In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue

On Sunday I met the girls at my house at an early 7:45 in the morning. Our train left for Genova, Chris Columbus' (and Renzo Piano-for all you architecture majors) hometown at 8:20. We got to Genova around 11 and had to get a cappucino to start the trip. The weather was really cloudy and even sprinkled on us for awhile. We walked around the city just stopping when we saw something interesting. After breakfast we looked at an art exhibit outside of Chinese contemporary art. We walked for awhile and asked for directions to Chris' house. The house was tiny but the tour guide said that it was big for the time period even though Chris' family was considered poor. After the house tour we went to the city's duomo (cathedral). It was closed on Sunday but we stayed in the courtyard and listened (and sang) to this guy playing Beatles songs on his guitar. We went to the port and walked around watching street preformers and looking at street vendor treasures. We decided to go to the aquarium-the largest in Europe. Amazing!! I loved it even though it brought back bad memories of Christmas shopping...people everywhere and little kids screaming for gift shop goodies. The exhibits were really interesting and really well organized. Towards the end we were so tired from fighting the crowds that we left and found a nice little cafe on the harbor to eat a terrific lunch. Call me inhumane but I really had a craving for seafood after going to the aquarium so I had pasta with shrimp. For desert we had strawberries with the best vanilla gelato I have ever had in my life. We were regenerated after the break and decided to tour the Royal Palace. For some reason they weren't selling tickets but we managed to get a FREE tour of the palace. This (of course) was my favorite thing in the city. The rooms were incredible and I couldn't help imaging the kings and queens sitting in the rooms. The art was incredible and had some famous pieces that I studied in college so it was nice to see them up close and personal. The tour took over an hour so afterwards we had a little time left to get some gelato-I realize we eat a lot of this stuff but it is out of this world!-and walked down one of the main streets. We went to the train station to wait for our train and bought dinner to picnic on the train. Our train took a little over 2 hours so we got home at 11. It was a great day despite the cold rainy weather. Another weekend finished-back to work.