On the first day of this trip, Jeremiah and I arrived to Genoa from Rome after learning the hard way to space out our train schedules. In Rome, we were supposed to get on a train connection of ten minutes and our first train was ten minutes behind schedule. This left us stranded in Rome for the night, until we found some friends that hosted us until 5 am where we took the next available train to Genoa, in the train we learnt that at 5am there’s a lot of Italian youth that chant their way home after a night of partying. After arriving in Genoa, meeting with other students, and showing off our apartments, we all met at the Ferrari Plaza for a quick tour of the city where Professor Rice helped us find our way around the city and showed us the local spots to visit during our time here. Later that night we all went to eat at a ‘trattoria’ where I had a pesto pasta, and octopuses. Right after dinner some of us went to the bar area that Professor Rice recommended and met some of the locals as well as the people working there.
On the second day, we followed Professor Rice for a more in depth tour of Genoa focused on the culinary parts of the city and talked about the spread of slow food in Italy. After that we took a train to a nearby coastal town, Nervi, where we learnt that the park that’s currently there by the sea used to several different estates of rich families that were donated to make one big park full of exotic vegetation brought by the previous owners, the park is also used for a festival that fills the park full of flowers once a year. After that we walked along the coast on a trail named after an Italian general who liberated territories while doing military campaigns in Argentina during the late 1700s. We had some free time to enjoy Nervi on our own and met back with half of the group to participate in a Genovese cooking class where we cooked a three course meal. Later that night, I went up to the overlook spot of the city where we got stuck after hours because the elevator had closed down, but we figured out how to get down with other tourists that became our friends for the thirty minute walk down.
