- In the deli. Pick up a jar of pesto. “No, don’t buy that, go across the road to that shop, they produce their own. It’s the best around” (in Genoa, pesto is taken very seriously). I’d forgotten how regional food is in Italy and how important it is. Obviously pesto is a Genovese thing but things are even more specific. Sori, where we are, even has its own pasta (trofie is the name, it’s kind of a small corkscrew shape). Recco, the next door place (4 minutes by train, the standard measure when you’ve been doing interrail for 3 weeks), is famous for focaccia.
- E and I went to the opera. Or rather we went to a concert in the local oratorio where some opera singers did songs from different operas (I want to say “arias” here but I’m not 100% sure that all songs in operas are technically arias so I’ll go with songs. Also, is the plural of opera operas? Or is opera itself the plural? It’s a bloody minefield trying to get culture, I can tell you). Anyway at this event, very close to the end of the programme, the pianist disappeared. There was a wait (I think everyone assumed he’d gone for a slash – there will be a more operatic word for that, piscioretta or something, but we’ll go with slash. But either it was the world’s longest ever slash, or we’d all assumed wrongly). As we waited to see if he’d re-emerge from wherever he’d gone, a couple of the singers filled in with pieces that weren’t part of the schedule and with the assistance of the violinist (who must have been Romanian with a name like Constantin Ciobanu). The tenor, who seemed to be the most famous judging by the number of people who started videoing him whenever he sang, was Marco Bianchi. There were some other Italians and three Chinese singers too. Eventually the pianist reappeared for the grand finale apologetically explaining the reason for his absence (an explanation I couldn’t follow, but judging by the body language, was centred on tummy troubles. Or as they say in opera, Il Diarrhoeario)
- Sori is lovely. We’re on the Golfo Paradiso apparently, which is perhaps a bit of a stretch but Golfo Extremely Nice Indeed would definitely be fair under the coastal descriptions act.
Low-cost midlife crisis 
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