I had an overdose of carbs today, so I made sure to have a big salad for dinner. The hostel breakfast consisted of bread, croissant, and focaccia. And barely any coffee. And my lunch was a huge bowl of pesto pasta. Well at least I was fueled for all my walking. Genova is a pretty cool city. It has a busy port, huge buildings and old palazzi, tiny alleyways that wind through the old city, gaudy churches, and lots of hills. I went into quite a few churches today, all of them richly decorated, lots of gold. I also went to visit a few of the palazzi- the Palazzo Bianco, Palazzo Rosso, and Palazzo Reale. Lucky for me, they were all free today. The first two had a few old paintings, the Flemish paintings were my favorite. The Palazzo Reale was just a big, lavish, grand palace, with richly decorated rooms, the hall of mirrors was impressive, as well as the kings room- red velvet and gold. I also went down to the port, ande decided to pay the hefty entrance fee for the aquarium. The aquarium had a few nice exhibits, and it was fun learning some names for some of the animals in Italian: squallo-shark, razza-ray, medusa-jellyfish, lamantino-manatee. I think my favorite exhibit was the penguins (pinguino, but I allready knew that one :). I mostly just walked around a lot today. Found some more food vendors in front of the Chiesa del Gesu, selling honey, olive oil, meats, huge wheels of Grana Padano cheese, pastries, and all kinds of dried fruit. The markets here are just amazing.
It's a Saturday, which means tons of people checking into the hostel. I'll be in bed early again from exhausting myself. Tomorrow I leave for Cinque Terre. Excited, but concerned about what the hostel will be like and about the crowds, I've been hearing that there are tons of tourists. We shall see.
