After a couple of croissants and a beignet, taken in the wonderfully aromatic garden of the Palais Carnolès, which is the largest citrus garden in Europe with 130+ kinds of citrus trees, we were ready to depart Menton. Genova is only a couple of hours away, but as there aren't many coastlines more beautiful than the French and Italian Riviera, we decided to take the long route, as close to the water as we could get.
The SP1 is a lot like Highway 1; it's slow, and curvy, and runs through the middle of every small town along the coast, and has a speed limit of 90 kmh (about 50 mph), but offers some incredibly beautiful vistas. The sun was shining, the water was that special, cloudy sapphire color that you find in the Mediterranean along the Cote d'Azure, and eventually the rocky beaches of the French side became sandy.
^^The Med.
<-France Italy->
After many hours of lovely driving, we arrived in Genova. Julianna found us a hotel room for the night at Hotel C. Colombo, named after one of Genova's famous sons... it is a very nice, though slightly "eccentric" hotel (our room had a random exposed end of an antique structural beam in the wall, for no apparent reason). Below you may see Julianna enjoying a reasonable glass of wine and some snacks in the Piazza delle Erbe, where we scampered soon after arriving, desperate for food and drink to tide us over until dinner.
Julianna took a bit of a nap upon returning to the hotel, and we wanted to adopt the Italian dining hours, so we didn't start looking for restaurants until 8:ish. The receptionist at the hotel didn't have any particularly interesting dining recommendations, so we set off on our own, and started wandering hither and thither through the very small, narrow streets of the old town. Through many trials and tribulations, including restaurants that didn't look very good, and other places that didn't have any room, and as we were getting increasingly cranky, Julianna was able to find her way back to one of the first places we looked at, La Buca di San Matteo.
Since the wonderful meal we had with Kris in Brussels, we had about struck out when it came to good restaurants. The place in Bayeux had terrible service and mediocre food, the restaurant in Arles wasn't great and a bit pricey, there wasn't anything in particular memorable about Menton. But tonight, luck was with us. It was a small restaurant, staffed (tonight anyway) entirely by women. There were a handful of tables filled, and no one was speaking English. The menu was small, and mostly indecipherable (between us, Julianna and I speak French, German and Spanish, but when it comes to Italian, I rely almost exclusively upon words I've seen on the Bar Bambino menu). The tables were small and wooden, with white runners, the glassware was high quality (Reidel and Schott), and there were bottles of vintage Italian wines scattered around as ambiance and decoration (there was a 1977 Gaja Barolo next to me, and a couple of bottles from the late '60s on a sideboard, in addition to Barbarescos and such of a similar vintage).
We split a warm octopus salad, I continued with Gnocci Verde al Scampi (or something similar) in a light tomato sauce, and finished with an artichoke stuffed loin of rabbit. Julianna was disappointed by her risotto, but the piece of beef she ordered was incredible, garnished with Condimento di Balsamico and strawberries. All of the courses were rather artistically presented, though without being at all awkward to consume. Along with, we had a 2003 Nebbiolo d'Alba "Agrestis" from Agricola Marrone which was lovely, and developed delightfully over the course of the meal. Finished with cookies and a glass of Vin Santo. A wonderful end to a wonderful day.
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Yum, and I hope you took pictures in the citrus garden!! The orange trees are just about done blooming in So Cal, but for a while it was just like you described - lovely, fantastically perfumed air.
ReplyDeletep.s. I love that you know the brands of glassware.