It is a photograph of Lorenzo Fantini that greets you as you arrive on my homepage here but I realised, I didn't tell you what he is currently up to ...
Take a peek at what Lorenzo is doing when he isn't running his Genovese vegetarian cafe - Cibi e Libri
Pizzeria Da Pino creates the best pizza I have tasted anyplace in the world.
This is not a paid advertisement, as I always pay for their pizza ... and gladly.
I’m a bit of a Napoli pizza girl but mostly because I didn’t really discover anchovies until I arrived here in Genova back in 2008. And now I can’t get enough of them.
And basil, ohmygoodness! How didn’t I know about Basil??
So tonight, the night of Last Hours in Genova Rituals, is all about good pizza, a favourite wine, about cleaning and packing, about wishing I wasn’t leaving again but, at the same time, needing to go home.
It’s like that ...
Note to reader: The words ‘delicious’, ‘delightful’ and ‘lovely’ are used often in this post. Just so you know …
Yesterday was one of those delicious days I don’t want to forget but today finds me train-traveling to Leopoldsburg, with no time to sit down and savour my yesterday howevere I have packed my tiny blue travel laptop and so, here I am, writing from the train.
But perhaps it didn’t begin yesterday. It began months earlier, when a woman called Karla wrote me a note enquiring about family photo-shoots. It didn’t work out then but later it did.
And the shoot was so much fun. There was the pleasure of meeting the loveliest family, photographing the baby with the bluest eyes, hanging out with a friendly black labrador … stuff like that.
We stayed in touch, worked out a date for the photographs to be picked up and voila, we arrive at my yesterday.
Karla came over, toting her beautiful blue-eyed baby, accompanied by this lovely Irish woman who brought her very own chuckling bundle of delightful baby boy. Really chuckley … I can’t emphasise how delicious his giggle is. I’ll photograph him one day, it’s written all over his face when he laughs.
We sat down at my kitchen table, with tea and coffee, and talked, in that intense and delicious way that strangers sometimes do and voila, my marvellous yesterday had begun.
We looked through the photographs first, we learnt something of each others lives, I was introduced to my very first colour therapist and did I mention … we TALKED.
The babies played while we toyed with new ideas for each others lives and businesses. There was that delightful click of like-minded souls meeting, it’s something that always amuses me. While right-wing populist politicians work at making us fear ‘the other’, there we were, as is more often the case, finding connections across 3 different cultures and histories.
Karla and Marcia didn’t really know Antwerp at all and so we wandered into the city for a lunch. I couldn’t resist and despite rain, I introduced them to my most favourite square here … Hendrik Conscienceplein … created by the Italian Jesuits, it soothes my soul sometimes.
We stopped in at the soup cafe, Comme Soupe, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It’s tiny but the soup is a truly satisfying work of art. I should have taken a photograph but I will return there, I promise.
Tiny cafe + two pushchairs meant that we didn’t like to stay longer than need be but afterwards, we crossed the small space to the Cupcake Cafe called Lojola Coffee and Cake, at Hendrik Conscienceplein 14. Oh my, if in Antwerp, you must pop in.
We chose divine little cupcakes to compliment our coffee and we were happy. Delighting perhaps, in the dollhouse-like playfulness of that little cafe. Mmm, photographs to follow.
And it was almost 4pm … so suddenly.
We said our goodbyes in the city, and off I wandered on my next big adventure. The buying of the Nespresso coffee machine. Just the espresso part … inspired by a desire to avoid future pain when searching the city for good espresso. Genova and her beautiful coffees ruined me.
I felt childlike but I don’t think they knew in the shop. Remember that feeling of having that birthday money clenched in your hot little hand as you marched off to buy that thing that you really truly wanted, forever? It was like that.
I chatted with the woman in the busy Nespresso store, staffed by many. She had been in Australia.
You know, the more years I am away from New Zealand, and realising both my brothers are married to Australians and living there, the more I feel that we downunder people are fairly similar and there is no insult in mistaking me for an Aussie.
Beaming, and still feeling like a small excited kid, with my coffee machine bagged up and in my hand, I boarded a tram home and had this nice looking guy beckoning to me, wanting me to sit with him. Gert and I had managed, quite by chance, to find the same tram to ride home.
Well yes, he did have to suffer quite some Chitter-Chatter by Di on the way home.
I didn’t dare caffeinate myself after dinner. Chitter chatter on a tram after work is one thing, he can do it … just. Chitter-chatter at 3am, of the over-caffeinated kind, is something else. I had my first little espresso this morning and it was good.
Lately, life has been all about intensely good friends and meeting lovely people. Thanks guys.
Anyway, you see it, yesterday was a very good day…
One of my favourite places, here in the city of Genova, is Bar Boomerang.
Initially it was the name that I noticed. Then the fantastic, never-tasted-better cappuccino drew me back again and again. On this, my second visit to the city, I discovered that their aperitivo is the nicest aperitivo I’ve had so far.
The staff are friendly, clients are important to them and their passion for the work comes through in all that they do. If you are in Genova, I recommend you find your way to this cafe and decide for yourself.
In a small interview with Simona, the patient barista (patient in working with my New Zealand English), I asked a few questions about the cafe.
She explained that the name had orginated from a visit that Marta, the owner, had made to Australia. Marta and her husband enjoyed the trip so much that they named their Genovese cafe Bar Boomerang. I need to explain that what we would call a cafe in New Zealand is a bar here in Italy, although alcohol is served so perhaps it becomes something of a hybrid.
Open five years, the bar is located on via Porta Soprana, 41-43, not far from the ancient Genovese gate known as Porta Soprana. The gate, built in 1155, was originally intended as a defense rampart, with access for commercial traffic arriving via the interior, and acted as a barrier to would-be conquerors like Barbarossa and others. Today it stands permanently open, welcoming foreign creatures like me inside this ancient part of the city.
As a tourist, a sometimes shy tourist without l’taliano, I was a little intimidated about just how to order my coffee. Of course, it’s quite simple. You wander into the cafe, order your coffee, select something to eat if needed and take it yourself. In most bars, you can either pay a little extra and take a seat or stand at the bar and drink without sitting.
You pay as you leave.
At Bar Boomerang, their work is a passion and I’m sure that is what makes everything taste so good. Simona took me through the four steps required to make good coffee. Obviously you begin with good coffee, then you make sure your machines are clean. The third step involves making a good press and the fourth, well that surprised me, it’s about noting the humidity and any changes in the humidity. If it changes, the settings on the coffee machine need to change too.
The coffee is so very good. It’s one of the things I missed for weeks after leaving last time and I expect it will be the same this time.
Most people know Italians take their coffee very seriously. I asked Simona about the ‘rules’ and she explained that a typical Italian customer might have cappuccino or latte in the morning. Milk coffee is only for mornings and laughing she said, not before or after lunch or dinner. This is more of a tourist thing or maybe in winter, on a really cold day. Expresso is for all the time, after lunch or dinner particularly, as its role is to aid in digestion. You could typically follow the expresso with a liquer of some kind like limoncello, grappa or jagermeister.
I feel more relaxed when I wander into the bars here now, still imperfect and prone to crave cappuccino at inappropriate times but less worried.
Bar Boomerang is open from 7am until 9pm, 6 days a week – closed Sunday. They also serve lunches but that’s another post over on the blog.
I ate more pizza than I should have in Genova but eating becomes very much something I can’t be bothered doing when I’m out wandering ... cooking is even less likely to happen and so the pizzeria across the alley became a second home, specially while Pippa was staying.
One night, I popped into the kitchen and took a series of photographs at Pizzeria Da Pino.
I liked this one.
Pizzeria Ravecca da Pino, Via Ravecca, 23r - 16128 Genova.
I had passed by Cafe Stanny on the train as I travelled to and from Brussels city, and I have slid by it via the Number 8 tram so many times but I had never quite managed to step off and visit its red and welcoming friendliness.
Today, I had no destination in mind, I was simply escaping a really bad day and so there was nothing to lose as I climbed off Tram 8 with my small travelling laptop.
Cafe Stanny’s lunch menu is diverse enough to offer something for everyone, with soups, breads with a range of fillings and things I can’t quite remember. I chose a most divine bacon and onion omlette for lunch and it came with a soft brown heavily-grained bread that was delicious.
The music indicates good taste (an important criteria when wandering, laptop in hand). The atmosphere, now that it is summer, is open door with benches both inside and out. The staff were friendly and the decor lovely - appealing and a tug on the strings of memory for this kiwi so far from home. A deep blue bar/counter with stools, and stools along the high tables at the two large windows in the front.
Back in winter, I remember being attracted to the warmth of Cafe Stanny’s red exterior and the promise of its fogged up windows, clients bicycles piled up outside calling to me in but I was rushing, always rushing through that stretch of the city between here and there, I never made time to detour a little.
Cafe Stanny’s is lovely, a new favourite of mine but come see for yourself.
It’s at Stanleystraat 1, 2018 Antwerpen, located on the Tram 8 line and close to Berchem Railway Station ... seen from the train on the left side as you pull into the station (I think).
You can’t miss the red.