A Room in a Big Genovese House ...

I feel things powerfully, and so life is about negotiating this way of being quite sensitive, or it has been.

But I'm wondering perhaps here in Genoa it’s okay to feel everything as I do.

I mean look ... the photograph below is an ordinary everyday street in the city.  This is a street laid with beautiful old stones and you just know that they hold million stories.  They’re worn, they shine in the rain.  I looked down and like a child, I showed Gert the resulting photograph, exclaiming ‘isn’t it beautiful!’  And it wasn’t about the photograph, it was about the light and the stones.

The wine I find here is delicious.  We scaled a supermarket shelf today, hoping that no one was watching because they surely would have found endless entertainment in our efforts to reach the last couple of bottles of Conti Serristori, Chianti 2008.  Just 4euro, it is a very nice everyday kind of Chianti.

The focaccia I mention more often than is polite, is exquisite.  The coffee here ... it is sublime.  A small expresso lifts a day beyond ordinary.

Last night it was fresh gnocchi and pesto.  Simply prepared here at the apartment, devoured with delight ... and no small amount of pride that we managed to cook it correctly.  A delicate beast, is fresh gnocchi.  Once it floats to the surface of the pot, it’s ready ... don’t mess about unless Gnocchi Soup appeals to you (and it shouldn’t)

The sounds here in the small alleyway where we are ... it’s of people living and I miss that in Belgium.  Here, I feel like I have a room in a huge house.  I can hear everyday life in the same way I lived amongst 2 brothers, a sister, 2 parents and various pets.  I love the noise of life. 

The air is fresh today, washed clean by the rain that has returned ... and returned all day long, while thunder has surprised us periodically over the last 12 hours.  The temperature was 23 celsius this afternoon, but it comes and goes.  I love the rain. 

La Feltrinelli, a bookshop that is surely on my Top 5 bookshops in the world, has moved a little closer to the apartment, and today I accidentally purchased another book from a favourite author (8euro here) ...  delighted to roam through its shelves and many floors.

Mmmm, so it is, I have fallen truly, madly, deeply in love with this city on the Ligurian coast ... but you knew that, didn’t you.