5 terra

My only full day in Genoa was wet and cold and I tried to spend most of it indoors-three museums, the Aquarium and an Italian cinema. The museums were a 3 for 1 deal and mostly paintings (including a few Primitives) housed in three different palazzos-Rosso, Bianca and Tursi. I like acquariums but didn't really want to include many of them on this trip because I want to see what is unique to a particular city but I let the weather dictate the day and I kept things close together. They have seals at the Genoa and one little guy in particulart was a hoot. The acquarium wasn't very crowded when I was there and when I was at the underwater viewing window of the seal exhibit, I was the only person there. The small seal was gliding by the window at the same speed I was walking. I thought it was a coincidence until I stopped. He stopped. I walked the other way. He followed. I knelt down. He sank. I walked along and then stopped behind a pillar and peeked around it. He kept going past the pillar but stopped and waited. We kept this up for quite a while. I don't know who was having more fun.

After playtime with the seal, I took in an American film dubbed in Italian just for fun. I knew the story as I had read the book the film was based on (Twilight) so I wasn't completely lost but I probably would have been had I not known the story. It was an experiment, OK?

So that ended my dreary weather days in Genoa. My train ride the next day (Friday) was a short on to Riomaggiore, one of the five villages that make up the Cinque Terra region of Italy. I was in town, checked into my hostel and back out touring before noon. I had info on a Letterbox in the next city down the line so decided to do that for the remainder of the day. The box is listed at being in La Spezia but having attemped the find there, I'm thinkin' the clue is a bit off and that the box is actually in Pisa where I'm going on Monday. Nothing on the ground in La Spezia matches the clue but during my search I found two museums and explored them instead. The first one was a combination of archeological, religious, historical and fine art. I think I was the only visitor in the museum. A map was provided and each room was numbered and it was important to follow the numbers. Docents/guards were there to direct me at each entrance/exit and turn the lights on and off as I moved through each room. There were a few rooms in the center where I guess it was OK for someone to be left alone because there would be no one at the door and I'd enter the room and just sort of stand there in the dark until the lights came on. In the sculptures room, I waited for what seemed like a long time (it was probably less than a minute) then went and stood in front of the security camera and waved. The lights came on after a few seconds and I saluted a thank you. The lights blinked. Coincidence? You tell me.

So what did I see in this museum. I don't remember. The first bit was all religious bits-Crucifixes, headpieces to staffs, chalices, all kinds of painted enamelled artifacts, reliquaries, carved bits of ivory, wee statutes in silver, gold, bronze and wood. That was just the first room. The second room were the miniatures which I thought were going to be small models of things but 'miniatures' here refer to the miniature paintings that make up the illuminations in illuminated manuscripts for the age of that sort of thing (12th century-ish?). In some of the cases the entire pages were displayed. Some were texts and some were music scores. About a the last third of the room showed only the miniatures so it you couldn't tell what they were illuminating.

After the religious artifacts were religious paintings on wood. Madonna & Bambino being the most often depicted subjects with dyptychs of The Nativity &/or The Gift of the Magi and The Crucifixtion being the second favorite topic.

Periodically, in each section, one part of a room would have some archeological bits discovered when the building housing the museum was being renovated.

The fine art paintings finished out the tour. I haven't gone into details of much of this because I figured you might be kind of tired of reading my non-descriptive descriptions and all of the informative pamphlets and plaques were in Italian so I can't say much about what I was looking at.

The Sigilli museum is unique and kinda cool. It was something to warms the hearts of sphragilists world wide. No, I'd never seen the word before either. You know those wax seals kings and such used to use-that's what it's all about. There are hundreds of seals here and they all used to be a private collection until the collectors donated the whole lot to the city of La Spezia. Seals are still used today though not exactly in the melted wax way most of the time. However, apparently, the Pope still does seal certain documents in this manner. My interest in this museum comes from my having recently added a few wax seals to my hobby room. Now that I have a bit more information (I bought the book at the museum that was written by the former owners of the collection) I'm gonna try to find some older style ones rather than the story bought ones I have or maybe make a few of my own!

So La Spezia was a bust as far as letterboxing goes but surprise winner in other areas.

Saturday, I started my tour of Cinque Terra. I meandered through my base village of Riomaggiore including the museum. (A wee little one room exhibit.) I then walked the path overlooking the sea to the next town Manarola and visited both of its museums (Wee little one room exhibits, also). Then back to Riomaggiore, grocery shopping, dinner and the day is done.

I was concerned about my stay here because when I booked my hostel online, I could only find a mixed dorm hostel and we know from one previous experience with that situation that I was not looking forward to my accomodations. My concerns were for naught. My hostel is 10 bed, four room apartment, with two almost full baths (shower, no tub), common area and kitchen. There is a doorway at each corner of the kitchen. You enter through one door, going counterclockwise around the kitchen, you walked past the stove and sink with cabinets above and below. The first door is to my bathroom. Go to the next door you pass a counter top with cabinets above and below and the fridge. This second door is my room with two beds and a wardrobe, amoire or chiffarobe thingy that you can't open full because the bed is too close. The room is smaller than any college dorm room I've ever seen Go to the next door and you pass the windows overlooking the street. You enter the common area. There's a 9" TV that may or may not be a color TV. There's no picture. Keep going straight and you enter the other bedroom which is bigger than the one I'm in and has two beds. The second bathroom is off the common room. Remember I said there are10 beds. So far, I've accounted for 4 of them. The other 6. . .they are lined up around the perimeter of the common room! Centered in the common room, by the way, is the dining room table! And yet, I'm still not concerned. Had I been here at the height of the summer season, I'd've stayed elsewhere but my first night, I had the place to myself and there were two roommates who took the other bedroom last night. (Guess what, they're Aussies!) Unless a soccer or rubgy team stops by for the remainder of the weekend, I don't foresee and problems.