Genoa

After a morning walk through Lucca, visiting several churches, we drove on to Genoa while Eddie napped. It was really hot! We had to keep to the shade wherever we went. After lunch, we walked downtown. Eddie ran around for a while in the courtyard of the town hall. Then we got to Piazza de Ferrari, which had a huge fountain to run around, and some giant speakers where a band was setting up or something. Every once in a while they would start playing music—sometimes extremely loudly—then stop in the middle of a song. Eddie was running back and forth, dancing away whenever the music started, then shaking his open hands to say "all done" when it stopped. He approached some of the other people around, too. He wandered into a photo with great panache—he just walked up to stand next to the two people getting photographed, looking up as if to say "So what are we doing, guys?"

Another guy was sitting on the edge of the fountain, looking kind of depressed. Eddie climbed up to sit by him and make buddies. Then when the music started, Eddie danced on his seat, looking at the guy to say "see? Dancing is fun!" When the music stopped, Eddie ran off, but whenever it started again Eddie would run back to tell his friend about it. The guy had to smile. Nonno thinks that Eddie reminded him why life's worth living.

The next day we took a funicular up to Righi, a town on a mountain over Genoa. It had some nice views, and an observatory with models of all the planets for Eddie to look at, and then we had a long walk on a quiet road through a forest. We had lunch at a charming restaurant with a view, and underneath a man was mowing what must have been mint, because it smelled wonderful.

After Eddie's nap, we went back downtown, and headed into a street of shops. Eddie stopped in a toy store to look at some accordions. Then we got to the church of San Matteo, which besides being practically named after my father, has a mosaic above the door which looks just like him!

After that we visited the Duomo, which has some fantastic, long-maned, friendly-looking lions on its front steps. Inside, our guidebook casually mentions, it has the Holy Grail. ?! Of course we tried to see it, but it's in the treasury, which was closed. Darn! I bet this is what happened to the knights of the round table too!

We did get to see an unexploded bomb which hit the cathedral (which they keep around as a souvenir of a miracle, I guess.) I was worried that Eddie would knock it over so we hurried out. Outside, he ran around like a crazy guy. He saw another toddler, headed toward him, and said "Ciao baby!" Eddie veered away from actually encountering the kid, though, and started chasing pigeons.

At dinner time we found that Eddie is really into seafood now: shrimp and crab were big hits.