Portofino

Today I travelled further north up the Italian Riviera to Portofino. It was about an hour train ride to Santa Margherita (also a tourist spot). From there it was about an hour's nice walk along the coast to Portofino. Portofino is all about (rich) tourism. All it basically has is lots of restaurants, boats, hotels and villas. It's an expensive but popular place, particularly as it's not far from Genoa. But apart from that it has a nice harbour, impressive churches and it's own castle (Castle Brown). Although it's a medieval castle, it's named after an English consul to Genoa who owned the castle once and renovated it when no one wanted it. I went up to the castle and as you will see from the pictures there were sensational views of Portofino from it. It's a pretty little place and it also has a national park with lots of walks but I didn't get to that.

On the knucklehead front, there was one taking his dog with him up the steep paths. It was a Samoyed and it was clearly not enjoying the exertion and heat (but not clear to the owner). It was panting even when still and even shaking a bit. Then there was the group that decided to have lunch in the middle of the the path just before the town centre. I'm not sure whether they were anti-social or just stupid. Finally, on the train back there was the character that couldn't sit still. He kept walking up and down the train. I spotted him at least five times in my carriage. Italian railways should hire him to check tickets because certainly the conductor didn't.