Jim's next project...

We decided to stay in town today because rain was forecast for the area. We have found that when it rains, it really rains and you hope you are under cover somewhere.

After breakfast we paid a visit to our favorite laundry service (I could get very used to this) and headed out for the “Durazzo Park”. Durazzo Park is a beautiful park that wasn’t always so. There is a villa located here but only in recent years the city of Santa Margherita took the park and villa over and brought it back to life.

A little history here: Santa Margherita was actually two fighting towns—each with its own bay. In 1800, Napoleon came along, took over the Republic of Genoa and made it one city—naming it after him. When he fell into disgrace, the town stayed united and took the name of the patron saint of its leading church, Santa Margherita.

In the 1850’s, the residents decided to make Santa Margherita a Riviera resort. They imported palm trees from North Africa and made a grand beach promenade. Rich aristocrats of Genoa, England, Russia and Germany built grand villas in the hills and area around Santa Margherita. This is how the villa of Durazzo came into the picture.

When the city took back the Villa and the park, they created a “Wild English garden (referring to the free growing vines, trees and bushes) and a carefully coiffed “Italian garden”. The garden is known for its famous collection of palm trees—each one is different. The villa now hosts concerts. Unfortunately it was closed due to the time of year but the gardens were open.

We leave here on Thursday. In speaking with others we are going to change our train ticket from Genoa to Milan by an hour. I guess the Milan train station is huge and we only have a 20 minute time frame to get to our next train that takes us to Stuggart, Germany. Trains have been running late and if we miss that connection, we stay overnight somewhere. Instead of chancing it, we will leave here at 6:30 am, walk to the train station and catch the early train to Genoa and then take the earlier train to Milan. We hope our plans work; we are already booked into a hotel in Nuremburg for the evening.

And finally, we have figured out Jim's next project. We finally figured out what we can do with that garbage can full of black rocks! This area of Italy uses them by standing them on edge in cement on their piazza's. They would make a nice little porch or something! Print this post