Sitting in the rather dingy little internet cafe yesterday listening to Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston whilst the only other customer, a crazy old man drank wine and muttered loudly to himself, I was thinking “oh, whoop-de-doo, this is Imperia, where we’ll be for the next 10 days”, yaaaay. I walked around the town in the pouring rain (avec umbrella) through shady (and not in the good way) little streets that looked thousands of years old, paint peeling off, tiny little doors that only hobbits could get through, mangy cats and grumpy old ladies with beards. I walked past the laundromat come bar (?), a souvenir shop that sold mainly Hello Kitty key rings and ceramic thimbles with Yorkshire Terriers on them (?), a fruit shop that only had 3 apples, a bunch of rotten bananas, a swarm of fruit flies and a sack of oranges. I did, however, manage to find a shop that sold beautiful wool (this is what happens when you’re left on the boat by yourself, you start knitting) so after a 10 minute enactment of knitting and indicating what colour I wanted, I bought some wool. I carried on walking and ran straight into one of the most enormous churches I’ve ever seen, so, I went inside. BIG mistake. Mistake of epic proportions. It was the most frightening place I’ve ever been. It was dark and echoey and there were creepy statues everywhere. The bells were ringing really loudly and at the same time there was a group of people chanting, the chants getting louder and more frightening and it was storming and there were candles flickering and gusts of wind coming through the door, I thought it might be disrespectful to RUN so I speed walked out of there as fast as I could before God could strike me down. Never again.
My luck seemed to improve as I walked into a bakery to get a loaf of ciabatta (when in France, eat baguette, when in Italy, eat ciabatta) and was given a complimentary slice of pizza and a bag of biscuits for “having face like the little doll”, okay, fine, I’ll take that. Who am I to turn down free pizza? I got back to the boat and said hi to the crew sitting on the dock, “sheesh, Imperia’s pretty grotty hey”, haha... that’s Porto Maurizio, the main town of Imperia is that way, you get the bus there, it’s really nice. Haha, PHEW. So, that’s where I am today, the real Imperia, drinking a cappucciono, people watching and blogging on my little pink laptop after exploring the vibrant market that's on today, beautiful flowers and incredibly fresh produce which inspired me to buy a little antipasti recipe book, in Italian, with the hopes that A my cooking will improve and B, so will my Italian. Oh, and I've completely lost the plot, I came dangerously close to buying a tea pot for R900 (in my defence it was an amazing tea pot, beautifully made cast iron, dusty pink with flowers engraved all over it, with a filter inside to put the tea leaves in... maybe I'll be outrageous and go back to get it... eee)
