P O R T O F I N O

Well hello there,

Ahh we finally made it to Portofino! This had been our dream since we did our North Italy tour and skipped Portofino due to the bad weather. For those of you who have never heard of this, Portofino is a seaside town in the ‘Italian Riviera’, right in between Genoa and the Cinque Terre. From Turin, we had about 2.5h train ride. We had to change into a bit smaller train at Genoa. The return tickets cost us just over 30 e. We managed to form a group of six which was ideal for a rental house. Portofino itself is super expensive, the ‘common’ hotels I saw were definitely in the three figures per person per night. Obviously, there are many options and out of season, you might get lucky! We decided to rent a holiday apartment in Rapallo, which is nearby and easily accessible by train. The flat was really nice, included a kitchen and a pool (which unfortunately was only in use during the actual summer months). This cost us around 50 e each for two nights.

In the morning, we cooked a yummy Spanish omelette together and enjoyed our breakfast on the patio. 

Once we had happily filled our bellies, we decided to walk to Rapallo beach and take a ferry from there to Portofino. The walk was around 20 – 30 mins (there is also a bus) and the ferry departs every hour. We just missed a ferry and happily settled into our faith to lay at the beach for the next hour. It was a bit windy but I was determined to enjoy the beach so I actually managed to get a tan line!

We hopped on the ferry and started our excursion towards Portofino. The return tickets were 13 e and the ride takes about half an hour each way. There are dozens of sailing boats out in the ocean making the picture perfect shining blue ocean even better.

Finally, we arrived around a cliff which then revealed the colourful little town of Portofino! The bay was filled with luxury boats and the balconies reaching over the sea were full of colours and flowers. We immediately got excited to explore the city and were busy making plans for all the things we could do in our few hours (the last boats back left at 5 pm).

We climbed up to the local yellow church from which we spotted out the castle and the lighthouse Faro. You also have to try out the local speciality ice cream portion. The price (12 e) sounds like a robbery but it really is worth it. I cannot even describe it. YUM!

It costs 5 e to get into the castle on top of the hill so only two of us actually paid it to catch the view from the garden. Also very much worth every penny; best view of the city and the building itself is beautiful. Unfortunately, due to a tornado, the lower garden was inaccessible.

From the castle, there is a breathtaking 300 m walk to the end of the island to the Faro lighthouse. The ocean is simply so blue and the trees so green that no words would ever do them justice. The lighthouse is old school, fully white and has a bar behind it with chilled music playing for everyone’s entertainment.

View from the lighthouse bar.

Sadly, we were forced to leave the town too soon and headed back to Rapallo. We found some local focaccias and home-brewed wine (which cost 1.6 a bottle plus 50 cents for the bottle itself). The wine was quite interesting but a good experience!

We headed back to our flat after the sunset and our Neapolitan friend cooked us some REAL pasta. Also a huge success. The rest of the evening was spent singing, dancing and playing games.

The next day we ate a breakfast at Rapallo beach and headed to Genoa for the day. Genoa was nice to visit again; the weather was pleasant this time and we had a tasty lunch. Genoa is famous for its pesto so we all ordered different kinds of pesto dishes.

That’s all for now!

Thank you,

Mira