It was finally the day we arrived in Italy! I was surprised how excited I was. I mean, I’m always happy to be anywhere new, but I felt far more excited than I was in Portugal, Spain, or France. Woohoo!
We just booked a simple, short tour of the town. These are kind of nice because you see a little, hear the history, get the landmarks pointed out and then you still have most of the day left over afterward to go spend time wherever you want. Since it was short, we didn’t have to report to the bus until 9 or so which meant we had time to go see our favorite coffee barista and have her make us a flat white. This is a coffee popular in Australia that we absolutely loved when we were there and they make a great one at this one coffee bar.
So, we’re sitting there waiting on the coffee. Jason runs to the restroom so I’m just quietly sitting there alone. All the sudden, I heard some sort of loud commotion. I turned my head trying to make sense of the sound. I see a tour group walking towards the aft staircase. And then I hear very loud voices. Shouting. Two men. Suddenly, it is just one voice and it screams, “I don’t care about you. I don’t like you. I hope you get everything that’s coming to you!!!”
Then, an older man comes walking past me very fast and he yells, “KICK HIM OFF THE SHIP!”
At this point, everyone else is…stone quiet.
To say this is unusual on a boat is a ridiculous understatement. Certainly, there are people who don’t like each other. But yelling and screaming and threatening language? No. Never.
Finally, I see the guy who was doing the shouting. And man was he something to behold. One of those people who is just different in style and presentation. You’re going to notice this guy, even if he isn’t screaming. And, he walks fast. Always holding a phone to his ear. (I mean seriously, could he possibly be talking to someone?) Always dripping with brand name labels. And on this particular day, he was also wearing the strangest, largest, brightly colored rainbow sweater I’ve ever seen. He was also wearing sunglasses. Even thought he was inside, not near windows, and it was cloudy and rainy anyway.
This incident rocked the boat. If you were there and saw it/heard it, you were telling everyone else. The story blew through the boat and Genoa, Italy!
A couple hours later, we were off the bus tour and walking through the city center when we heard a loud voice. NO LIE- there was the guy! He had cornered a couple who were dining at an outdoor cafe. We were pretty sure they were from our ship- but we hadn’t seen them before. We ended up taking a huge lap around the downtown area and came back to that same cafe and sat down near the couple, who were just finishing up their beers.
Before they left, the stopped by to talk to us. They hadn’t seen his outburst in the morning, so we filled them in. We assumed he was telling him about that when we saw them talking earlier- but oh no. Instead he was telling them they wouldn’t be allowed to get back on the boat and a slew of other total nonsense. They told us that earlier in the week, he and his friend made a huge scene in the duty free shop when they found out they couldn’t bring their newly bought liquor straight to their room. duh.
At this point, we learned that the couple we were chatting with were both police officers from Australia. Cool! No wonder they stayed so calm and chill. They’ve trained for this. But in the conversation, the female cop said, when describing him, “…and that’s when Rainbow man absolutely lost his sh!t!” I can’t stop laughing at this. He’s been rainbow man ever since.
We asked some of the crew we’ve become buddies with if the crew gets some sort of notification about passengers who need to be watched. They were a bit hesitant to to answer but said yes. Rainbow man was known.
Anyway, back to Genoa. The city center was lovely- a huge fountain that looked exactly what Italy looked like in my mind. An older man sitting playing beautiful violin music that was filling up the center. Clean. Bustling but somehow also quiet.
Genoa is home of basil so I was determined to eat something with pesto- which was pretty darn easy to do! We shared 2 dishes - a basil pesto and fried anchovies. Both were incredible. We scored again with a local white wine. The dishes were the perfect size - just enough. They were lighter than what a similar dish in the US would be. Not overdone. Not too oily, cheesy, greasy. Just spot on.
At some point, Jason had gone inside and I was sitting alone at the table. A younger lady came up to me, grabbed Jason’s chair and said something in Italian. While I somehow absolutely knew she was asking if she could have the chair- her table had too many people, not enough chairs - my brain couldn’t come up with anything at all to say. Nothing. We just looked at each other. Finally, I said, “what?” The entire patio, myself included, started laughing. And then she said in perfect English, “Oh, I’m sorry. Would it be ok if I took this chair?”
Too many languages in a short series of days. My brain died.
Back on the boat, the rainbow man stories continued to spread. Everyone was anxious to see if he was going to be allowed back on the boat …business as usual. Time would tell.
We were sitting in Vines early evening, having some wine with the gang, when we heard the chime come over the loudspeaker. Listen, this isn’t our first rodeo. The second we heard, “Ladies and Gentleman, this is the captain…” we all knew were weren’t going to make it to Tuscany the next day. DANG IT. Malaga, Cartagena, Gibraltar, Valencia, Chateauneuf du Pape, and now Tuscany. What the heck.
The captain had some “good news” though, which is that we would just go ahead into Rome instead- arriving around noon. We’d get 1.5 days there. That’s better than going nowhere. And with that, the beleaguered shore excursion crew began again cancelling everything from Tuscany and lining up things in Rome. Those people need a vacation.
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