Old new things and new old things

 It's Friday the Thirteenth and in some countries that's considered unlucky. But I'm not in one of those countries today so I'm safe! If you live in one, just keep hiding under the bed till it's over.

Tomorrow is Valentine's Day, which is a sort of commercial Licence to Love day. Years ago I went for a Valentine's dinner with my then partner to a local restaurant where we knew the food was good. And it was. Except that the place was packed and so it was busier, noisier and pricier than usual and, as a consequence, not very romantic. I vowed I'd not try the experiment again. But, hey, you do it your way.

The heart-shaped box of chocolates here was at Romanengo's chocolate shop in Genoa. Love has a price here: 88 euros to be precise. Eep!

Today's title is not a lesser known quote from Donald Rumsfeld (remember him?) but relates to more things from my recent trip to Genoa ...

 

Historic shops 

Genoa has over 100 historic shops which house ancient businesses, some of them 200 and more years old, from butchers to bookshops. Romanengo above is one and here are some others I spotted that haven't already been posted.

Café

Stationers

Cakes

Rubber stamps

In addition, some ancient buildings house new chain stores, like OVS that sells cheap clothing but is in an old palace. It's odd to browse the racks and come across this fountain with a heroic statue of Hercules clobbering the Hydra. 

Hercules famously wore a lion-skin cloak (and not much else) and here he is surrounded by cheap jeans! This sort of incongruity appeals to me. 

 

Jeans

Talking of jeans, the garment originates in Genoa and is an anglicization of the French name for the city, Gênes. I wrote about the development of jeans here a few years ago: Jeans, the garment that made the modern world.

 

St George  

And talking of incongruity, there's a story that the English flag, which is identical to the Genoese flag, was borrowed from Genoa by King Richard the Lionheart in the late 12th century when he went off on crusade.

 

I say borrowed. The story is that the Genoese, with one of the largest navies of the time, let English crusader ships use their flag when sailing through the Mediterranean to afford them more protection. King Richard had to pay for the privilege and then subsequent kings seem to have forgotten this nicety. Some or all of this may be Ye Medievalle Fayke Newes. St George is a military saint who appealed to crusaders and medieval soldiers generally.

You have to wonder at contemporary English nationalists' possessive obsession with St George and his flag. Given that Saint George came from Cappadocia in what is now Turkey, fought in the Roman army, allegedly killed a dragon in Libya and was buried in what is now Israel; is also the patron saint of Ethiopia and, of course, Georgia (the country named after him, not the US state), and one of the patrons of Portugal; is a saint in Islam as well as Christianity; and killed a dragon, which was a favourite Anglo-Saxon symbol. There's nothing English about him at all. You don't have to be dim to be nationalist, but it certainly helps. 

St George is painted on the beautiful palace that used to be the government house here. 

Sadly, 1960s urban planning being what it was, they put a flyover right in front of this building. 

It's by the harbour, which was revamped in 1992 for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's first voyage and has a lot of modern attractions such as the aquarium and the maritime museum, both very large. I saw these in 2019 so I didn't repeat my visits this time but they are excellent. There's also this warship, the Neptune, which is not old but was built for 8 million dollars in 1980s money for Roman Polanski's movie Pirates. I hadn't heard of it ... apparently the film, despite (or maybe because of) its being a comedic tribute to pirate movies of yore, was a flop.

 

That concludes my sightseeing. I liked Genoa's competent and cheap public transport system, including its single-line metro that takes you to all the main points in the city centre. I'll go back when it's warmer as I'd quite like to take some of the funiculars that hoist you up the steep hillsides of the city, and visit the Great Wall of Genoa, which is the strongest and longest city wall in Europe. 

Next week, though, under the principle of saving the best till last, I'll be concluding my thoughts on Genoa with a few paragraphs on the city's centuries-old trans community and the trans ghetto.

Have a nice weekend.

Sue x