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One of the best – perhaps the best – thing about travelling in Italy is this: you arrive at your destination and find that everything is better than you felt you had a right to expect.

You go to eat in a simple trattoria (or simply buy something from a bakery) and the food is tasty and well prepared, you go into a busy coffee shop to kill some time while waiting for your bus and the espresso is hot even when served at your table (why can’t the French and Germans learn how this is being done?), you go to an ice cream parlour and pay half of what you would pay in France for twice the quantity and quality.

And even the least promising stopover town has something so beautiful that it takes your breath away.

We have been travelling in Italy a lot!

On our recent trip to Pietra Ligure, this happened not once …

"churches to see when Travelling in Italy"

… but twice …

"Borgio Verezzi"

… for a day full of pleasant surprises.

Pietra is a resort town close to Savona, located on a stretch of the Riviera (just to the southwest of Genoa) where foreign tourists rarely go. The foreigners – and even many Italians – choose to concentrate on the famous resorts in the east (Portofino and the Cinque Terre) and on the extreme west of Liguria that features Sanremo and the hilltop villages of the back country.

Tourists who do come here visit mainly for the beaches of which there are many, stretching on either side of the town for a total of more than 10 km, …

"Beaches in Liguria - Travelling in Italy"

… but there are other sights including the 18th century town church …

"more churches when Travelling in Italy"

… and a castle …

"castle ruins in Pietra Ligure"

… where two members of Monaco’s Grimaldi family were once help captive and executed.

But do not be alarmed: this happened a long time ago, when the Grimaldis themselves were violent men, long before they concentrated on gambling and the import of American movie stars. (The castle – called Castrum Petrae – dates back to the Age of Migration in late antiquity. The rock on which it was built is the Pietra which gave the town that grew around it its name.)

We advise to leave your holiday base early so you can explore Pietra and its surroundings before lunch. There are several opportunities for short-ish walks in the area.

We decided to head for Borgio, the next small town up the coast. On the Riviera, you will never walk for long until you come across another former fishing village that is now a resort.

These coastal walks are, in truth, all fairly similar: not unattractive as such but not exactly engineered to charm and delight …

"beach walk in Pietra Ligure"

… and sometimes packed with bad surprises. (Yes, travelling in Italy has those, too. As always in life, you must be ready to take the rough with the smooth.)

In this case, the problem was that the walkway to Borgio suddenly stopped behind Pietra’s largest public beach, a good 1 km out of town.

I suspect that this is roughly the maximum distance that the average Italian is willing to walk to the beach on foot and you would have to continue for the last kilometre on the hard shoulder of the highway.

This is not something that we recommend, so you should leave the walkway roughly at the level of the Restaurant Milano, turning left into the underpass across the railway tracks and then right into the small street that runs parallel to the main road.

After approx. 20 minutes, you will enter Borgio, but this is the functional new town, and for the historical centre, you will have to turn inland, first into Via Generale Silvio Ciarlo and then left into Via Giacomo Matteotti.

This street will take you directly to the old town gate.

"inviting sights when Travelling in Italy"

While Pietra Ligure may not be very well known outside of Liguria, Borgio is the kind of place that even most people from elsewhere in the region will not have heard about.

But it qualifies as a real find: generously spaced, not as claustrophobic as many other “back country“ villages …

"town of Borgio Verezzi"

… and better kept, too.

It may not be the liveliest of places (we only met a handful of people there, and they were all tourists like ourselves), but folks must be living here because somebody has obviously taken an interest in urban conservation, ensuring that the charms of Borgio are not those of benign neglect and dilapidation.

"well kept street of Borgio Verezzi:

Borgio’s star attraction is clearly its central piazza, one of the most beautiful anywhere in Liguria.

"pretty courtyard of Borgio Verezzi"

After a short walk around Borgio (it is pretty but small), it will be time to eat. There are no restaurants or even cafés in the centro historico, so you must head back to the coastal new town.

You will have a smaller choice there than back in Pietra where many promising eateries offer menus at reasonable prices (€15 for a three-course lunch), but we were lucky to stumble upon the Ristorante Piedigrotta which serves – in the best Italian tradition – simple but properly prepared dishes.

I ordered a thick and rich slab of tuna, which was served ungarnished: without even a token bit of veg or potato, but which had been prepared just right.

You would be surprised how many restaurants in France serve tuna and swordfish in thin and overcooked slices.

Buses to Savona and Pietra leave on the main road, on the far side of the railway tracks by the beach.

There is also a rail service to Genoa and Ventimiglia, but only about one in four regional trains stops at the local station (called Borgio Verezzi: you will pass it on the walk from Pietra), making for one departure roughly every two hours.

If you still have energy after lunch, there are many opportunities for exploring the area a little but further.

You can walk to Verezzi up the hill from where you get some splendid views. Many hikers come here for the grottoes, which start just a short walk behind Borgio Old Town and continue all the way to Perti.

We, however, decided to leave that for some other day. Good-bye, Borgio: we’ll meet again.

"revisiting when Travelling in Italy"

Travelling in Italy will certainly have more pleasant suprises than bad! Do you agree?

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