Don’t get me wrong…..we loved Portofino. The views of the long, curving harbor — and from that harbor — are wonderful. Story book. Historical. The walk above the town to Chiesa di San Giorgio and then to Castello Brown and on to Faro di Portofino is invigorating and interesting, and it provides spectacular 360-degree photo ops.
The bells of Chiesa di San Martino add charm. From eight in the morning until ten at night, at the top of every hour, they sound out the hour (eg., eight times at 8:00 am); but they do this twice each hour, three minutes apart. The only explanation I received for this duplicate service was that the priest must think the parishioners are hard-of-hearing. To me this ministerial meddling makes sense because, between the two soundings of eight bells at 8:00 on Sunday morning, the bells rang another 30 times…..very loudly at first and then gradually softer…..as if to wake Saturday night’s revelers and rally folks for Sunday worship.
From eight-thirty in the morning until nine-thirty at night, the bells also ring one time at each half hour…..except at 19:30 (7:30 pm) when they toll any number of times…..45 times one evening and 29 the next. No local I asked could tell me why this happens, and – amazing to me — none of them had actually noticed!
Portofino has been the setting for many literary works, including one of my favorite fun novels, “Beautiful Ruins,” which depicts the shallowness of 20th Century celebrities, especially motion picture stars. And ironically (or perhaps not), Portofino suffers from a similar superficiality today.
On closer inspection, not everything in Portofino is as it seems. The masonry work on almost every building is phony….3-D painting of beveled stone blocks, corners and cornices…..well-done to be sure, but fake. And the village continues to toast its celluloid celebrities long after they have stopped visiting. Today, lesser personalities blight the harbor with larger yachts.
Even before a wedding reception unfolded beneath our hotel window, we saw more men in sport coats and women in high heels during just two days in Portofino than we had seen during the previous two weeks of travel in Italy; and you had to wonder about the vanity of 4-inch spike heels on the pedestrian-only, ankle-twisting cobblestone lanes of Portofino.
The food is no better than at eateries in hundreds of other small Italian towns, but it’s served in Portofino at almost double the price of restaurants in lesser locations because many hundreds of tourists delivered by ferry boats to the harbor docks each day of pleasant weather are a captive clientele.
Even so, as we sat in our room overlooking the harbor after some of the oversized ships and all of the day-trippers had departed, and especially as we listened to the happy hum of diners after dark in the harbor-rimming cafes, we were grateful we hadn’t missed this stop on our Italian road trip. Portofino is still providing some of the strongest and fondest memories.
JER
ALL OVER THE MAP 