I’m getting fat on Italian gelato.
But here I am, walking down to the Genoa port with a three-scoop cup of gelato in my hand.
I like Genoa because it’s a working port, in the northeast of the Mediterranean, on the Ligurian Sea.
The people here are friendly and, well, seemingly normal.
I like how the houses and apartments rise up on the surrounding hills and that I can see the mountains beyond.
I think it’s a place I would be content to live in, if I could control my gelato addiction.
There are only a few places a wanderer like me can access the port waters, the rest being blocked by gates and guards.
Though I am at leisure, people are working hard around me.
I pass a couple of men eating apples and repairing a fishing net.
There is activity on a submarine parked in the harbour.
Men work on their fishing boats, a woman cleans her pleasure boat while listening to Italian pop music on her radio, and a couple of barefoot men wearing toques scrub down a sailboat and check the ropes for fraying.
Whale-watching boats are ready for customers, as is Il Galeone Neptune, a replica of a fictional 17th-century galleon, built in 1985 for Roman Polanski’s film Pirates.
A man catches me by surprise, reaches to place something into my bag, grabbing it by the strap.
I jump back – what the heck – and see that he has a little wooden artifact in his hand.
He is trying to sell me a small wooden carving, from Africa he says, and aggressively reaches forward again.
I tell him no and then when he persists, I tell him to back off, raising my hands to fight.
He backs off.
I quickly check my bag to make sure nothing is missing, and that nothing has been added, give the man a dirty look that he shrugs off, and take my leave.
To ease my troubled mind about the incident, I seek out yet another gelato vendor.
