The car pulled up at the bottom of the stairs leading down from the castello. Waiting as I had been asked to do, I watched as the old tin-can of a tiny Italian car came to a stop at my feet. It was already over flowing with people. All young men, bright-eyed and laughing in the late morning heat. Looking quizzically at the car, I wondered where they expected me to sit? There was some jumbling and squirming and finally all the boys were piled into the back seat. The driver, a much older man well into his fifties, looked like he was taking a break from his day job as the subject of a Renaissance painting. He sat at the wheel and while patting the now empty seat next to him, he cheerfully yelled “Andiamo!”

Knowing full well that I was taking my life into my own hands, or putting it into the hands of this band of dark-haired laughing misfits in the back seat, I slid into the passenger’s seat and hoped for the best. It had been difficult to resist the beggings of that angelic face, and today I had finally given in.

I had been invited to go to a place called Camping.

The young man with the angelic face surrounded by a crown of black curls would not have been mentally noteworthy had I spied him only once. He would have been just a blip in my hippocampus had he not been ten feet behind me everywhere I went around this small Italian beach town during the previous two days. Sitting near me at the beach. At the next shop pretending to look at produce. Sitting a few tables away from me on the terrazzo of the cafe while I enjoyed my afternoon coffee. He took my eventual confrontation really well. He seemed to welcome it actually. I tried to make myself look big and scary. That only made him laugh.

Castello Vuillermin in Finale Ligure

Castello Vuillermin sat high on the hill above town. It wasn’t an old castello as castles go, only a century old, if that. My bed next to the window gave a splendid view of the rooftops of the town below and the brilliant blue sea extending beyond to the horizon. Sleeping was really the only thing I did here, and the best part of sleeping was the waking up in the morning and seeing that view.

During the rest of my days, my time was spent slathered in olive oil and lemon juice, sunning myself on the beach. Or eating. Or walking. It felt good to take a break from my urban passion of going to museums and studying works of art. My first Italian food discoveries came from this little beach town. Did you know that you can buy slices of focaccia cut to any size and priced by the kilogram? Who knew that pizza without sauce could taste like rosemary in heaven? Or that you can make a meal out of gelato?

My train arrived in Torino the following morning. The sun was just rising with that morning glow that all writers write about at some point in their career, sometimes a little too often. At this hour the train station was empty, and the city was barely, if at all, awake. My first impression of Torino was of its architecture – complete with a vision of God dropping large blocks of stone with a thud from the sky. Torino had the appearance of being bulky and boxy and dense. Leaving the station with the intention of finding an open cafe for my morning coffee, I walked through the cubed porticos of the city center until I could smell the aroma of the liquid I was looking for. I forgot my words and ordered my au lait in French. The barista gently reminded me that I was now over the border and in Italy and that they served cappuccino for breakfast. Would that do? Yes. Yes it would.

Torino was not my final destination that day. Although there was no clear agenda or idea in my head of where the final destination might be. Torino was my intended entrance into Italy. The first place that the train had stopped after crossing the border. My aim was to reach points further to the south, to see the places and people that really piqued my artistic interest and had brought me here. Pisa. Firenze. Siena. Roma. Napoli. Michelangelo. Botticelli. Caravaggio. Bernini.

But for that first day, I think my only requirements may have been that the destination was inexpensive and on the beach and that there was a hostel to stay in. Watching the day get brighter from my table on the sidewalk, I sipped my first *real* Italian cappuccino of my life, full of strong Italian roast coffee covered in steamy, milky, fluffy, foam. Pulling my guidebook out of my bag, I thumbed through the Italian beach towns. It seemed that there was a do-able place just to the south of Torino, called Finale Ligure.

I decided that morning to leave Paris and take the night train to Italy.

It wasn’t really on a whim, it was something that I had always wanted to do, to visit Italy.

August holidays were in full swing in Paris which meant the city was vacant. The food shops and boulangeries were randomly closed. Shopping for food had become a treasure hunt, almost more of a hassle than it was worth. During that time I had sometimes thought that maybe it would be easier to starve until the end of the month. The stifling hot weather, the long days of summer, the lack of food, and the fact that all of my friends were off on their August holidays, made the idea of going to the beach, or at least to a place that was almost surrounded by water, sound like a good plan.

The whim of it all was waking up that August morning with the idea of going right now.