Ventimiglia

A quick trip to Ventimiglia today, accompanied by a very competent Italianist, who did all the transactions for me, including working out, from the strongly Ligurian accent of the waitress, what exactly the home-made cake we ate was (it was apple).

The market in Ventimiglia, as I have written before, was stunning, and unbelievably cheap compared with Antibes. My translator bought Castelmagno cheese, which I had not tasted before, artichokes and trombette, what the Antibois call courgettes muscadines.

The trip up to the old town was the usual obstacle course between thick layerings of peculiarly orange dog dirt, but the view from the Porta di Nizza was as good as ever, rolling breakers coming in smoothly towards the shingle beach, the low-lying market gardens and sinisterly empty seafood restaurants. One of the latter had the singularly auspicious title of "Sea Gull Hotel". I like the separation between "sea" and "gull". Made me think of Hitchcock for some reason....

On the larger of the two bridges over the river Roia, there were almost Kosovan crowds, bearing bundles: turned out they were French shoppers, of very modest pouvoir d'achat, attracted over the border by the much cheaper booze and nosh.

On the way home, when we finally boarded a train (the previous two had been cancelled), the first announcement, repeated afterwards every couple of minutes, was that the train hosted 'two pickpockets' (deux piquepoquettes), and would passengers kindly pay attention to their belongings. No sign of the fuzz, though. Maybe the PPs were officials of the railway line. As a distraction, my translator had the good luck to be reading La Stampa: I, lacking such highbrow distractions, had to put up with a long discussion between two overweight retards about which internet site provided the best bargains for OM branded football shirts. Bernard Tapie must have been squirming with pleasure.