Camogli · Genova · Portofino
A Week of Lemons in Liguria
Six days, one rental kitchen with a broken oven door, and more citrus than two people should legally attempt.
Locations
Camogli · Genova · Portofino
Days
6
Budget
€1,300 for two
Rating
91
We took the slow train down the coast because the fast one does not stop anywhere worth stopping. This turned a four-hour journey into seven, which felt like a mistake somewhere around Genova and like the entire point by the time we arrived.
The apartment came with a terrace, a cat that was not ours, and a lemon tree the owner mentioned only in passing. By the third morning we had stopped asking whether we were allowed to pick from it.
This was the first trip in years where I cooked more meals than I ate out, and it is the reason it is still the one I think about most.
Fly into
Genova Cristoforo Colombo (GOA)
Stayed at
A rental with a terrace and a lemon tree in Camogli
Getting around
Regional trains the length of the coast — no car, ever
The scorecard
Food
95
Lodging
88
Entertainment
84
Cost
90
Safety
96
Pros
Twice-weekly markets that are still genuinely for locals
A rental with a kitchen changes the whole trip — cook at least half your meals
Trains connect the whole coast; you never need a car
Quieter and cheaper than the Cinque Terre for the same water
Cons
Portofino is worth exactly one afternoon and not a euro more
Everything good at the market is gone by nine in the morning
Rental kitchens are a lottery — ours had one working oven hinge
Restaurants close hard between lunch and dinner
Where the coast actually is
Most people mean the Cinque Terre when they say Liguria, and the Cinque Terre in July is a queue with a view. The rest of the coast is the same water, the same pastel houses stacked up the same cliffs, and a fraction of the people. We based ourselves in Camogli, forty minutes east of Genova, and I would do it again without hesitating.
Camogli is a working fishing town that happens to be beautiful rather than a beautiful town that used to fish. The houses on the front are painted in ochres and pinks with trompe-l’œil shutters and cornices painted directly onto the flat façades — a local tradition that started as a cheap way to look expensive and is now the thing everybody photographs. The beach is pebbles, the water is deep and cold and clear, and the whole place empties out around seven when the day-trippers go home.
Portofino is twenty minutes away by boat and is the one place here that has fully committed to being a postcard. San Fruttuoso, in the next bay, is a tenth-century abbey you can only reach on foot or by water, and it is the better half-day by a distance.
The market, and cooking in someone else’s kitchen
The market is twice a week and it is genuinely for locals, which means everything good is gone by nine in the morning. I went late on the first day and learned that lesson once. After that we were there by seven, which sounds punishing and turns out to be the nicest hour of the day.
What we came home with, most mornings: tomatoes still warm from the crate, a bag of the small violet artichokes that are more work than they are worth and worth it anyway, anchovies packed in salt, and bread from the stall at the far end that always ran out first. Liguria is also where pesto comes from, and the basil here has smaller, softer leaves than the stuff sold everywhere else — it is a different plant in practice, and it is the reason the sauce tastes like something else entirely.
There is a particular pleasure in working with the wrong equipment. One good knife, two pans, a fridge that hums too loudly, and no measuring anything. Our oven door did not close, so we stopped baking and started grilling on the terrace instead. Three of the recipes I now make at home came out of that week, and every one of them is the result of not having the right tool.
If you take one thing from this: book somewhere with a kitchen even if you do not think you will use it. It changes the trip from a series of restaurant decisions into actually living somewhere for a week.
Focaccia is a separate food group
Ligurian focaccia is not the thick herby brick sold under that name elsewhere. It is thin, heavily dimpled, wet with oil and finished with coarse salt and a brush of brine, and it is eaten at any hour including for breakfast, dipped in cappuccino, which sounds appalling and is not.
In Genova, look for focaccia col formaggio — a Recco speciality of two paper-thin sheets of unleavened dough with soft stracchino between them, blistered in a very hot oven. It is closer to a cheese pancake than to bread and it is the single best thing I ate all week.
Buy it by weight, from a bakery, wrapped in paper, and eat it standing up within about ten minutes. It does not keep, it does not travel, and it is never as good sitting down.
Trains, and the shape of a day
You do not need a car and you actively do not want one — the coast road is narrow, the parking is impossible, and the regional train runs the length of it every twenty minutes for a few euros. Genova is an hour from Camogli. Every village between them is a stop.
Our days settled into a rhythm without our deciding on one: market or bakery first thing, cooking and eating on the terrace through the middle of the day, the water in the late afternoon once the boats had gone, and an aperitivo somewhere on the front at seven. We ate dinner out twice in six days.
The one structural thing to know is that restaurants close hard between lunch and dinner, and I mean hard — there is no kitchen open at four. Either eat on the local schedule or keep bread, tomatoes and cheese in the flat, which is what we ended up doing.
Days 1–2 — Settle in at Camogli
Arrive, shop badly, cook anyway. Swim off the pebbles in the late afternoon when the day boats have gone. Learn where the good bread stall is by getting there too late.
Day 3 — Market morning
Up at six, at the square by seven, home by nine with more tomatoes than sense. Cook lunch on the terrace and do nothing else with the day.
Day 4 — Genova
An hour on the train for focaccia col formaggio and a city most people skip entirely. Back for dinner on the terrace.
Days 5–6 — San Fruttuoso, then nothing
Boat round to the abbey and swim off the rocks below it. Half an afternoon in Portofino to see what the fuss is, then a last day of reading and cooking whatever is left.
