Tuesday, September 24th - Day 14 Sanremo, Italy

After a day of rain - lots of lightning - and catching up, we headed off to Italy!  The one-hour drive took us through La Turbie where, on the other side, the view of the "Trophy of Augustus" was a distinct tall structure above the town, demonstrating the reason the Romans chose this location.  We bypassed Menton with Deb noting that the town was famous for its lemon tart - to be purchased later.  After some tunnels and a line of traffic with many trucks, we entered Italy and were surprised to see a different landscape, unlike the French Rivera with its high corniche on the shore.  In contrast, the Italian side was low sloping hills set far back with wide valleys full of greenhouses, which we discovered later, contain flowers including roses and carnations.

Sanremo is known as the City of Flowers and the Ligurian coast is called Riviera dei Fiori (flowers).  The city economy is based on the cultivation of flowers which are transported far and wide internationally.  

We headed to the old city centre.

We parked along the waterfront to visit the market - basically a flea market with inexpensive clothing but still kind of interesting with vendors under their white tents.  

Then we walked up a block to a wonderful restaurant where we had lunch with outdoor tables and shared calamari salad suggested by our young dapper waiter.  He revealed he spoke 5 languages, came from somewhere else, started from the bottom, and couldn't be a racist (after he pushed along a street vendor who had placed some African wooden statues on our table in the hopes of making a sale) since he had dark skin!  All in good humor.  Followed by excellent thin-crust pizza for both.  

We were surprised that African vendors strolled between the tables.  They were likely needy new arrivals having a hard time and we had no problem with that.

After lunch we drove further up the main street to a grocery store.  Just had to buy fresh pasta and Genovese basil pesto for dinner later. We threw in a couple bottles of Italian wine just for good measure!