Arrived early morning at the Genoa Principe Train station and as we headed out toward the taxi stand the clouds let loose with a torrent of rain. We walked back in and bought 4 Cafe Americano’s (American coffee) and sat down to wait it out. By the time we finished the rain had stopped and we went back out looking for the taxi stand. Was a bit of a wait, it was Easter morning and I guess they were all in church.  We ended up taking two taxis as they were very small, barely got 2 of us and our luggage in the first one.  We arrived at the apartment and it looked good from the outside, much better than the others, except maybe the one in Florence. (once we found the front door)
After a bit we finally got a hold of the landlord and she let us in remotely thru the outside door to the lobby. We had a modern looking elevator here, but very small. 4 people without luggage, but only 2 with.  The sent us a code to unlock the key box mounted on the front door so we could get into the apartment.
So far its the largest and nicest one.  And I checked out the locking mechanism on the front door, i looked like the vault door to a bank. Lots of round steel bars protrude out when you turn the key a few times.  Its going to take a lot to break down that door!! The exact opposite of our Florence apartment door. Which looked like if you leaned on it from the outside it would open.
The apartment turned out to be the nicest so far, very large.  A large kitchen with a couch and the heat came on when needed. Something that really hadn’t occurred at any other place so far.
It was filled with IKEA like furniture, which was some pretty uncomfortable 
stuff when used.  Our bed had plastic legs and one of them folded over early one morning. I had to put on my engineering hat, not the Casey Jones one, but the other.  I ended up removing both of them and replaced them with two upside down buckets i found at a shop down the road for 5 euros each.
We took off and headed out for gelatto and to check out the San Lorenzo Basilica.  The gelatto was grand and so was the church. I took a video inside the church so I could hear the pipe organ, that was a pretty awesome sound in there.  And also of a bell tower with ringing bells that I was able to capture them being rung on video. It was very nice sounding and being able to see them being rung was a great experience.
We met up with Tami and Scott in the Piazza Ferrari and walked down a large shopping boulevard that would almost be a mall, at least it seemed like we were in a mall, but a very old one with new chic tenants.  Once we got down to the bottom of the street we decided not to walk back up and hopped on a bus. Turns out you need an app to buy tickets, its not like other cities bus lines allowing us just to tap our credit card when hopping on.  The app was ATS Genova, turns out its similar in Milan with the ATS Milano app.  We took that to a stop not far from our apartment.
We are staying in the old area of town, with extremely narrow streets, some of them only 4′ wide.  I heard a comment about how a ambulance would get in there.  The next day we went out for lunch and afterward I wanted to see a Funicular, there are a bunch of them in Genoa but it seemed all but one was closed. (possibly due to gondola accident in Naples a few days before, but we don’t know if that’s why)
The funicular that was open took us up about 300′ in elevation. Then across the street was something else that 
looked like another one, but it was a very long walking tunnel that went to an elevator that took us up at least anther 300′ higher.   I turned the wrong way coming out and we didn’t get to see anything. Turns out there was a great viewpoint overlooking the city in the other direction and also another old church but do to unpopular demand we never got there.  On the way back down I spotted another one practically across the street from the one we were coming down, but it turned out that one was just another elevator down a short walking tunnel.  This was a much nicer elevator and it dropped us off at a different scenic overlook. Took some pics and headed back down and home.
On the way back I stopped at the Pizza place behind our apartment and had a slice of “focaccia al formaggio” It tasted amazing, it was like nothing I have ever had before.  I knew after that I was coming back for dinner before we left Genova.
The last night we were there we tried to go to a nicer restaurant but it turned out, after a longish walk it was full. But we did get to have great Gelatto on the way there.   After the full restaurant, I ended up getting to go to that best pizza joint in town, which was right behind our apartment. (I had been closed the first two days we were in Genoa).
