Imperia: sightseeing and a scooter adventure

We left the campsite in Ceriale at 9.30 and were pitched up on a new campsite on the edge of Imperia before 11, after a straight forward journey. Imperia is made up of two districts, the more modern commercial area, Oneglia, and the old area, Porto Maurizio. I was looking forward to exploring the best bits of both.

We decided to walk rather than cycle into the town because we find sightseeing easier without being encumbered by the bikes. It was a lovely walk in along the fabulous pedestrian/cycle path with great views of Liguria in all directions. We first explored Porto Maurizio, climbing uphill to the cathedral, which is the largest in church in Liguria. It is an impressive building.

We then climbed more flights of steps to picturesque Parisio, the medieval district of Porto Maurizio. I loved wandering through the narrow cobbled streets here taking photographs. There was so much to see, and so many interesting details to capture! John practically had to drag me away!

We finally caught a little lift back down to sea level and walked along to Porto Maurizio harbour, which was full of small boats and holiday yachts.

Then, carrying on along the shore we reached the commercial port of Oneglia, stopping for a drink en route because I needed the loo… any excuse! ☺️ Afterwards, we wandered along the quay admiring the big yachts, one of which John researched and found out it belongs to JK Rowling.

We had a lovely lunch in the sunshine at Calata Giovan Battista Caneo. This quay building faces the harbour and has beautiful arcades, which were traditionally used to shelter fishmongers and fishermen, and now house bars and restaurants. Once again the camera came out!

John did some research and found a lovely trattoria in the arcades for lunch. We’d only intended to have one course but the food was so good, we ended up with two!

I’d read about a villa which belonged to a famous clown called Grock, so we decided to visit it. It was a twenty minute walk uphill which was a good way to burn off some of the pudding! The garden and villa were beautiful, but we found the clown museum a bit disappointing.

We then set off back down to the quayside where John talked me into hiring a couple of Bolt scooters to ride back to the campsite. I was nervous because I’ve never used a motorised scooter before, but up for an adventure! Once we’d sorted the apps out and read the instructions, we set off, and I was surprised the scooter was so easy to use.

However, we had to use the roads to get back to the cycle track, which I hated because it was so busy. At a junction, I was pulled over by a police woman on a scooter who told me that it’s illegal to ride without a helmet. To be honest, this didn’t surprise me… I felt I should have a helmet on when I was on the road!

We pushed the scooters to the cycle track and then felt we were safe enough to ride them back… there were plenty of Italians using this type of scooter without helmets, and hopefully she wouldn’t spot us again! Plus we needed to find a parking station to return them to and knew there was one by the campsite.

In the end, we had fun riding them and they definitely saved our legs! Tomorrow we are off on the bikes in the other direction, meeting a friend of John’s in San Remo.