Rapallo log 4 - Cable Car to Montellagro

I'm not sure where I first read about the Rapallo cable car - whether it was in a list of things to do in Rapallo or in T. A. Williams' book "Murder in Portofino" - but whichever it was, it was something that I intended to do. Originally I thought that the cable car stop was somewhere behind the train station, but when I found it on the map, I discovered that all I needed to do was to walk out of the hotel and keep walking - not turning left to the promenade or the historical quarter. This path shortly took me under the railway bridge and into residential Rapallo, and after ten minutes and 1,770 steps (I measured in order to tell my wife how far away it was), I arrived at the stop, then walked back. The cable cars leave every half hour, so it was easy to figure out when to leave.

There were only two other people in the car going up with us, so it was easy to film the ascent that takes one up from residential Rapallo into the hills behind. There are surprisingly many villas on those hills, many with their own small swimming pools. After a few minutes ride, we arrived at the top. I knew that there was a church/monastery there worth visiting, so we walked up the many steps from the cable car stop until we reached the magnificent church of Montellagro.

As we arrived, it seemed that the morning service (after all, it was Sunday morning when we visited) had just visited and many people exited the church. Inside, every scrap of wall and ceiling was covered in paintings and mosaics, a far cry from the usual unadorned synagogue. 

It didn't occur to me then, but it does now: how was this church built at the top of a mountain? How were the necessary building materials transported? The village Montellagro is closer to the church and higher than Rapallo, but even so, the questions still stand. 

Leading up to the church is a long avenue with many trees which provided well needed shade from the hot sun. In the avenue was yet another imposing building that had been turned into a gourmet restaurant; we didn't eat there, but I saw that most of the tables were occupied.

We hadn't timed our visit very well as we returned to the cable car station to discover that there was a break in the timetable, presumably for lunch. So we had an ice cream at the small café and waited for service to be resumed. When we returned to Rapallo, it was straight to the hotel and into a cold shower: I think that I was slightly dehydrated. 

After siesta, we went into the historical quarter: my wife was looking for light summer dresses whereas I was looking for chocolate. She found her dresses, but although I found some very interesting food items, the chocolate that I was looking for remains unfound. Eventually we turned onto the promenade, had a pizza in one of the many restaurants there, then hang out on the promenaded for another half hour or so.

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This day in blog history:

Blog #	Date	Title	Tags
2	07/09/2005	More introductions: music and me	MIDI, Beatles, Richard Thompson, Reason
402	07/09/2011	A resizable dialog box	Programming, Delphi
628	07/09/2013	December 1973-February 1974: my gap year, part 5	Israel, Gap year