Driving to Italy takes less than an hour and you can experience a cultural shift as you cross the border and arrive in one of the Italian Riviera towns. Suddenly you are in a far stronger family orientated environment, but everything is much poorer.
We wanted to buy some oil and we have found that Italian olive oil to be much better than the French. A few years ago Madeleine and Tom introduced us to this oil distributor in a small town called Taggia. After we had bought 6 x 1 litres of oil we had a lovely cappuccino at a nearby cafe. The coffee beat anything we had drunk in France and amazingly it cost only €1.50 each.
By the time we had finished our coffee and driven to the small village of Riva Ligure, which lies on the sea almost due south from Taggia, it was lunchtime. I parked the car about 500 metre from the restaurant Lanterna. We have eaten in this restaurant this time last year, when we also bought oil. The place is well known locally as the fish restaurant.
The place is a family run establishment with the grandmother in charge of all proceedings. One of her children arrived with a one month old baby, who proceeded to scream for much of the time we stayed. Today at lunchtime they had only three tables occupied including us. but we had a nice meal at a reasonable cost.
We walked back to the car along the coast and passed the ancient fortress designed to protect the village against pirates in the 16th Century. Apparently the communities along this coast were besieged by corsairs from the Barabry Coast of North Africa who would raid and pillage for any loot they could find including slaves.
By the time we returned to the car it was after 3 pm and we visited the nearby Conan store to buy food for the next couple of days. There is food in italy that is much better than you can find in the French supermarkets. We bought some wonderful Gorgonzola which was so creamy and smooth. It tasted nothing like you can buy in the UK.