Genoa 2018: Cafes and Gelato, Genoa, Italy

I love spending time in cafes - from morning coffee to maybe a snack lunch, and then when in Italy to enjoy an aperitivo early evening. The name cafe is pretty interchangeable with bar and most will sell you coffee or alcohol at any time. I especially like the wonderful historic cafes you find in places like Turin, Florence and Vienna; cafes steeped in history and often where famous writers, philosophers and politicians of old have met to talk. Call me a romantic!

I was therefore pleased to find a vibrant cafe life in Genoa - and inevitably I spent a lot of time seeking out new cafes, returning to ones I liked and sampling an array of delicious coffee, pastries and aperitivo.

Of course, when in Italy, there is gelato too! Any of you who regularly read my blog know of my love of ice cream - more particularly Italian gelato. I found a good gelateria on my first day, close to my hotel, Profuma di Rosa, and the friendly young woman who ran it happily shared her two other favourite gelaterie in Genoa once I’d told her about my blog. She knew a lot about the best gelaterie in London too so really knew her stuff and her gelato was gorgeous.

This little bar was just round the corner from my hotel and was my first stop after arriving on Thursday morning and dropping off my bag. It was really just one of many similar bars that proliferate in the centre of the city; you pass them all the time. It was about 11am and I’d been on the go since 4.30am, getting up early for my flight. Coffee was definitely in order and I didn’t want to go far so stopped at pretty much the first cafe I came to. It was a simple little bar but they served a very good coffee and a nice croissant (the Italians call them ‘brioche’ and they almost always have some kind of filling, like jam or pastry cream, and are glazed). I think I paid just less than €2 for both. I noticed a few more ‘Coffee Lab’ cafes around the town and their coffee was reliably good. ...... (follow the instructions below for accessing the rest of this article).