Super-Awesome Sanctuary, Recipes, Hotel-Restaurant Tip

Smile! Your awesomely fearless blogger atop Monte Manico del Lume (photo courtesy of Luciano Parisi), 2,400+ feet above the Mediterranean (background, left). Alison refused to be in the picture.

The Riviera romp continues. Succinctly.

It has been brought to my attention that readers of blogs are interested in three things: 1) recipes; 2) restaurant and hotel tips; 3) photos.

Musings, political commentary, literature and philosophy are topics of the pre-electronic past. Brevity is all. The brave new paradigm!

Briefly: I’ve also learned from multiple sources, contemporanously, that “awesome” is the current buzz adjective. Until now “awesome” has been entirely missing from my awesome blog. A simple, naked awesome not modified by “really” or “killer” or “super” is not really awesome however, I’m told. Plain awesome is like “good” or “okay,” meaning lousy, rotten, depressed, etc… Since I’m already beyond the Twitter count for this posting, I’ll cut to the chase: awesome hedonism in a temple of the spirit!

The Sanctuary of Nosta Signora di Montallegro, a super-awesome really old place made from marble, poised on a ridge way above the Italian Riviera was, we soon discovered, really great and killer awesomissimo. Not only are there panoramas to kill, and ancient oak trees cloaking the slopes. There’s even a neat church with cool votive offerings (things people leave for the Madonna or a saint, in hopes of receiving help of some kind, editor’s note).

Best of all, in the souvenir boutique hangs a stuffed crocodile 400 years old. This croc reportedly began chewing on a Ligurian missionary in deepest Congo some time in the 1600s. The missionary invoked the Madonna of Montallegro. She intervened, poking the croc, and he spat out his snack. In thanks, the missionary’s happy converts slayed the reptile, who foolishly didn’t finish the chewing job before the missionary could make his Ethernet call to Montallegro. The croc was gutted and preserved and stuffed, then sent back to Rapallo to be displayed at the sanctuary. No, I am not making this up. I have dubbed the croc “Dusty,” because he has been hanging for centuries from the ceiling, and could use a dusting. But he is awesome, really, super awesome.

No room for a recipe here. I can assure you that the pesto, roast veal with slivered baby artichoke hearts, and semifreddo with cinnamon – all housemade – are remarkably awesome at Hotel-Ristorante Montallegro. So is the homemade jam and the honey (the owner is a beekeepr). The views of Rapallo and Santa Margherita and Portofino from our comfy, recently restored room (#208) were almost as good as those from the top of Monte Manico del Lume, and the ride down to Rapallo on the funicular would alone be worth a trip here. Super-duper awesome.

As to my unwanted reflections on the wild boars that chased us, and the link between the idiotic hunters of Liguria and those of Alaska (and Washington, D.C.), I will spare you – no recipe to remedy that sad situation without effective gun control. The death (while we were hiking) of the Italian soldier in Afghanistan, about which we learned at the hotel (did any of you hear about it?), prompted yet other musings. Musings about the ancient Romans, who took 80 years to subdue the ancient Ligurian tribes who lived here 2,000 years ago. The Ligurians’ steep, stony territory bore then and still bears today a remarkable resemblance to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Eighty years to dislodge the Ligurians? And guess what? The Romans failed. They’re still here, those Ligurians. They hid in the crevices. They fought. They came back. They still speak their own dialect and eat their own foods. Maybe we need to invoke the Madonna of Montallegro to get us out of Afghanistan and teach us a thing about peace and brotherly love, and tolerance of those who prefer discourse to fire-power whether in war zones or convention halls. That would be really super awesome.