Portofino, Italy

Today it is Adam’s 21st birthday, so a very special day for him - and also for me as I think back to the day he was born all those years ago. We have a lovely dinner booked tonight in one of the restaurants on board, so that should hopefully be a memorable evening. The staff placed balloons and disco lights in his cabin which was very sweet of them! He is having a party next month when his friends are back in the UK after the summer holidays.

Thankfully today the strong winds had abated and it was a beautiful day. The captain of the boat said that if they had continued, we would not have been able to anchor off Portofino as the swells would have been too large to use the tender to get ashore. 

We arrived in Portofino just as we were sitting down to breakfast, at an outside table on the deck where we had beautiful views of the town. We had champagne with breakfast to celebrate Adam's special birthday, and then at about 10am Thomas arrived back on the boat from his rugby tour. He had quite a journey to get back to us in time for Adam’s birthday - last night he flew from Biarritz to Paris, then from Paris to Genoa (in a rather small plane). As he arrived in Genoa very late last night he had to sleep over in Genoa and then this morning he arrived in Portofino where he was able to re-join the boat.

After breakfast we went ashore to visit Portofino. What a beautiful gem of a place this is, it is so picturesque with its coloured buildings built around the harbour. There are many restaurants and cafes and some very chic stores selling upmarket (and expensive) goodies. It has always attracted the rich and famous and I can see why, it’s such a charming and glamorous place on the Italian Riviera (and in my opinion far nicer than some of the tacky places on the French Riviera). We had coffees in one of the cafes (and the most awesome lemon sorbet ever tasted) and then walked up the steep steps to the Castello Brown which sits high above the town and has far reaching views over the bay and surrounding sea (see extra). 

You know how it is, when you are in a beautiful place like this, people often ask you to take their photo. So today I took some photos of a woman and her daughter and then she offered to take some of the five of us which is great, as I seldom get all of us in a photo whilst on holiday. However, despite being in an age when people are constantly taking photos on their phones and therefore are used to composing shots, I find the photos taken of us so awful I cannot use them - today’s was so bad it had us laughing, the five of us were very small in the bottom right hand corner of the frame, the stunning view behind us was almost completely missed, and it was just of the blue sky - I tried cropping it but it was beyond repair!

After walking down from the castle the boys wanted to swim so we found a lovely bay amongst the water facing houses - I have added an extra of the human tower the boys made as they were fooling around in the water. (and another of Adam taken last night, and another of the beautiful sunset we had last night)

We leave Portofino very late tonight, but I really would like to come back here again as it is so special. We sail to Livorno tonight, and then we have a full day out tomorrow as I have organised a guide to collect us from Livorno and she is taking us to visit Florence and Pisa for the day.