My wife is a planner, especially when we travel. She puts together massive Google Docs concerning whatever destination is on the horizon with snippets of articles, details of all our reservations, local tips from friends of friends of friends — you name it. The doc is shared with me, and she also prints two copies, old-school MapQuest-style, so we have it at the ready whenever cell service gets spotty.
I never open this doc or fan through its reams of paper. My natural travel state is Type B — as in, let’s wing it. The underlying philosophy: plans create expectations, expectations ruin spontaneity and spontaneity, with all its inherent surprises and delights, is the spice of life.
I am never right. Planning, and here’s where I tip my hat to my wife (in case she’s reading — hey, babe), is always the way to go.
Except for this one time…
East of Genoa, West of France
Italy’s a destination requiring zero introduction. We all have our own version. The Venice-Florence-Rome tour for first timers. The Amalfi for the Instagram conscious, or maybe Ischia for the more seasoned. Sicily, especially if you’ve been White Lotus pilled, or Como when a fancy American friend invites you to their fancy destination wedding. If you’ve ventured north to the Alto Adige, with its Italian culture and Austrian efficiency, bravo. I can only assume you read a lot of Tyler Brûlé.
But here’s a place in Italy no one visits: Noli. It certainly wasn’t on my radar, nor was the region of Liguria, the northern Italian Riviera that’s west of Genoa and east of France. It’s a curve of coastline that lacks the topographic charms of its southern counterpart: no terracotta towns clinging to craggy inlets, no charming cities with cobbled backstreets barely wide enough to fit a Vespa. Instead, you mostly get wide swaths of beach bordered by rather nondescript towns. Concrete abounds with buildings built for budget holidays. If I sound like a snob, I’m sorry — vacations, especially those in Italy, tend to awaken it in me.
I discovered the northern Riviera in the summer of 2020. Peak Covid had passed in Italy, and the borders reopened. My wife, our two-year-old son and I were living in Switzerland. We’d felt cooped up since March, so we packed the station wagon to embark on that most American of family pastimes: a two-week road trip. We began in the Austrian Zillertal, then headed over the Brenner Pass and down into Italy, where we spent three days on Lake Garda (for those looking for a less touristy alternative to Como, check it out). From there, it was onto Genoa, before banging a right at the coast and up along the northern Riviera, hooking our way toward France.
I was expecting more of what I was familiar with: the weather-warped buildings of Cinque Terre, clustered on the rocks like barnacles, or the green-shuttered splendor and church tower of Camogli. Instead, we got the aforementioned drab beach towns. We checked into our Airbnb in the hills of Bergeggi and drove to the supermarket in Spotorno to stock up for the week. It was raining. I couldn’t hide my disappointment.
“You could’ve helped a little,” my wife said in our car, sitting next to me shotgun and seven-months pregnant. She sounded both defensive and apologetic. “You could’ve done some research, too.”
She was right. Like a brat, I’d done next to nothing to plan the trip. I’d winged it, believing that the safety net of my wife’s good plans would save us should my winging it go awry. Only this time, her good plans landed us just a touch too far west. And we were stuck there for a week.
The next morning, I woke at five for a bike ride, and headed off up the coast. There was a curvy section of road that clung to a cliffside, one made famous by the Milan-San Remo bike race, and I wanted to hit it. The towns ticked by at my right, each one as unmemorable as the next. Until, that is, I came around a wooded bend in the road and spotted it: Noli, a sickle of cabana-flecked beach, bordered by palm trees and, on the other side of the road, a colorful town with ochre roofs. There was a fortification wall that cut up the hillside and a castle tower at the top.
Here it was: Italy, just like I remembered it.
I told my wife about the town as soon as I got back from my ride. It wasn’t on her itinerary or anywhere in her carefully researched doc. We headed there for lunch.
Google Noli, and you’ll find next to nothing about the place. In terms of travel journalism, it’s mentioned — as in, relegated to a single sentence — in this piece in The Guardian titled “The Sleepy Side of the Italian Riviera.” The story ran in 2017. Since then, nothing. Zilch. Niente. What was once a medieval independent maritime republic has fallen off everyone’s radar, save for the few Italians who still go there.
We walked under an archway and into town. There were arcades and narrow alleyways and cobbled streets worn smooth as stones in a riverbed. The village kept unfolding the deeper we ventured into its labyrinth-like streets. Finally, I heard music. A catchy song in a foreign language. I walked toward it. We came around a bend to discover a small shoebox of a bar, its front doors flung open, an arched window through which bottled beers were being served. People were mingling and dancing in a small courtyard under the cool shade provided by the tightly gathered buildings. My wife and I grabbed drinks — a Peroni for me and a chinotto for her — and got an ice cream for my son. I Shazammed the song. “Vamos a la Playa,” a 1983 pop hit by Righeira. I still play it these six years later. It takes me back.
We went back again and again to Noli that week. To its beach and coffee shops, to its dark alleyways, which we strolled with squares of the local, sardine-topped pizza sardenaira always in hand. To the small trattoria we dined in one night, owned by a couple who recently moved there from Milan.
I could tell you the specific names of all these places, of when to go and where to stay. My wife could slip you her travel doc, if she’d ever added Noli to it. But what would be the fun in all of that? Some places in life are best discovered by winging it.
More Like This
We're always on the scene eating, drinking and traveling near and far to bring you the best of what's happening out in the real world. Sign up for IRL now.
