In Praise of the Second Prettiest Places

On a recent and idyllic October Saturday with magic hour on the horizon, my friend M and I arrived by car to Camogli, a dollhouse of a town on the Italian Riviera. On the outskirts, we struggled to find parking and in service of good-mood maintenance, decided pretty quickly to line up for a pay lot. Parking thus secured, we made it down to the water for a spritz against the sunset, a time of day at which the Mediterranean invariably thrives. The bar we chose hovered over the long pebble beach, sunbathers dotting it, a few even dipping into the autumnal water. Behind it and stretching down the shore, 400 meters of tall, narrow buildings packed together like a stack of crayons turned upright. Beyond them, archways opened to still more ancient buildings enveloping a marina where fishing boats remain, although they’re dwarfed by the tourist ferries.

By measures both subjective and objective, it’s a stunning place. That if you are an American reader you are unlikely to have heard of Camogli in no way negates the fact that Camogli is an absolute magnate for tourists in the region. Its stupendous good looks, in fact, flashed as an immediate warning signal for this traveler, grown wary of beautiful places, that this one could not be trusted.