Why You Should Visit Ventimiglia, Italy

I literally stumbled upon Ventimiglia, Liguria, Italy in the Italian Riviera while on my way to Nice, France. Unfortunately unbeknownst to me the French trains were on strike. The very last train stop in Italy before France is Ventimiglia. At first with my limited Italian I thought the train conductor was saying something about twenty million something rather. Then a man from the Netherlands who spoke perfect English explained to my friend and I that Ventimiglia was the name of the town the train ride was going to end at. From there we were on our own. Flabbergasted we didn't know what to do.

Sometime around 6am our train pulled into a really run-down dirty looking station. Figured we had to get stuck in the dumpiest looking place. The train station had many buses that were going to Nice or Monaco, but none of them could guarantee us a ride back. We sat on the steps of the train station looking down a street that had some shops. It reminded me of Romania, or maybe a little beach town in Florida. There were some palm trees and really nice yellow and orange stucco buildings. We looked on a map and saw the Monaco was only 7 miles away. Perhaps we could walk there. It was just over a mountain.
We walked down the street and began to realize the town was really quaint and beautiful. The sun was shining and the streets were rather crowded with people going into restaurants and into little shops. There was a long boardwalk that took us along a rocky lido, or beach, typical of the Riviera and unlike anything I had ever seen. The boardwalk began to get very hilly and then it disappeared. A path continued to lead us up a hill amongst ruins of old buildings. The path got really steep and we decided that maybe walking to Monaco was ridiculous. However, we had just seen some ancient ruins. Ventimiglia we later discovered has many ancient ruins of the city walls, tombs, and even an old Roman theatre. My guess is that we discovered the city walls, or perhaps old tombs. It resisted the Romans for many years, but was seized about 100 years BC, then later by Byzantines, Goths, and eventually by Genoese.

On the way back to the train station we stopped along the boardwalk and took some beautiful photos of an inlet, and a sandbar. Though the beach was rocky there was some sand further inland and under a bridge we walked over. Unsure of what to do we ended up taking a half hour cab ride to Monaco for a few hours, but though surreal and gorgeous there wasn't really anything affordable to do. The castle was beautiful and a race was happening at the famous speedway, but after walking along the pier for a bit we decided to go back to Ventimiglia.

We drove back along extremely high and scary cliffs overlooking the bluest water I had ever seen. We drove through windy cobblestone roads, little towns with houses on the mountains that reminded me of The Sound of Music. Coming back into Ventimiglia we saw how beautiful it was. We thanked our very helpful French taxi who gave us a little rundown of everything from the casino in Monaco to his trips to New Jersey. We went in a couple stores and found that they had the typical touristy Italian chocolate, dolls, flags, and t-shirts that many of the stores in Rome and Florence had. On Fridays they have an open market in the town with all sorts of discounted items.

Walking back down the rocky beach there was some sort of dance festival going on. It reminded me of times when my own dance school had danced at the capitol or different town greens. I made my friend watch for a while. We got hungry so we ventured down to the park again that was covered with palm trees and green grass. We sat on a bench, talked, and ate. The sun peaked through the trees and we were able to capture some amazing photos. There were some gorgeous buildings with balconies nearby. A man on one began to take a mirror and aim the sun at us. I'm not sure what he was trying to do, but it was annoying so we left the area we were in. This time we ended up sitting near a family of what had to be gypsies. They were dressed like them, and were playing a banjo type instrument, eating and having a picnic. It was interesting to watch.

Done eating we decided to hit the beach. Beaches in the Riviera are rocky. Smooth, shiny, pebbles that do not hurt your feet that sink into them just like sand. The water was like bath water, but it felt wonderful. It was high tide, but you could still see the bottom clearly which was so strange for someone used to Long Island Sound. It was a peaceful and quiet family beach. No topless people, no blasting radios, just people who were probably locals or tourists relaxing. A man was painting the fence along the boardwalk green.

By then it was about time for our train to take us back to Rome. We saw our nice taxi driver again who asked us how our day had gone. We decided it had been amazing because we hadn't spent too much money (except for the taxi) we had been in one of the most beautiful places we'd ever been. I'd recommend it as a cheaper place to stay if you want to visit Monaco or Nice. From what we heard later Nice isn't as nice as Monaco, and probably more touristy and crowded than Ventimiglia. There is an older medieval section of Ventimiglia that we were unable to explore, but looks pretty. There is the church of San Michele and another cathedral built on ruins of an old Roman building. The town also boasts Italy's largest botanical gardens as well as a library with 17th century manuscripts. Had we researched the town beforehand we may have tried to visit those places, however we were surprisingly pleased with what we found. When asked by people where my favorite place is I will always say Ventimiglia because of its beauty.