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Haunted honeymoon
What's with the homicidal drug-dealing hotel manager? After 50 years, certain things have changed at this Italian honeymoon spot.

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By Ann Reavis

March 10, 2000 | It seemed like an inspired idea at the time. The parents of my Florentine roommate, Francesca, were about to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary. In 1949, they honeymooned in a small, secluded hotel on Punta Chiappa, a finger of land across the bay from Camogli, just north of Italy's famed Cinque Terre coastal region. The hotel and a nearby well-reviewed restaurant could only be reached by boat. Francesca and I decided to treat them to a night at their honeymoon hotel, dinner in the restaurant and then a day of sightseeing in nearby Portofino. We also thought that, this time around, Wilma and Bruno would have much more fun if we went along.

"Ann, this is one of those things you are supposed to talk me out of," Francesca said as we trudged through the cold, dark autumn morning to the train station. At that time, she didn't mean the entire trip. She meant that there was no earthly reason why we were starting out before light. Although it takes about four hours to reach Camogli from Florence, did it really matter if we reached our destination by 10 a.m. or would noon do? How much time did we really need to explore a hotel that was on a deserted outcropping of land? So long as we caught the last boat out to the Punta Chiappa, landing in midafternoon we would be fine. I shrugged, as usual.

At the Florence train station, we met her cheerful parents, who had been up since 4:30 a.m. Bruno, tall and bald with wild eyebrows accenting blue eyes, was dressed with typically exquisite care in a subtle mix of browns, from the silk scarf at his throat to the heels of his Italian loafers. Wilma, more practical about the comfort of Italian trains, was warmly attired in a comfortable beige pantsuit and a warm jacket. They were looking forward to chatting with their daughter on the train for the next three-and-a-half hours. Their ability to converse with me was limited by my failure to learn to speak Italian at a level above that of a 3-year-old. (Actually there were plenty of Italian toddlers that could out-verbalize me any day.) Of course, Francesca got most of the blame for this because, after all, she was a teacher of the language and we had shared the apartment for over 18 months. But she also spoke perfect English (with an American accent) and the last thing she wanted to do in her free time was to give me gratis language lessons.

In La Spezia, at the southern end of Cinque Terre, we changed trains for the local to Camogli. The route provided brief glimpses of the cliffs on which small towns clung. It appeared as if, at any moment, they could slide right into the turquoise sea. Black smoky tunnels repeatedly blocked our snapshot views.

Camogli anchors the north end of the Portofino peninsula. The trendy town of Portofino is at the south. In between is a large nature reserve, accessible only by trail and boat. Camogli is a fishing village, with plaster and stone houses painted in peach and golden-yellow hues placed along narrow switchback roads from the sea to the top of the ridge. The busy harbor does not shelter the magnificent yachts of Portofino, but only the small boats of sardine and anchovy fishermen, the somewhat larger craft of those hunting orata, octopus and ricciola and the small ferry that runs between Camogli, Punta Chiappa and the medieval Abbey of San Fruttuoso, midway on the coast between Camogli and Portofino. It's at the bottom of the tiny bay at San Fruttuoso that a giant marble statue of Jesus was placed, for some reason, creating great photo ops for underwater divers.

The sun shown bright, but a light autumn breeze and the lack of tourists at the Camogli train depot reminded us that it was mid-October. We discovered that we could have slept in, as the next ferry was not going to leave for three hours. Bruno, eager to reach the honeymoon hotel and remembering that 50 years ago he and his new bride were rowed out to the hotel by a fisherman for a small fee, tried to hire one of the boatmen on the dock to take us out. The asking price of 90,000 lire ($45) changed his mind.

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