I have now meet Nicolini’s brother!

Riomaggiore, Thursday 1 October

Our last night and those of us remaining decided to try a new restaurant for dinner. One of our crew did some wheeling and dealing with the Maitre de, which was very difficult to understand but which involved a big fat juicy looking fish and eight of us sharing this as our main. Hard to pin down exactly what we were getting, but a price of E20 per person was finally negotiated for the fish on the basis it would be cooked to perfection. Our dinner was served, three courses, and was really very delicious. Unfortunately when the bill came, our number one man tried to pull a fasty and billed us E200 (!) for the fish…along with everything else we had eaten. To cut a long and very familiar story short, due to my charming good nature, I took up the job of reconciling this mistake with the owner. Twenty minutes later having met the family and my Italian well improved (I am sure I was endearingly called an Australian insalata misto...not sure what being an Australian mixed salad means ...but I didn’t correct his mistake about my origins) we unfortunately could not agree so I took it upon myself to reduce the bill anyway and we divvied it up to the cent. Lots of yelling, arm gestures, evil eyes and more insalta misto’s later we left the family to balance the books now apparently unable to provide for the schooling of three children. Shame really, we would have happily paid the full price if that’s what he had said from the outset, like everywhere we have been along the coast, the food is superb here and is actually really good value compared to what we would typically be paying at home.