My sister Jenny has been here the last few days. On Thursday we went to Bonassola, a little beach resort a little way down the coast. It was busy but a good place to swim. The water gets deep very quickly, so you can just run in and dive. The water is very warm now.

We ate that night in a traditional Genovese restaurant, just off Corso Torino. It was small and family run and you could see the cooking going on in the kitchen. There was the proprietor, his wife and his mother. The food was extremely good, I had fresh pasta in a sauce of broccoli, oil and chili, and Jenny had a vegetable soup. The soup was very special. I guess the vegetables were very fresh. In the kitchen, we could see one of the women sawing away with a mezzaluna at a huge pile of them. For second course, we both had fish. Together with a bottle of rosé from Puglia, it was a very fine meal.

We visited the Aquarium on Friday. It's Genova's biggest tourist attraction and was rammed. The fish were great but the other people inside, banging on the glass and shoving in front of each other, nearly drove me crazy. It was also sad to see big animals like dolphins and penguins in small tanks.

That night we went down to the Corso D'Italia to take in a few seafront bars. The weather is just starting to freshen up, but it's still warm enough to go out right by the sea.

Yesterday we went to Nervi. Jenny had a good seafood salad, and in the park afterwards, we found two four leaf clovers. I have one in my wallet now. Nothing exceptionally fortunate seems to have happened yet, but I did get the last copy of the Gazzetta dello Sport from the newsagent this morning.

I've just come into the lab to watch the 100m final. At the moment, in these Olympics, Italy and Britain have almost exactly the same number of medals, 6 golds and 20 in total. This seems fair enough - the populations are about the same size. However, the Italian press are delighted with the performance, while the British press are moaning as usual..