We had heard that there was an annual fish festival on in a small town called Camogli held on the second Sunday of May, which is right on the coast in the middle of the Italian Riviera. We were a bit nervous after our experience at the risotto festival, but we went for it anyway and drove 2 hours from Milan to the coast, arriving on the Saturday afternoon.

When we arrived in Camogli it was raining and we couldn't see much. What we did see impressed us though. The town is beautiful, with coloured houses dotted throughout the green hills, leading down to the foreshore with the waves lapping up against the black, volcanic sand. A medieval church stands next to a fort on a small promontory. We checked into our hotel and our room looked out over this picturesque setting.

While we were checking in we started chatting with an Englishman who lives in Milan. He comes to the festival every year and gave us the low-down. On the night that we had arrived the town drapes the church and the main buildings in fairy lights. At 11:00 after the last plane has flown overhead bound for Genoa, they put on a massive fireworks display. At the end of the fireworks they shoot a rocket towards the church and then they have a bonfire competition. Two teams spend the day building huge structures on the black sand and after the fireworks they light them up. The team whose bonfire burns the longest wins.

The next day they fire up the biggest frying pan in the world and have a giant fish-fry in the main square.

We had time to kill before 11:00, so we went out for dinner in a restaurant jutting out over the water. The meal was super-delicious. Carmel and I shared some fresh crumbed anchovies which were divine, and Lidia and I shared a seafood risotto which we also loved.

After dinner we went back to our room to play cards and have a few drinks before the fireworks. We had found a supermarket and bought a 5 euro bottle of prosecco and a 3 euro bottle of Montepulciano. They were all awesome and we may have polished off a bottle of Barolo we had kept as well. Ian certainly had more than enough because while we were playing Uno he threw a yellow skip on a green four and announced "Let's make it red!"

At around 10:30 we wandered out to the foreshore. The weather had cleared beautifully and the church looked magnificent in it's coloured fairy lights. The townsfolk had built two huge structures on the beach. One was the Eiffel tower and the other super Mario in his cart. These were to be the bonfires later on.

At around 11:00 the fireworks started. They were absolutely spectacular, and so close that they sounded like cannons going off, reverberating through our chests. They were predominantly over the fort and church and also going off in the water itself just off the beach.

After about 15 minutes, a guy came out onto the promontory to our left and fired a rocket 200 metres across the water to the church on our right. He was spot on, because the rocket bounced off the church clock tower and then more fireworks started going off.

After the fireworks finished, they lit up the two bonfires and we watched Mario go up in flames. At one stage his back wheel fell off and started floating out to sea.

The next day we went out to enjoy Camogli in festival mode. Before we left we had breakfast and Ian decided to boil his own egg in an egg boiling station. He didn't put a timer on and counted to 120 in his head. When he cracked the egg open it was completely raw. He said "I like my eggs soft" and proceeded to dip his bread into the egg and slurp down the completely clear snot. The girls couldn't watch.

We then went out amongst it. The town was full of vendors selling arts, crafts, food, etc. We decided not to partake in the fish fry because the line was over 1 kilometre long and the fish didn't look great. We climbed up to the fort and took some amazing photos.

Carmel and Ian decided they wanted to hike up to an Abbey that is up the mountainside and we decided to stay in the town. They didn't quite reach the Abbey because the trail was too dangerous, with sheer drops off the cliffside and no railings. They had to traverse rock faces with only a chain to hold onto and after braving it for a few hours decided to come back to Camogli. We found them in the bar chugging down wine and beer, exhausted.

We all went out for dinner to the same restaurant we had enjoyed on the first day and had another magnificent meal. The next morning we went for breakfast together, Ian slurped down another raw egg and then we saw Ian and Carmel off at the train station. They are off for a 3 day adventure in Cinque Terre and we have decided to go inland to Parma and Modena, having seen the magnificent Cinque Terre on a previous trip.