The world we live in amazes me sometimes. Saturday morning, I woke up at around 5:30 am. Saturday afternoon, thanks to the privilege of having a car, Mer and I were in Toronto. Thanks to the modern wonder of large aircraft, by 8:30 am local time (12:30 am Sunday back home), we were in Rome. Thanks to the ability to grab a train, by 5:30 pm local time (11:30 am back home), we were at a hotel in the Cinque Terre. It was not always pretty, being more or less awake for about thirty hours, but one hundred and fifty years ago, none of this was possible (other than the trains, I suppose). Just for added wonder, I made a local call using Skype on my laptop’s wireless connection to my credit card companies to let them know there was no fraud going on for Italian charges. It is an odd thing to make a domestic call over a laptop and have it all work out. What a wondrous world.
In more detail – the drive to Toronto went well, except right at the end. I love Canada in general and Toronto in particular, so I was surprised, disappointed, and very frustrated when we tried to find the remote lot parking at the Toronto airport – there were no signs that we saw. Even after we asked, we still made two wrong attempts to get into the cheap lot. We did manage, and Canada went back to being wonderful and polite again. We got to our gate about two hours before the scheduled take-off time, but our flight left an hour and a half late, so we had plenty of time in the airport. Happily, Mer had remembered to bring her stash of Canadian money, so we were able to spend that on a late lunch around 2:30.
The flight was very smooth, and Mer loved hearing all the Italian (she studied Italian while in college). I napped a little bit over the first hour or so, and then we were fed supper. The plane had older technology in that there were only a few monitors overhead showing movies (as opposed to one in each seat back), and we had no option on what to watch, so neither of us bothered. Mer read, and I played the computer game Civilization 4 for about five hours (I bought it for this trip for $7.50 online). It made for an entertaining flight for me since the flight was only about eight and a half hours long. Just as my laptop was giving out on the battery, it was time to be served a light breakfast. I spent the rest of the flight (other than the last part, when electronics are not allowed) listening to Car Talk and looking out the window at the mountains of France and Italy.
Rome’s airport was painless. We climbed out of the airplane by a staircase down to the tarmac, where a bus was waiting to take us to the terminal and customs. In the first error we made for the trip, I realized we’d forgotten our bank card at home and only had credit cards on hand. Since I have no idea what the PIN numbers of my credit cards are, we were forced to use a currency exchange, with their higher fees, and we will have to use banks to get cash instead of using ATMs. We got some cash, collected our two checked bags, and breezed through customs – the officer did not even ask us any questions; he waved us through after looking at our passports and stamping them.
We caught a bus from the airport to Rome’s main train station, where we discovered we could not use the automatic machines to buy a train ticket because the machine wanted a PIN number. As such, we had to wait over thirty minutes in a line to talk to a real person so he could swipe our card. We then went to a restaurant to get something to eat for lunch, but no one ever came to take our order, so we left and got a couple of pizza sandwiches instead.
The train from Rome to the Cinque Terre took about three and a half hours, with one train change late in the journey. I nodded off to sleep several times, usually waking up with a start when my head fell forward. We made the change to the new train with no problems, and so found ourselves in the third of the five Cinque Terre towns, Corniglia. Mer had picked Corniglia to stay in because it is the “sleepiest” of the five towns, with fewer tourists staying the night than in the other four towns.
We caught a bus up to our hotel to save us the 365 steps from the train station to the town. We shared the back of the very small bus with an American woman who was quite pleasant, and she even turned out to be staying in the same hotel as we were. Mer and I checked in to our room, and took a two-hour nap, falling asleep to the sounds of a small choir, church bells, and a rooster. It turns out there was a parade in celebration of Mary going through the town, which explained the bells and choir (but the rooster was acting on his own).
After the nap, we walked fifty yards into town, and picked a restaurant overlooking the sea. The young American woman was there, and we got to talking with her and asked her to join us, which she did. Her name was Caitlin, and she was from Seattle. She was in Europe on a lifelong-dream trip for two months. She had worked on an organic farm in France in exchange for room and board, had been to London and Berlin, and was now in Italy. She was a fun and lively person, with a good humorous style in telling her story. We all had great food (Mer’s pesto dish was especially good – pesto was invented in this region).
After supper, the three of us got gelato (Italian ice cream) and wandered the small town. The town has two churches, and we were all amused to see a couple in a passionate lip-lock in the doorway of the smaller of the two churches. We found a scenic overlook of what passes for a marina in the town (it is very rocky), and on the way back to the hotel, I found a narrow path through a tunnel that ran uphill. We followed that to a breathtaking overlook of the ocean, the train station, and the next town down the coast, Manarola. It was dusk, and the lights of the town were all on. To add to the magic, there were fireflies around as well. That is a pretty great evening for a first night.
The three of us headed back to the hotel, getting back around 10:00. We said good night to Caitlin; we have fair hopes of running into her again tomorrow night, since the town is so small.