Odyssey

Wow, today was an adventure for sure and not one I'd readily repeat if I had the choice (someone wet met along the way referred to it as an odyssey' lol). We were up just after 6am and were dressed and out the door to the train station for 6:40am. Now, we were up seven minutes later than I thought the alarm was set for so we nearly had to run to the station. In our room and when I'm not quite ready, Jeff says to me, "We've got to be there in 7 minutes, no, 6 minutes!". So, that was a little close, but we made it. We then caught the next train at 7:10am that would take us to Milan. It took just over two hours and was pretty uneventful (other than my ipod biting the dust for no apparent reason - a serious piss off if you ask me! Now I'm carrying two dead electronics with me).  

Because of the train strike we had no idea what to expect once we got to Milan and the whole station was in a state of confusion as people bought tickets, stood around looking at the schedule boards and standing in a monstrous line at the Information desk (that was being run by one man...one).  We stood there for awhile until Jeff went off and did some investigating and essentially we were able to buy tickets at the ticket machine and actually get a train (some were guaranteed others not, we had no idea). It was going to take two trains and we weren't sure if the second one would run or not but we took a chance and bought the ticket anyway.  Thankfully the train wasn't canceled at the last minute and we found our seats next to a nice Norwegian couple who offered us beer and an entertaining conversation most of the one and half hours it took to get to Genoa. Even though the train was over fifteen minutes late and we only had ten minutes between when we were supposed to arrive and the next train, we made it. Perhaps the second train was waiting for ours to arrive? Who knows, but we made it with barely a minute to spare.

That train took just over an hour to get to La Spezia, where I am writing now in a McDonalds cafe area... oh man, lol. We're already down a couple of cheeseburgers each after not having lunch items with us. Oh well, cheap and easy is what we needed.

The local trains are on strike so we can't leave this place until after 5pm, but at least we're only 20 minutes away from our destination of Corniglia so we won't be arriving super late. A very chatty lady has just started talking to us, I better go :)

***
So, the lady was an interesting individual and not interesting in a good way... everything out of her mouth was pretty dramatic and negative about our hike, Rome, etc. not helpful! We excused ourselves and did something else.

At 5:05pm, right after the official strike day ended, we were on our way to Corniglia. It was only three stops away. Once we were off, we found the road and walked about 20 minutes (uphill of course) with a young Australian couple until we both found the places we would be staying.

There was a note on our door saying to get the neighbour who we knew would have the keys. He let us in and we found ourselves with a mini apartment separated from a couple of other rooms by a lockable door. We had our own little kitchen (just a sink to use though) and our own bathroom.

Once we dropped our bags we headed out to find breakfast for the next day and after paying an arm and a leg at a small shop, we checked out the restaurants for dinner later and wandered around the very small village.

We went to a family owned place and treated ourselvs to a nice meal.  I had spaghetti with "fruit of the sea" (seafood, most of it still in the shell!) and Jeff had lasagna with Ragu. We shared a half litre of wine wine, some very expensive water and some bread.  For whatever reason, restaurants in Italy add on a service fee and/or cover charge and it came to a whopping €6. It isn't enough that we're in their country spending money, they have to charge the heck out of us too? Uncool. At the very least we had a really nice meal together and ended up chatting with the folks next to us, a Finish couple on holiday (that's three Scandinavian couples we've met in one day [another was on another train]). 

We are back in our chilly place and have crawled into our bed of four layers. The trek begins tomorrow!

Amanda