Our train connections were all quite tight, so Mary and Margaret were finally able to get some breakfast after Spiez (well after Brig as we were just heading to the restaurant car when border control came aboard with their Golden retriever who took an interest in a fellow just in front of us as we tried to leave the car. We decided we should let that excitement die down and wait until we got over the border before trying again for breakfast.
We had hoped to have time for a coffee in Milan but our train was in the station 30 minutes before our departure so we just waited at the train. The trains in Italy were a definite let down after the lovely clean trains in Switzerland. The train we got on from Milan to Genoa was very dingy – “First” class felt like a cattle car – instead of four and two seats as with other cars, the train had six seat cabins with a hall way along side. It would have been all right except there was only over seat shelves for suitcases which was not enough room for six suitcases even with Larry to lift them up.
Our luck finally gave out with our connection in Genoa – our train was 12 minutes late and we had only had a 10 minute connection so we finally got to stop and rest for about 40 minutes while waiting for the next train. We opted to take the slow milk train so that we wouldn’t have to change trains anymore for the day. We almost hopped on the wrong train but someone on board was able to tell us that the train was not going where we wanted to go. We should have known that trains do not show up early in Italy. After a short wait our milk train showed up and we were able to make our way to Riomaggiore. In the end our eight hour journey turned into a ten plus hour trip.
We arrived in Riomaggiora and figured out which way to go to find our hotel, after trundling through the tunnel from the train station and up numerous blocks of uphill streets, we found our hotel only to find that they had lost our reservation. We spent about 20 minutes waiting while the clerk made a number of phone calls and a woman from the Okanogan tried to translated for us (in some kind of Italian, Spanish and French). After several phone calls, Raphael showed up to lead us across town to his newly renovated rooms. We trundled along a number of streets then hauled our bags up some Amalfi type stairs to find two nicely renovated rooms overlooking the sea (and the train station). We were just preparing to settle in when Raphael received a call from our original hotel who said that they had located the reservation and we had to come back or pay the one night cancellation fee. We listened to Raphael argue for a while and then we all had to traipse back across town (with our luggage comfortably lodged in Raphael’s rooms) to argue in person with the proprietor of the original hotel. We had a 10 – 15 minute argument where we said we had in essence been turned out on the street so there was no way that we were going to pay any cancellation fee nor were we in the mood to drag our bags across town to whatever rooms they had now located. The lady from the Okanogan did more multi-lingual translating. I think the final deciding factor was the knowledge that Carol had already cancelled the credit card that was guaranteeing her room and my assertion that I would get Visa to cancel any charges that I might be charged for a room we never received.
After all of our adventures, we went out for dinner and had a very nice dinner on the main drag. Mary was adventurous and had a Bouliabase type soup with shrimp and scampi/crayfish/little lobster/giant shrimp (not exactly sure what they were but they were big). The carnage after dinner was extreme, a plate full of shells and a table cloth covered in tomato spatter.
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