Varenna is gorgeous, but the wifi at the hotel is out, so again you don't get to see it. (we leave tomorrow for Paris and have wifi there, so photos will be posted soon - I have to email them to myself from my phone to post them from my iPad)
We met with some difficulty in our train travel today on every leg. First, at Vernazza departing to Levanto we couldn't print our tickets at the train office, so we decided we'd hop on without tickets and hoped that in the two stops before we transferred that we didn't get caught by a conductor because there is a 40€ fine. Then, in trying to get ON the train there was a large tour group disembarking and the doors started to close before we got on (we had 2 more trains to catch to get here!). So once again showed how similar in mannerism Mom and I are in that we both had wide eyes and we're saying "no no no no no no no no no" (picture an Indian war cry being shouted by two Canadian tourists) as we jammed ourselves between the doors.
We got on and didn't get busted...bonus.
We had a 30 minute wait in Levanto, but it was a small station and we had a paperless ticket reservation. The train was almost 3 hours, but in our "cabin" was an Australian couple and an American couple that we chatted with the whole time and the 3 hours flew by.
In Milano Centrale, Milan's main train station we had to print our tickets, but because it was a regional train we couldn't print them at the kiosk. We had 30 minutes (our closest transfer was 7 minutes which was NO problem, so we weren't anticipating problems, but that was a much smaller station) but the station was HUGE, like an airport. I had to go down 2 floors to the ticket office, so left Mom near the platforms and went down the movators and was faced with a line of about 40 people ahead of me and now 20 minutes to catch the train. I FINALLY got to the head of the line and passed my reservation number to the "officer" and said "I just need to print my ticket and RUN" but she wanted to discuss my ticket, that it was a regional train, to not forget to validate...just give me my frickin ticket!!! I now had 5 minutes to get back up to Mom and get on the train...I literally ran. We made it with a couple of minutes to spare and hopped on the first carriage, the caboose, even though we had a first class ticket and sat down...we were on! Awesome, who cares if our seats are pleather.
We sat with a guy from Varenna, Andre, who was so nice and so funny and so interesting. He grew up a few towns from here and pointed out information along the way, where he went to school, the mountains and towns - it was like having a free tour guide! He's been working in Beirut as a Project Manager on a construction project for a hotel and marina resort...I said "so...who exactly vacations in Beirut?". He said "nobody". He's been all over Managing projects for his company including Algeria, Siberia and Armenia (his wife is Armenian, but I'm not sure where he met her). He said "everyone wanted the project in Miami, but they said No, you go to Kazakhstan..ok, thank you". He was so funny. His wife was expecting their second baby and he's been away for a month, so he was excited to be home to see her and his 3 year old son. He even offered us a lift to our hotel when she came to pick him up at the station!
We walked the 15 minutes to our hotel and got checked in with no trouble. Our room is up 2 flights of stairs - this is another up and down town, lots of stairs. So we went down 2 flights of stairs to get to the front door and then up 2 flights of stairs to get to our room, which is at street level at the back but 2 storeys up from water.
After dropping off our bags we went out for something to eat. It was 4pm but we had had no time to eat in Milan as we had planned. We did a little explore of the town, bought some wine and are now enjoying sitting on our balcony on the water before we eat at the hotels restaurant, which was recommended to me by someone on Trip Advisor who had stayed here. The menu is expensive, but it's our last night in Italy and it's a roof top terrace...I think I might have the pumpkin risotto...I'll let you know how it is (and maybe take a picture!)
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