Mayhew,

The SL train station is one where the trains pull all the way into the station facing the station. That means the trains pull in vertically to the entrance as opposed to running along horizontally to the entrance. I think I have that right. Anyway, it is easier to get to the trains in SL because you don't have to cross all of the tracks. You just have to walk back and forth to find the track you want and then down the track.

At Mestre, the tracks are horizontal to the station and you have to cross all of the tracks. I didn't see a subway crossing there, but there may have been one. I didn't know about them until later.

I didn't see a porter, but I didn't ask for one either. I would suggest knowing how to ask for one in Italian. We were at SL very early in the morning and there weren't many people around. Any other time that I needed help, someone would assist me even if it wasn't Trenitalia personnel.

The subway crossing in La Spezia had an elevator up against the station, but the elevator on the tracks was out of order.

I didn't see an elevator at the stations in the Cinque Terre.

Sounds like you did a lot and had a great time. But I'm sorry you missed the greatest joy of Venice.
You never got lost!

modglila, Wow is all I can say. You don't often see such an honest trip report. I appreciate it! I am leaving next Thursday for a 3 week trip to Italy. I am leading a group of much older than I am art friends. I have only been a handful of times myself so I am no expert. Thank you so much for your report on Venice train. We too will be traveling that route and I appreciate knowing how difficult it may be. We will allow plenty of time to find appropriate "bin number" I have never been by train to Venice before. Sounds interesting???? Thanks again, Ciao Kim

Regarding honesty, it became a big joke to my friend and I, we just kept saying "It's easy"...."No problem"...and, "It's the same."

The It's Easy and No problem came from reading forums and It's the same is something we heard from Italians quite frequently. I think it's equivalent to "It makes no difference" or "No diff", but it sounded so catchy when they would say, "It's the same."

Another thing. I never heard the word please in Italian during my entire trip. I heard the word prego a gazillion times. In all of my tapes trying to brush up on Italian, I never heard the word prego at all. I also heard "basta" and something like "allura" a lot. Women were yelling basta at little boys. I thought they were cussing at them at first. An Italian friend of mine told me today that it means, stops it or cut it out or that's enough. Something like that.

I didn't get to the honesty part. When you travel a lot, these things are simple. This was my first time out of the country and things weren't simple.

I had a great time and will most likely travel again. I just felt exasperated because I kept hearing how easy things would be and they weren't always that easy.

Someone asked earlier about buying their ticket ahead of time. I asked that myself and even though it wasn't "easy" I wouldn't buy my ticket until I get over there. The ticket lines were never long, although we couldn't charge once we got to the counter. I'd be too afraid of changing my plans and being stuck with a ticket for a train I couldn't make. Someone said it's easy to change, but I'll never fall for that again :-)!

Good report. I'm glad that you are willing to admit that not everything was perfect.

It also makes me glad we didn't drive in Tuscany.

Missypie,

I'll always remember driving in Tuscany. Although we got lost a lot, it didn't make our trip any worse. Well, except when we were lost at about 8pm and it was dark. I'll have to admit that I was a little frustrated. That was our own fault for being so far from our home base so late in the evening. I don't think we would have had as much trouble finding our way if it had been light outside.

No one should reconsider driving because of our getting lost. It's not like we didn't find our way out. It wasn't so much getting lost as taking an alternate route. :-)

I can post my thoughts on Cinque Terre, but from the responses I have had on my Florence post, I'd thought I'd see if anyone really wants to hear it. It isn't all roses like I'm beginning to feel most people want to hear. I don't regret going, but I like to try to let people know what I had trouble with so they can avoid it on their visit.

Please continue!!!

As for the driving: On vacation, my husband is the driver and I am the navigator. He expects me to be instantly oriented, wherever we are; he revs up the rental car and immediately expects me to know which way to turn. When we get lost, things get tense. I think it was much better for our marriage that we didn't drive!

We do get a lot of perfect, rosy trip reports. I've never known whether

(a) people are embarrassed to admit that they messed up or were treated badly or flat out didn't like something that everyone else loves,

(b) they are afraid of being flamed here,

(c) they have such a great attitude that nothing bothers them,

(d) they don't want to seem like whiners, or

(e) they really DID have a perfect trip.

I personally like being told in advance about the things that are less than perfect.

Missypie,

I hadn't thought about the added tension if I had been traveling with my hubby. I was with a friend and we are probably a little more tolerant with each other than we are with significant others. :-)

I was afraid you were changing your mind based on something I said.

I'll try to post on Cinque Terre tonight. Then, hopefully, I'll have my photos all uploaded and ready for viewing by early next week. Everyone at work is bugging me to see my photos.

Lisa -
I hope you will continue with your trip report (either on this thread or the Florence one). It is interesting to hear about travel from every perspective. We are all different and experience travel differently. We learn from each other.

I personally did not have very much trouble traveling in Italy even though it was my first time. I say this even though:

(1) I was pickpocketed. (They didn't get anything of value because I had heeded all warnings. Thus this was just an interesting experience and not a tragedy.) and . . .

(2) the travel agent messed up our train tickets so they were for the day before we actually were traveling. (The train conductor was very nice and told us to find an empty seat and sit anywhere. There were no empty seats so we rode the entire way in the dining car. Very convenient for cappuccini and wine!)

I did mention both of these problems in my trip report (and a few others). However, they were just experiences on the way and simply added to the journey, rather than detract from it. At least that is how I look at it.

Just call me "Pollyanna". ;-)

Anyway, that is me and you are you and missypie is missypie, etc. We can still share experiences and enjoy each other without ragging on each other.

So, looking forward to more . . .
Linda

When we were in Italy last year, whenever we needed to ask directions, we looked for a young student. They are always anxious to practice their English and they are usually happy to help with directions.

Hoping to hear about CT, whatever the outcome. . .

TRIP REPORT - CINQUE TERRE and MILAN - LONG

Arrived September 5 - Departed September 9, 2006

We got to LaSpezia in the late afternoon and dropped off the car. The car place was tiny, hot and crowded. We had the coutner worker call us a cab to take us to LaSpezia Centrale.

We purchased our Cinque Terre card and were pleased to find that it covered the train all the way in and out of La Spezia as many times as necessary as well as between the five towns.

Then, we wheeled our baggage down to the baggage check and checked what we weren't going to need in CT. Again, very inexpensive and well worth the money. I think it cost 10 euros per bag for three days.

The bin where we were to catch the train in La Spezia had a freight train sitting on it. People started congregating and we all just looked at each other and joked about whether or not that was the train we were going to ride into Cinque Terre.

Every time an announcement was made over the intercom, it seemed like a train would roll through and we couldn't hear. But, eventually, the freight train pulled out and our train pulled in. This is the point in our trip when we started running into a lot of people that spoke English. So many people were asking us if we spoke English and could we tell them such and such. It was weird to be asked for advice, and even weirder to be able to give it. Many of those people were just beginning their Italian getaway.

We all talked about who was staying where and what parts of Italy everyone was visiting and where everyone was from. It was very nice.

In Cinque Terre, we seemed to be pretty spread apart. We got off in Manarola with two young girls. They said they were staying way up on the hill. We were staying in Manarola at La Toretta. Manarola has one main street and it pretty much goes straight up. We were very glad we had checked some of our luggage.

Partially up the hill, we saw the bus backed up and ready to head up the hill. He hopped on and rode the rest of the way up. It wasn't very far, but with what was left of our luggage, I was thankful for the lift. The road flattened ever so slightly at a small piazza with a church on the left-hand side. La Toretta was on the right-hand side. We got out and just like their Web site indicates, there were children playing soccer on the piazza. Those kids played in the piazza until midnight.

We checked into our room and were very pleased with our view of Manarola and the sea. The sun was falling low and it was lovely. We had a bedroom, a sitting room and a private bathroom. The sitting room had a bed so we split up each taking a room. The bathroom didn't have a shower like I'm used to having. There was no curtain and you had to sit in the tub but there was a shower nozzle. The cost was 110 euros per night and included breakfast of one very hard roll with an assortment of things to spread on the roll. We had yogurt, juice and cappaccino as well.

We ate at La Billy or Il Billy or something like that. A very small restaurant just behind our room. We had spaghetti with pesto. It was pretty okay. I added parmesan cheese and it was a little better.

After dinner, we walked to Rio Maggiore and back. The next day, we found that we hadn't really walked to Rio Maggiore, we had only walked to the train station. You have to go through a long tunnel before getting to the town, but we couldn't tell that in the dark. I just thought it was a very small town!

The next day we set out to explore all five towns. Since this was the end of our trip, we decided we weren't really up to hiking. We decided to walk from Manarola to Corniglia since it was listed as an easy walk. It was easy and it took about an hour or so to walk. The view was lovely and there were a lot of other people out that morning. Many with those pointed walking sticks. You could tell they were in for a day of hiking.

Once at the train station in Corniglia, we saw that a bus will pick you up and take you into the town. We opted for that over taking the stairs. In the town, we ran into someone we had seen on the path and she said the stairs really weren’t as bad as they look. It looks like a lot of stairs, but I don’t know how many there are.

Corniglia was a fairly small town and there weren’t too many people there at that time. I bought one of the cactus fruits, can’t remember what they are called, in a market. It was kind of sweet, but not a lot of flavor. We wandered around for a while looking in the shops, then took the bus back down to the train station to go to Vernazza. By then it was getting very hot and there wasn’t as much shade in Cinque Terre as there had been in the other places we had visited.

I picked up a schedule for the CT trains because I couldn’t quite figure out the schedule. Make sure you get one when you visit the CT because not all trains stop at each town. During the middle of the day most of them do, but there are some that are express trains that run from Monterosso to Rio Maggiore. The trains only come every hour and 20 minutes so it seemed like we spent a lot of time waiting for trains that day. The alternative would have been to hike between the towns.

Vernazza’s station is actually in the town. I liked that about it…no tunnel to go through before getting there. Vernazza seemed to be a little more shady than the others as well. There were more people, but Vernazza was my favorite town. We ate lunch down by the water on the piazza. I didn’t catch the name of the restaurant. There were at least four around the little piazza. We shared a pizza and it was very good. We wanted dessert, but we wanted what we saw on someone’s plate at another restaurant. The waiter at that restaurant said we couldn’t sit down for dessert. If you don’t order dinner, you can’t get dessert. A customer explained that it is the custom in Italy but that you can get dessert only at a bar. He recommended that we go to il Pirate for dessert. Il Pirate was his brother’s bar/restaurant. They were twins and very chatty. Il Pirate is at the top of Vernazza by the parking lot. We walked up there and introduced ourselves to the twin brother. He didn’t quite understand what we wanted except that we had been at the restaurant area by the water. He doesn’t think very highly of those restaurants. He was so funny going on about how much better his service was and how much better his food is and how much larger his portions are. It took a little bit to actually get any food from him. However, once he understood what we wanted, he prepared a wonderful treat for us. Some kind of cream topped with sliced strawberries. He also insisted that we taste his hot fudge with cold cream. He put it in a tiny cup and almost slapped my hand when I went to stir it. He said NO! Sip it like it is. He was a hoot. We decided we’d come back there for dinner that night to see if he was all talk or not. But, we had more to do that day before dinner.

So, we went on to Monterroso. That was a busy place with lots of sun bathers and swimmers. I thought the water felt a little cold, but I’m sure you would get used to it quickly. We crawled out on the rocky area thinking we could dip our feet in the water. The rocks were steeper than they looked so we settled for a little running stream near the rode. I took off my shoes and socks and sat on a small rock with my feet in the water. We looked at all of the different kinds of pebbles in the water. So many different colored rocks.

Since we had a little time to kill before dinner, we rode back to La Spezia to purchase our train tickets to Milan. We had forgotten to do so the day before. Then we rode back to Vernazza for dinner at il Pirate. The twin we had seen at the restaurant saw us coming and welcomed us. He offered us a table inside or out. We chose outside. The service was very good there. They really try to please you there. No other place in Italy seemed to really care about what we thought so it was a welcome change. They brought my Coca-Cola Light with a glass FULL of ice. That was a first in Italy because I usually only got a cube or two. He brought bread as usual, but the crust wasn’t as hard as most of the breads had been and the thin bread he served had herbs on it to give it some extra flavor. I ordered eggplant parmisan and it was delightful. We then hurried off so we wouldn’t miss the train because the next one came kind of late, at least for us.

Back in Manarola we decided to walk partially up the path to Corniglia where you could sit on the ledge and watch the moon rise over the hill. It was very relaxing. A group of Italian men stumbled, literally, up the path and joined us, uninvited, for awhile. They were funny, but it didn’t take long to figure out what they were up to. We didn’t want to go for a midnight stroll with them, but they just kept asking. We decided to turn in and they walked us all the way back to our hotel, only because they were parked just past our hotel in the parking area for Manarola. We sat out a little longer on the terrace of our room.

I forgot to mention that the walls are so thin in Manarola. At the top of the hill you can hear everything going on all the way down by the water. All of the sound rises to the top of the hill or something. It was too hot to shut the windows, so we had no choice but to stay up late. Then, at 7 a.m., the clock next to the hotel chimed. So, where I thought we could spend the most time sleeping in, ended up the place where I got the least amount of sleep. One of my few disappointments with CT.

My friend woke up with a migraine so I spent the morning and part of the afternoon alone strolling to Rio Maggiore and back. That’s when I discovered that the town is actually down through the tunnel. I noticed that they have a restaurant that serves bacon and eggs and hamburgers for anyone who is interested. They also had a laundromat. Then I took the train to Vernazza for lunch. I bought a slice of pizza and sat by the water in Vernazza for a long time. I took some time to check my e-mail at the Internet point. I sure like being able to stay in touch so easily. I didn’t realize the Internet points would be everywhere.

I went back to the hotel and met my friend. We decided to go back to Vernazza for dinner. Incidently, if I return to CT, I will definitely stay in Vernazza so I don’t have to spend so much time on the train or worry about the train schedule. We climbed up to Al Castello and made a reservation for 7:30 p.m. We sat on their terrace until they were ready for us. It was getting kind of chilly so we didn’t take the wonderful seat they offered us. My friend was cold so we ate inside where there was no view. I ordered the Fried Mixed Fish and a salad with dessert afterwards. The calamari was very good, but I only got one shrimp and two small puny little fish. I was glad for the salad and dessert.

We asked for our check, which is hard to get in Italy. They definitely don’t rush you like they do in the states. It was 8:50 p.m. when we asked for the check and we didn’t get it until 9:15 p.m. The train to take us back to Manarola was due in the station at 9:20 p.m. We didn’t think we would make it. We scurried along only to discover that the train was 20 minutes late. So, we sat for 15 minutes waiting for the train. There was supposed to be a full moon so we went back to Manarola to sit on our ledge again. Unfortunately, the clouds were covering the moon and we didn’t get to view it that night.

I haven't mentioned the toilets in CT yet. No one else ever mentioned them, but several of them are just holes in the floor. They are unisex bathrooms with a trickle of water. They do flush. There is a tread on each side of the hole where you stand. The treads are there so you don't slip I guess. I passed a couple up before I just had to give in and use one. It wasn't as bad as I thought, but I wouldn't want to use it if I was any older. I might not be able to get up. Okay, TMI, but I thought people should be forewarned.

We turned in so we would be ready to head to Milan the next morning. We were able to get a train that went from La Spezia to Milan without stopping in Genoa. We sat on the train with a couple from Australia and a couple from New Zealand. We had wonderful conversation all the way there. It was fun sharing stories. The couple from Australia seemed to feel a lot the way we did about Cinque Terre. Although it is quite beautiful, if you aren’t there to hike then it might as well be a day trip. The trains are for the birds…dirty, late, and not frequent enough. It appears that most of the local have moved out and rent out their homes to tourists. So, there weren’t many Italians in the Cinque Terre. A few, but not many. I wasn’t disappointed with Cinque Terre, just surprised at the lack of locals and the number of tourists. It’s become a well-known tourist spot. I’d still go back though.

Once we got to the Milan train station, we took a cab to our hotel. We would never have found it on our own. Maybe not that bad, but it wouldn’t have fallen into our laps like the hotels in the other places we stayed. Of course, Milan is a much bigger city. The Hotel London was the most expensive place we stayed and the least nice place we stayed. The room was a shoebox, but we were only staying one night. They also didn’t provide or offer breakfast. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.

Since we only had one afternoon, we hurried out to view The Last Supper and see the Duomo. At the last supper, we encountered a young couple who had just dropped in with the hopes of getting in. We had reservations. The young woman was so disappointed, that I offered her my ticket. My friend was as tired as I was and she offered hers up to. The couple was so excited and I’m sure they appreicated it more than I would have.

We walked down to…..McDonald’s and I got a Bacon Cheeseburger, Fried and a Diet Coke. Yum, yum! It really was pretty good. The bacon tasted really good. Then, we went to the Duomo. Wow, what a spectacular site. It looks like an ice castle to me. We went inside and then took the elevator up to the roof. We sat up there for awhile trying to cool down before going back down to the street.

We spent the rest of our time just sitting on a step people-watching. That evening, we went next door to our hotel to a Chinese Restaurant. It was very good. We got up early and took another cab to the airport. The subway would have been 15 euros each, but we just didn’t want to lug our luggage that early in the morning so we split the 90 euro cab.

I was hoping to get breakfast at the airport, but only a few of the food places were open and they were packed. We just went to the plane and they were boarding early. After sitting awhile, the plan took off and we left Italy behind.

We had a great trip and I don’t regret a minute of it. I learned some things that will help me plan my next trip. I don’t know where I’ll go next time. It may be somewhere in Italy, or I may try another country. We’ll see.