Christian October 11th, 2008
The journey from Naples to Venice was very long even when spent in a nice first class seat on the train (only Eurail ticket we could buy, what a shame). The good news was that once we arrived at the Venice train station our hotel was only a few short blocks away. We were quickly checked in and then shown to our room, which turned out to be down a maze of corridors, steps, and so many turns you weren’t quite sure what direction you were headed. It was very odd, the walk to the hotel was actually shorter than the walk to our room. It was almost like some sort of illusion, since the hotel looked very small and unassuming from the street. Our room was small and had some ruby red wallpaper, but was nice enough at first glance. Continue Reading »
Christian October 2nd, 2008
Upon arriving at the Naples train station we were greeted by a red eyed crackhead when trying to buy tickets for the local train. We assumed he wanted money, or Casey. He was talking very fast and not making any sense. We shrugged him off and continued to wait for our train to our hostel. While waiting, we noticed there were many “shady” characters around. It did not help our feelings about the place when there are “watch for pickpockets” signs and an audio announcement in english every five minutes saying the same. Our hostel was located only a 10 minute train ride away. As we got off the train, we were stuck behind these two older men. Something shiny caught my eye when walking behind them. As soon as I figured out what it was, I was not surprised but received confirmation about the safety in Naples. Continue Reading »
Christian September 24th, 2008
Like most of the trips in Italy so far, the trip to Rome was not long, but delayed. Our train ended up being 35 minutes late, which we spent sitting on the floor of the train station with our bags since there are no benches. After the last hostel being so far away, we didn’t have high hopes for the one in Rome. We were plesantly surprised. From the train station, it was only a few short metro stops to our stop. From the metro stop, our hostel was only a few blocks away. The owners of the hostel, an Italian-American couple, were more than hospitable. We threw our packs on our beds in the 6 bed dorm room and plotted out what we wanted to see on our first day in Rome. We were given a nice map of the city and figured that we would spend the day seeing the free sites of the city. Continue Reading »
Christian September 19th, 2008
The train ride from Nice to La Speiza was very scenic. Much of the ride was spent looking out over beaches, which luckily were on our side of the train. Once in the town of La Spezia, we had some time to kill before our train to Riomaggiore in the Cinque Terre. Having this time and there not being a line at the ticket window, we decided to try and book our tickets to Florence, Rome, Naples, and Venice. We really thought that we caught a break when we saw that the lady in the ticket window had an the all important british flag on her nametag. At many trainstations the attendents will have small flags on thier nametags, symbolizing what languages they are fluent in. This lady must have borrowed someone else’s nametag. We asked about reserving the train to Florence first. She said “NO PAY”. Okay, that is fine, it is a regional train we don’t need reservations, perfect. So then we asked about Florence to Rome, again “NO PAY”. We knew we needed reservations for this train and clearly the lady was not understanding our question. We kept trying to explain it to her, but everytime we would start talking, she would simply say loudly “NO PAY”. We gave up when she Continue Reading »
