Monday, May 28, 2007

Tren Italia adventure

The next weekend I set off with a couple of friends (namely Chris, Stuti and Cam) for a Tren Italia adventure, testing both our endurance and the punctuality of the Tren Italia system. We were planning on visiting 3 cities (Rimini, Perugia and Sienna) in 3 different regions (San Marino, Umbria and Tuscany) in 3 days, with each train journey involving at least one change on the regionale trains (think Connex stopping all stations trains that are perpetually late by at least 10 minutes, have no airconditioning, soundproofing and tend to stop in the middle of nowhere for no apparent reason) as there was not one direct train (or train line) between these three cities.


First was Rimini, a coastal beach resort town directly west of Florence on the Adriatic coast. Unfortunately no train line runs directly there (due to some mountain ranges) and we had to go via Bologna. Two train changes later, which amazingly went without a hitch, we arrived in Rimini and checked into possibly the best hostel I've stayed at so far; free breakfast, kitchen, free lockers in the bedrooms, free bikes and a nice big and clean bathroom. After a quick lunch (at a Chinese place, which involved a history lesson from Cam about the Polish Army and their “Battle Pigs” of the 1920’s?!?) we headed down to the beach which is about 13 kilometers long of private bathing areas with rows and rows of beach umbrellas and chairs with only about 800m of "free beach", however at long last (after the stony beaches of Cinque Terre, Lake Garda and Lake Como) we had found a sandy beach in Italy. After an hour of swimming and sun backing, we took some of the bikes from the Hostel and rode into the historical town, had a look at some of the remains of the old city wall (roman I believe), visited the Castel Sismondo and had aperetivo in a nice wine bar in the centre (also served an awesome Margarita!). Afterwards we stayed in the Piazza Cavour and listened to a band playing for the opening night of a multicultural festival (mainly African from what I could see) and enjoyed some of the hospitality of the local Commune (council) offering 1 euro glasses of wine.


The next morning we checked out and rushed to catch the 9.00 train to a small town near Ancona which reminded us of Bonnie Doon with the leathery old men lounging on a dirty beach with an gas refinery in the background. Nevertheless, we had a really good coffee in a little bar across the street from the station as we waited for our train to take us to Foligno where we would again change trains to reach Perugia. Unfortunately this train was a first-class only train, which we didn't discover until after the train had left the station when we had walked up and down the whole train looking for the 2nd class carriage. Luckily, the conductor only fined the group once, not individually, so we only had to pay a couple of euros more than we had budgeted for the ticket each. Amazingly this was the only difficulty we had with the trains for the whole weekend!

Arriving in Perugia we had the most amazing Pizza I have had in Italy so far, and spent the afternoon wandering around the town (which is not so easy as it is built on the top of a hill and involved walking up and down countless amounts of stairs and hills) sucking in the views, and having aperetivo (again… with another great Margarita and Daquiri) for dinner. Unfortunately we still needed to head to Siena, as our accommodation for the night was there. This involved catching a bus at 10:30 pm at night from the bottom of the hill near the station. However, we weren't certain that the bus was leaving from there (we only had it from the guy at the bus information office who had to call someone else to check), if it would come or where to buy tickets... so sitting in a wet bus station (it was raining) at 10:15 pm was rather amusing (especially with our incredibly civilized conversation about whether someone could try to be raped… not entirely sure why!?!). The bus arrived, and after some negotiation with the driver and a local Italian student to interpret for us, we landed in front of our Hostel in Siena.


The Hostel in Siena was well... prison-like. It had a curfew at midnight, a really bad, non-complimetary breakfast between 7.30 and 8.30am (which we didn’t buy, preferring the little bar down the road with some awesome panini) topped off with a 9am lockout. Luckily we only really needed the bed and had planned to leave early in the morning anyway, as we only had a day in Siena.


Siena is a beautiful city; all pageantry and Middle Ages with every building built out of these beautiful red (almost like terracotta) bricks and little streets with lots of cute little shops. The Duomo is amazing, although rather overdone with the entire inside and facade made up of zebra-stripe black and white marble giving it an almost epileptic effect. However, some of the artwork contained was amazing!!! Despite a rather big rainstorm, we still climbed the unfinished facade of the "new" Duomo, which had an amazing view... Unfortunately due to the rain and wind, we weren't able to enjoy it for long, only stopping to take a couple of photos before climbing back down... The Piazza del Campo is an amazingly large piazza, which is the centre of the old city and is dominated by the Palazzo Communale (the town hall from the Renaissance), and it is very easy to imagine the Il Palio (the wild horserace dating from the Middle Ages) taking place.

Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Lake Garda, Milan, Lake Como

In my week off after the first two subjects I spent a couple of days in Lake Garda with Chris and then went on to Milan and Lake Como for a few more days by myself. When we bought the train tickets to Lake Garda the day before we left, we were informed that we could only take the Eurostar to Padova, as there was a Train Strike. Unfortunately the lady selling us the tickets couldn't tell us if there would be a connecting train from there, as the train strikes are often localised. Fortunately when we got there, we found that the trains were running and we got to Lake Garda on time, but unfortunately had to pay more for the train tickets.

Lake Garda is a beautiful lake surrounded by Mountains on the northern side, and is frequented by many German Tourists. It was a welcome change hearing all the tourists speaking German instead of American as they do in Florence. We met some other Australian backpackers at the train station and spent the first day with them wandering around Peschiera del Garda, lazing on the beach and sampling some wine in one of the numerous wine bars in the town centre. We also hired some bikes and rode through a couple of the small towns in the afternoon. I also spent the next afternoon sailing on the Lake, which was probably the best way of enjoying it.

The next day I went to Milan, which I didn't like very much. I arrived at around midday and took about an hour to get to the hostel because of the hopeless directions they had given. The city is very modern and whilst it still has a lot of impressive sights it wasn't as I had expected it and I was quite disappointed. I spent the first afternoon wandering around the city centre and went into an Egyptian exhibition at a museum in the Castello, which had a few mummies and alot of the idols and other medallions and things that they would put into the caskets with the bodies. Unfortunately I was hassled quite a few times during the afternoon by numerous young men as well as having one of the African gypsies at the Piazza del Duomo attempt to swindle money out of me. They "give" you handmade bracelets and tie them to your wrist and chat to you for a while before they ask for money. If you don't give them any they say they will take it themselves out of your wallet. Unfortunately for this particular African , I wasn't about to part with any money and he had to walk away with no money and a bracelet less.

The next morning was spent looking at the main sights of Milan with a Belorussian girl I met at the hostel. The Duomo, which is one of the largest cathedrals in the world was very impressive with its many statues, pinnacles, pillars and flying buttresses. Unfortunately much of the front of the cathedral was covered by scaffolding, as part of the ongoing renovations, so much of the initial effect was dampened. The climb to the roof of the cathedral resulted in an amazing close-up look at many of the spires and a wonderful view of the surrounding city. After a wonder through the gardens at the Castello Sforzeco, where we were approached by a self-professed transsexual fortune teller who was determined to read our palms for a mere 7 euros each, which both of us declined we made our way to Lake Como for the afternoon.

Como is the main access town to the lake which we spent most of the afternoon at. It is a sleepy little town (well it was in the middle of May which was presumably prior to the peak tourist season) with a cute little city centre full of pedestrian lanes and little speciality shops. After wandering around the city centre for a couple of hours we made our way to the lake shore where we decided to rest for a while enjoying the view. After a while we noticed this small motor boat driving back and forth parallel to the shore line, laughing to ourselves as we assumed they were checking out the girls along the lake shore. They continued this for a while, and started coming closer to the shore, eventually waving at us and gesturing at us to go somewhere. When we then walked along the lake shore to the next town, they followed us for about 10 minutes trying to talk to us until they eventually realised that we weren't interested in them at all. The next morning I visited Corsa Bunos Aires for some window-shopping before heading home in the afternoon.