The first leg of our trip went along the Mediterranean coast the majority of the time, and it was crazy beautiful. The train tracks were practically on the beach. This train took us from Marseille to Ventimiglia, Italy, which is a town just across the Franco-Italian border, and as far in this direction as French trains travel. It’s an adorable little beach town where because of its location, both Italian and French are spoken/understood. This was nice because my Italian was still a bit rusty. We planned a five hour stopover in Ventimiglia to grab lunch and have some time to explore. After some wandering, some delicious pizza eating, and some more wandering, we were back to the station and on our train to Genoa.
We arrived in Genoa Saturday evening and took a taxi up to our hostel because it wasn’t exactly close and the bus system was too complicated to figure out in the dark. The city is directly on the coast (and happens to be Italy’s main port) and quickly climbs into some steep hills. The hostel we were staying at was almost the only one in town, and happened to be on top of all of these hills overlooking the city. This meant lots of super windey roads with hairpin turns zig zaging their way up. It was kind of scary in a taxi, and almost terrifying in a city bus (which we used the rest of the time to get between the hostel and the city center) because the roads were also very narrow and had parking on both sides. Often, the bus would have to stop to let the opposite direction traffic go through because there wasn’t enough room. It seemed like a very stupid system, but they showed no signs of wanting to change it.
We dropped our things off at the hostel, and then headed to a nearby restaurant which the guy at the front desk described as the easiest place nearby to grab dinner. We get seated and immediately notice that something was strange about this place. It seemed like a supper club, or a low budget banquet hall. The chairs were plastic garden chairs, they still had New Year’s decorations up, there was a half assed DJ booth complete with 3 disco lights, and a few strings of rainbow xmas lights were hung in the room. My friend and I were also the only table with less than six people at it. Then we saw someone was setting up at the DJ booth and hoped for some hilarious Italian entertainment, and we were not disappointed. For the rest of the evening, there were at least two couples on the dance floor, one of them being the same guy alternating between three different women. At one point there was a nine year old out there who was doing Shakira-like things with her hips as she danced with her mother…so apparently they pop out of the womb like this (and singing…because they switched to karaoke later). But the food was good, and all the slightly awkward ambiance/entertainment made it quite the memorable evening.
The next day we wandered around Genoa a bit. It was Sunday, so the city was relatively deserted and most shops were closed. It was also quite chilly, which didn’t help anything. We got some quality indoor time at their aquarium which was pretty neat. We were also unintentionally constantly trailing a trio of Italians who were taking dreadfully cliché stone faced European photos in front of almost each main exhibit. And since I think this is hilarious and that’s basically my favorite thing ever, and why I look so “angry” in all the photos I post of myself, it made the endeavor all the more entertaining.
We wandered some more and came upon some random palace in town. We saw it was only 2€ for young people to get in, so we decided to check it out. As we approached the stairs to the entrance, a man comes down and tells us it’s too cold up there and to come back in ten minutes after he takes a break and we could get in. So we come back and aimlessly loiter for a bit with a large group of Italian tourists before this same man spots us and points to where we could buy a ticket and then join the group. So we acquire our tickets, and these people in the office are on the phone, “I have two girls here…are they coming with you? What should I do with them…”. All the sudden a woman appears and tells us to come with her, and she takes us upstairs into the palace. My friend and I were passed back and forth a few times before they decided who was going to show us around, because there was this large organized group, and then a few unrelated stragglers including myself and my friend. So we got a detailed tour (in Italian) of this palace with just four other people, which was much more preferable to the giant group that was also there. My poor friend didn’t really speak any Italian other than “I don’t speak Italian, I’m Canadian” so she only caught every 5th word, and I think I understood at least half of what was being explained to me. We just maintained facial expressions that gave our guide the impression that we weren’t lost so things didn’t get more awkward. But in the end, it was a beautiful palace, a cheap tour, and just an overall interesting experience to happen upon and be thrown into. We spent the rest of the afternoon in search of food to take back to the hotel for dinner since we knew that with it being Sunday our options would be limited. But we threw together a nice dinner of pesto (the specialty of Genoa), some foccacia bread, porchetta (insanely tasty slow roasted herb pork, a specialty of Rome) and some cheese and we were as happy as could be.
The next day, we went back into town to take a train farther east along the coast to a place called “Cinque Terre” (five lands) which is a string of five small villages 5.5 miles from start to finish that are connected by a walking path and widely regarded as one of the most beautiful places in the world. So we got off the train at the farthest village and went to purchase tickets to enter since it’s a national park. The woman at the office tells us that due to “problems” the coastal path between towns was only available between where we currently were and the next town up, but apart from that we’d need to use the more complicated and mountainous hiking trails, or buy the ticket that was admission use of the train that connects everything. In no hiking spirit, we bought the train ticket, grabbed a copy of the train schedule, and highlighted the trains we would take at each town since they weren’t that frequent and didn’t want to be stuck somewhere too long. The walk to the next town was outrageously beautiful. It was around noontime, and my friend and I started to be craving some lunch. There was a group of dozens of Chinese tourists in the second town, half of which were carrying McDonald’s bags. Intrigued, we tried to find this easy lunch, but it was nowhere in sight.
So we caught the train to the 3rd town and figured we could find lunch there. However this train didn’t exactly drop us off in the town. It was more like several hundred yards to the side of and then 400 steps below. When you’re starving and just looking for food, an infinite staircase is quite insulting. We made it to the top and began to search for a café/restaurant. However, Cinque Terre is very much a warm weather destination…and it was February. So much of these towns were dormant/deserted. It was nice to be somewhere so popular when it was peaceful, but not when we just needed food. At this point it was now past the typical European lunchtime window (after 2pm), so we were afraid we wouldn’t be able to find a place that would actually serve us lunch, even if they had been open. But we found a place whose door was unlocked and had no one but a family of three speaking North American English inside. They said that the restaurant had fed them, so we could probably still eat too. As we’re standing there awkwardly, a man pops out of the kitchen and asks if we wanted a table. We said yes, and he says we can have spaghetti with either meat sauce or marinara. Just thankful to be fed outside of lunchtime and outside of tourist season, we picked our sauce and sat down. I’m not sure if it was the fact that we were in Italy, the crazy beautiful view out the window, the joy that we finally found someone to feed us, or how hungry we were after a half day of trekking, but it was the best spaghetti I’ve ever had. We thanked the staff and left a nice tip, and raced back to the train station to head to the next village.
This is where our voyage got even more interesting. We got off the train in this little village called Vernazza (the only ones to get off the train, mind you) and immediately noticed copious amounts of construction. My first reaction was that they were just updating the road while it was the offseason. But as we walked into town, we noticed that people seemed to be working on tearing out/re-doing the 1st floor of every building. We were very confused. There was no one in town except a few slowly walking old people and construction workers. The harbor had no boats/water in it. There was sediment everywhere; it wasn’t just dirt from a construction scene. We came to the conclusion that there had been a flood of some sort, and now had to awkwardly wait 75 minutes until the next train arrived. By the time we were back at the train station, all the construction people were calling it a day and also taking the train out of town. It was incredibly awkward….all these manly men finished with their day of manly work…and then these two random college girls. When I got back to my apartment Monday evening, I Googled the name of the town to see what had happened. Turns out that October 25th (keep in mind we visited the 2nd weekend in February) there had been a mudslide that killed five people and buried the town in 12 feet of mud. Holy shit. Because we decided Thursday/Friday that we’d be leaving Saturday morning and figured that while we were in the neighborhood we’d take the train to Cinque Terre and figure out the fine points of our tourist stops with the help of tourist resources in Genoa, we didn’t Google anything. This meant that we had no idea that there was a deadly mudslide and we shouldn’t have gotten off the train in Vernazza. Apparently the “problems” the woman at the starting office referred to regarding the coastal path really meant “devastating/deadly mudslide”. Thanks for the heads up, lady. But really…anyone in their right mind would have Googled something…anything…before going somewhere. But we were pressed for time and didn’t. Moral of the story, Google before you travel so you don’t end up in a disaster zone.
We visited one more town after that and it was nice and problem free. We headed back to Genoa that night, got one more night of sleep at the hostel, and early Tuesday morning headed back to France. Once again we had to change trains in Ventimiglia, but this time only with a 90 minute layover. This allowed us to pick up some last minute Italian food goodies to enjoy on the train and head back to la France.
Green is Aix, where I live. Yellow is Marseille, where we took a bus to from Aix to catch the 1st train. Red is Ventimiglia, where we changed trains/killed Italian time. Blue is Genoa, where we stayed and wandered. Black is the general location of Cinque Terre, where we learned life lesions.In the end, the moral of the story is to avoid visiting beach/summer towns in February…because not much will be open and you’ll be stuck in the cold and to avoid touring a major European city on a Sunday…because most things will be closed. And to Google things before leaving so you don’t end up in a natural disaster zone.
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