Train to Milano

Friday, November 5, 2010 Day 128

We awoke before 8:00 and went to the lobby for a mediocre breakfast, but it was only 5€, a bargain compared to many places where the charge is double that and which we usually pass. Then we packed and left the hotel, having three goals: lunch for the train, an internet café where we could print our hotel information for tonight, and then to verify that our tickets were the correct ones for the train we planned to take.

When we got to the street, there was a market going on – right in the street, which was closed to traffic for the duration of the market. There is a large square with a park in the middle of it, and the market was set up around the square and along the waterfront street. This section of the market was non-food – clothing, kitchen items, pots, pans, jewelry, shoes, gewgaws. We strolled along enjoying the wares, knowing we were not going to be buying. Most of the stuff in these markets is rather low-end, but we did pass some fur-trimmed leather going for 999€ each. Who in their right minds would spend that kind of money at a market?? We saw the local police or administrators checking to see if one stall had a proper license. We didn’t wait to see whether they did or not. There was a person with a painted face and wearing a tri-cornered hat and some sort of costume who was setting up his box and getting ready to assume a statue pose.

After we left the market area we came to a restaurant with sandwiches in the window, so bought a ham on focaccia bread for Roger and a green tort of spinach and artichokes for me, and a cannoli to share for lunch. Next we located an internet café where we got our Milan hotel info printed. Finally we arrived at the station and exchanged our incorrect tickets for the correct ones. We still had 30 minutes left, so we walked back down to a food market where we wandered through for a bit and I bought some tomatoes to snack on.

Our train left about 10 minutes late. Our path took us along the Mediterranean Sea until we reached Genova, when we turned north toward Milan. The first part of the trip we stopped at all the local stations, sometimes going only 15-20 minutes between stops, and getting up very little speed. The last half an hour before Genova we picked up speed. The scenery was beautiful – the sea to the south, mountains to the north, some of the more distant ones snow-capped. The landscape was interspersed with the sudden darkness of tunnels, causing discomfort to our ears. Once we left Genova, we turned sharply north and headed along the Po River valley. The autumn colors were splendid – perhaps not a spectacular as those in parts of the U.S., but certainly better than we are accustomed to in south Louisiana. We were about 30 minutes out of Genova when our train slowed to a halt and the loud speaker poured out an unintelligible announcement. Shortly thereafter we were joined in our 6-person compartment by a gentleman. I asked if he spoke English and he said no, so I gambled on French and he said yes. I told him I spoke a little. He proceeded to tell me that the train next to us on the track was “in English, broken.” Shortly thereafter three more people entered our compartment and other people poured onto the train, many of whom were stuck in the aisle outside the compartments. One of the gentlemen who sat in our compartment spoke English. He explained that their train had left Genova more than an hour before ours, and they had been sitting on that stuck train for well over an hour. They were grateful to discover that we would be getting into Milano around 4:00 – over an hour late for us, but two or three hours late for them. Roger had expected the trip up to Milano to provide some spectacular scenery, but unfortunately there were low clouds and some fog, so all we saw were gray skies and fields – no mountains, snow-capped or otherwise, the distance. We arrived in Milano without further disruption.