calling from some city...

The location of today should really read “Train” if I was being entirely accurate. Today we had to travel from Cinque Terre to Nice, France. I knew this would be one of our longer travel days because of the lack of direct trains between the two places, plus we had to cross the border. However, I expected we would get to Nice by about 4pm at the latest. But things did not go as we planned.
First, we woke up in Monterosso at 9 am, checked out of the hotel, and got breakfast. We did a little shopping- I got this really cute photo album. We went to look at train times, intending on taking a 10:55 am train. That’s where we ran into the first problem of the day. Monterosso is such a small town, that they do not have the self-help ticket machines to sell long distance tickets. The ticket window can only sell regional tickets, so we had to go to the Trenitalia office. Of course, that office was not open this morning, and no reason was provided- and when asked when it would open, I was told “sometime this afternoon.” Asking for clarification only got me “lunchtime” as an answer, and then I was told “around 1.” So that was not really working out for us. We found we could go to Genoa, and from there we would be able to buy the tickets to Nice. Of course, the next train to Genoa wasn’t leaving for 2 hours. Looking at the schedule, however, I saw a train going to Milan that was stopping in Genoa and asked to buy a ticket for that train. They couldn’t sell us that ticket, but told us we could buy it onboard for the normal price, without a fine, if we found the ticket collector.
So we planned on taking that train. Once the train pulled up to the station, I immediately found the ticket collecter to say we didn’t have tickets and had to buy them. He insisted the price was 50 euro, even though the ticket office was closed. He completely didn’t care and wouldn’t listen to the multiple people protesting they should only pay the normal rate. It was incredibly frusterating because he just waved his hands and walked away from us. So we didn’t board the train because we weren’t paying that much money just to get to Genoa.
That left us to wait for the 12:40 train to Genoa (which cost us less than 5 euro). We sat on the beach for a while and then got lunch. We got to Genoa at 2:22 and found out we wouldn’t be arriving in Nice until after 11 that night; we were definitely not happy to hear this news. But we figured we did not have another choice, so we board our next train, which left at 3pm for Ventimiglia, the border town between Italy and France. We expected we would have a couple hour layover in Ventimiglia once we arrived.
The train ride was 3 hours long, and it was pretty uncomfortable for me. The train was fine, but Scott gave me back the head cold that I had previously had earlier in the trip and passed along to him. On his blog, he promised revenge on me, and I definitely caught whatever he had because I’ve had a headache, runny nose, and blocked sinuses. My ears were especially bothering me. Nothing too serious, but just bad enough to make the trip very annoying.
Anyways we arrived at about 6:15, and after wandering around trying to figure out what time our next train left, I got in line at the information desk. The woman immediately wrote down the trains we needed to take and the times they ran- and luckily for us, we did not have a layover! We immediately got on a 20 minute train to Monaco, where we transfered trains and about 25 minutes after that, we arrivied in Nice.
By now it was 7:30 (much better than after 11) and I was very hungry. We spotted an Italian restaurant across the street from the train station and sat down there. It was pretty good food, but really at that point, anything would have tasted good. The directions to get to the hostel were very clear- we got on a very sleek and modern tram to a specific stop, and then waited for the hostel shuttle service to pick us up. Yep, the hostel shuttles guests between the hostel and the tram stop every 15 minutes or so for free- which is awesome and saved us a 15 minute walk uphill.
We got to the hostel to check in- and it’s amazing. The room is big enough for the 9 beds that occupy it, and we have our own bathroom which is nice. The hostel offers free breakfast, use of kitchen, and internet, and has 12 computers for guests to use. They also run a ton of excursions and have proven already to be the most informative regarding things to do in the area and exactly how to go about doing them and how to get there. They also have a huge lounge/bar area with a restaurant that offers cheap meals. The drinks are really cheap as well- 1 euro beers, 2 euro sangria, and 3,50 euro mixed drinks.
We were disappointed we had lost an entire day in transit, because there are alot of things we want to do while on the French Riviera. We probably should have planned that train ahead of time, but there really was no reason for the Trenitalia office to be closed on a Monday morning. But of course, that is a very Italian thing to happen- things are not always efficient and easy, especially when they should be. Anyways, because we lost the chance to explore Nice today, I offered the suggestion that we stay another night in Nice, and take a night away from Lyon. All of the attractions we want to see in Lyon can be done in a day and a night anyways, so I think we are staying in Nice for a night longer than planned so we can have 3 full days here.
Anyways, we immediately showered and went to the hostel bar to have some drinks and chat before calling it a night around midnight. We were tired from traveling and eager for the next day to begin!