Journey from France to Sorrento, Italy

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  Naples, Italy
Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Au Revoir from France and Bonjourno to Italy!

We made the decision to change up our travel plans to Italy and after talking to other tourists along the way and reading a lot about Italy, we chose to skip Florence, Roma and Cinque Terra, and Venice and opt for a week in Sorrento, Capri, Positano and the Amalfi Coast. We think it will be more fitting to what we want to see and do during our sabbatical and stay in the quiet little villages away from the crowds and tourists. We got a good taste of that while in the French Riviera and wanted more of that pace and culture!

Today was truly a travel day from HELL! We got up at 5am to prepare for our 7:04am train from Juan Les Pins to Sorrento, Italy. Yes, we knew it would be a very long day but it turned out to be a REALLY long day!

The first leg was probably the best and the shortest without incident! Here is how it worked:

--7:04am to 8:30am (yet the train was late and we arrived at 8:55am which will have meaning in a moment - Juan Les Pins to Ventimaglia, Italy (Yeah, across the border!)
--8:58am to 11:06am - yes, that was 3 minutes to catch our only train to Genoa, Italy! We literally hopped off the late arriving train and Laurie asked for the platform to move to for our Genoa leg. Of course, no surprise to you all by now, we had to drag our bags DOWN (that is the easy part) and then back UP 3 flights of stairs, in mind you, 3 minutes!

This was not an easy task as there seemed to be a crowd doing a lot of nothing at the bottom of the stairs. One look to Ryan and we slammed our way through these people who appeared to not know what to do with themselves, and we RAN up the 3 flights of stairs. Seriously, you do not run up these stairs but we managed to make it at breakneck speed. Laurie happened to notice a flashing little yellow light beside our departing train number and figured it was boarding - seriously, we ran to the door, confirmed with the conductor that this train WAS going to Genoa, and we pulled those darn bags on board!
No less than 2 minutes later we were off, wiping the dripping sweat from our bodies, but relieved that we were on board!

We know you think by now that what we just wrote was not that bad. Well, it was because if we had not been on that train to Genoa we had another train strike threat for the next day and had another connection (which we had not even reserved yet) for about 1pm. So, all that said our journey to Genoa was the slowest moving train that we had been on yet and a real sleeper for Ryan! It totally put him out and the fact that he had been fighting a horrible head cold did not make it any better for him - and that only gets worse!

We arrived into Genoa ON TIME which was miraculous all by itself (Sammy/Karl - you know how these Italian trains are - we were expecting to be stopped for a while in the middle of no where!) Anywho, Laurie immediately went to secure our 1st class tickets from Genoa to Naples for 12:52pm departure, direct to Naples (Napoli). First class was full (of course it was) and was able to get 2nd class reserved which was better than nothing.

We grabbed a quick bit of Italian food (Foccacia bread with a piece of ham and cheese slapped in the middle for a train station treat but our only meal of the day so far) and waited for our train. Ryan's cold was getting worse by the minute so we loaded up on Kleenex and throat lozenges and waited for our train to depart. Our train departed on time at 12:52pm (this was too good to be true as all the stories I had told Ryan were making me sound like a liar). But wait, the good stuff is coming.

This train from Genoa was to be direct to Naples, arriving at 8:36pm, only to catch another small commuter train to Sorrento for another hour, to arrive around 9:30pm.
This god-forsaken train from Genoa stopped MANY times (that is what "direct" means in Italy) and then for an extra long break in Rome. Gosh, there must have been 6 stops in Rome (Roma) alone and when we got to the central station in Rome we waited, and waited and waited. Of course the conductor came on to say why we were delayed in Italian but for those of us who don't speak Italian, we had no clue. In the end, we were delayed over 30 min, which then put Laurie into trying to figure out how we would get to Sorrento and not have to stay overnight in Naples!

The criteria for train employees is to be the nastiest you can be, give the coldest stares humanly possible and pretend you don't know English, and ignore the passengers like the train is empty! This is exactly the treatment we got for 8 hours!! The biggest problem is that the weather was extremely hot and the air conditioning was not running. We opened the windows and tried to get some fresh air and no sooner was that working when the Nazi Italians came storming through and not only shut our windows, but LOCKED them as well! We waited a while before Ryan asked one of these horrible women, as they were running down the aisles (to ignore as best they could) to turn on the air conditioning! Ryan got a flippant comment but shortly thereafter we began to feel the slight bit of air coming through our vents! Funny though - at every stop they turned off the air conditioning - must be a conservation movement on their part! The air managed to stay on for the majority of the remaining 4 hours but it was still a miserably long, hot and sticky train ride and we were praying that once we got to Italy that the people would be different.

The train left for Naples from Rome and we were thinking we would hit Napoli Centrale train station at exactly 9pm, plenty of time to catch the 9:11pm commuter to Sorrento - no way! This train crept along the tracks and arrived after 9:15pm, missing our train to Sorrento. We had instructions on where to go to catch this commuter, but once in the Naples train station we could not find anyone to help us, no one on duty at that hour and we just went with what we had and realized that we were not in the right direction. We were DRIPPING wet as the humidity was high and we were tired.... We had seen a little old man running around our train upon arrival saying "Sorrento?" but we ignored him.

We caught up with that funny little man and he said to us "Sorrento train?" and we said YES. Well, we bought it and he grabbed Laurie's bag and said "follow me". We confirmed that we were not getting a taxi and he said "no, that is too expensive, to the train". This funny little man took us RUNNING to the ticket booth, where we purchased our two cheap tickets to Sorrento. This man proceeded to run us to the platform to wait for our Sorrento train - THE LAST ONE OF THE NIGHT! Ryan said "do you have a little tip for him?" and of course, we had a little something for this kind old man.

As he dropped us at the platform, and we were really dripping wet by this point, the man confidently said "that will be 10 Euro, EACH!" Laurie had a 10 spot ready for him but this man was not taking less than 20 so we kindly paid him off, feeling very suckered but realized that without him we would have never made OR found our train as the directions which were given to Laurie were not correct! For a mere 20 Euros we were on our way to Sorrento making this day almost over.

We chatted with a couple from North Carolina while waiting to board our last journey of the day. They had been to Naples finding and visiting with this woman's long lost grandmother's family. They went to a little plaza where no one spoke English and just asked for the family. They were taken to the area where they met loads of family members which was really cool as they did not know anyone and were not expecting such a greeting. Very neat!

The N. Carolina couple said that we just ride it to the end - how bad could that be? Here is a description for you: this train was covered with messy graffiti, dirty and smeary windows and god-knows-what on the floors! It is a ghetto train, no kidding, and one that most of YOU would not step foot on - trust us! To add to that, we were surrounded by some extremely shady folks on this last-train-to Sorrento journey! We did not have a choice though and as we endured 36 stops we had some interesting people watching in front of us. For some reason most of our train rides have at least ONE crazy loon who talks to themselves and this night was no different - in fact, this one was one of the crazier ones and we found him watching the pornography off of another guy's cell phone! Yes, only in Italy!

There was another odd duck, this woman who looked like she had just gotten off the beach in her bathing suit and tanned and she kept getting up to look at the stops on the chart to see which one she would take. She stepped near Laurie and kept moving closer, very much in that personal space so Laurie kept backing up. After a few moments of that she sat back down and then got up to do the same routine to Ryan. Laurie told Ryan to move closer to his luggage as we did not trust her. We could just see her grabbing the camera bags and running! Ryan has it all figured out and was ready to pounce on her if she gave it a thought! There were others on this last night run and they just got weirder as we went, with every stop. This train accelerated fast and applied very squeaky breaks HARD, we held on tightly to the final stop - our stop! enough to make you grip that mighty handle tightly for the entire hour!

We had received simple instructions on how to get to our B&B but did not know how long of a walk it truly was and with these bags and almost 18 hours of travel - we decided to find a taxi. We talked to the N. Carolina couple and they told us that the taxi drivers would try to circle around your hotel to get some extra fare as most stops are so close to the train. We took note of that and since we did not know how close or far our place was, we had to go with whatever at this point, but were on guard.

We got a whistling elderly Italian man, with a great big white mustache! He was adorable for the first few minutes! He asked us if we had been to Sorrento before and Laurie thought this time to say "yes, of course". We thought that might deter him from doing the circling thingy - it did not work. We knew it immediately - 1st: he had 9.00 euro on the meter when we sat down, and 2nd, the circling happened immediately as the written instructions said stay left out of the train station - Mustache man took a RIGHT! When we called him on it he explained the city is full of one-way streets and there were several closed streets, EXACTLY what the couple from N. Carolina warned us of. Mustache man wound around the dark alley's big enough for a compact car. We noticed the driver had both side mirrors taped into his car as these streets were not big enough for mirrors too! He wound us around and eventually came down a dark lane with hardly any lighting at 11pm! We parked in front of a large wooden door with a buzzer and Laurie told the driver to wait for us until someone showed! The last thing we wanted to do was to be dumped here, no taxi or people in sight and not have anyone answer the door. We were too tired to argue with him but paid the 20 Euro to be safely dropped at our B&B.

We were quickly greeted by Luca at the Bed and Breakfast Chiaro di Luna http://www.portanapoli.com/lodging/show.php?bh=110&lg=uk  and were taken to our room and then he kindly drove us up the street to grab a quick bite of dinner as we were starving!! Luca gave us the lowdown on the village and we enjoyed a quick meal with VERY friendly Italian's and were thrilled to be off the train and into the real heart of Italy!

Our first REAL Italian meal in Italy consisted of the biggest and BEST Mozzarella chunk of cheese and the freshest tomatoes you would ever imagine - and the olive oil, WOW! The restaurant was www.osteriadelbuonconvento.it You have never had olive oil like this - we wanted to pour it down our throats! It was amazing and so flavorful! (Jilly/Sammy - I don't know how to ship this home, too messy!). This was a fantastic end to a very long and stressful journey!

We walked the 5 minutes back to our B&B and by this time Ryan was worse but refused to admit it. Laurie got out her thermometer from her medicine kit (thank you Poppa - this finally came in useful!) to read a whopping 103 - time for bed and Tylenol so his fever would break fast as we have lots to see and do!

Tomorrow we have plans to get Ryan better and rest up after a long travel day!

Today's walk: 2.5 miles 
Total for the journey (187 miles, 34 days) 

Love,
Ryan and Laurie

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