Our Final Four... Trains

See the door under the stairs of the yellow building across the street?  Grocery store!!

May 29, 2010

Another train day.  Our last train day.  In the morning, we crossed the street for some breakfast from the tiny bakery/deli/neighborhood market and discovered delicious, fresh chocolate-filled croissants for only 80 Euro cents a piece.  Suddenly our past week’s breakfasts minus such pastries seemed like missed opportunities…  Mmmm.  

 

I finished up the packing, cleaned out the refrigerator and made a run to deposit our recycling and disposables in garbage cans down the street.  I made sure the kids were dressed and hair was done, and then I gave marching orders.  I had learned so much from our three months of train adventures and misadventures, that I was now seasoned and smart[er].  I had paid for nonmandatory reservations for the train from Genoa to Milan to ensure that we would have decent seats.  Rather than following the connection schedule suggested by the Trenitalia (Italian rail) website, I opted to make my own plan… leaving Deiva Marina on an earlier train so that we would have plenty of time to make our transfer in Sestri Levante.  We were not going to be running for trains on our last train day if I could help it. 

The kids were craving a last bag of honey candy and Cade was insistent that he could run to the town’s “big” supermarket by himself to buy it.  Even though the store was just around the corner and down the street, I was nervous.  But there are limits to what a mom can do with 9 bags and 3 children in tow, and the store checkout clerk was now practically a friend.  So I told him he had ten minutes to get there and back before I would start freaking out, so off he ran... and was back in 9 minutes, 42 seconds.  Phew.  En route to the station, we ducked back into our tiny grocery store across from our lodgings for bananas, chips and drinks for the train, and left bags in a pile outside the Tabak as we stopped for postcards and ran across the street to Lella’s for farewell foccacia.

Barilla pasta!!  The Italians really do cook with it too.   :)

It is even more delicious than it looks.  You have no idea...

We arrived at the Deiva Marina train station with 8 minutes to spare before our scheduled train pulled in.  A sixty-something Italian man helped us board the train with our bags, and then proceeded to talk to me in animated Italian for the next 20 minutes in spite of my initial protests that I “no comprende Italiano!”  The hand-gesturing Italians are masterful at the art of charades, so I figured out at some point that he was talking about hiking.  I started throwing out random names of the Cinque Terre towns to assure him that we haven’t been completely lazy during our stay.  Riomaggiore…  Bella!   Vernazza… Bellisimo!   Manarola, Corneglia, Monterosso…   Favoloso!  He lit up.  I felt validated…  until he started his rapid-fire Italian again and I was left to stare dumbly and shake my head apologetically.  I needed rescuing.  I looked over at the kids and mouthed:  PEACHES.  PEACHES!!  They so did not get it.  Actually, they did… but they just thought it was funny.

We arrived in Sestri Levante with an hour to spare before our train to Milan.  I was thrilled.  It felt like such a luxury to be able to leisurely wait for a train instead of running for one.  I was even more relieved when we discovered that the later train suggested by our original Trenitalia itinerary was significantly delayed, and would likely have caused us to miss our connection.  Whew.  Spared Regan a panic attack over that one.  The problem with efficiency and setting up a train schedule like dominos is that if you miss one, you miss them all…  which is an even bigger headache if you have reservations and/or nonrefundable tickets like I often did since they were cheapest. 

Just as I was indulging my relief and congratulating myself on a low-train-stress day, our train disappeared from the monitor, along with all the scheduled trains for the next two hours.  But the finicky monitor couldn’t make the ACTUAL trains disappear, so our train pulled into the station just a few minutes behind schedule.

The kids were hungry, and even the long-rejected snacks we had carried with us in our travel bag for weeks were finally consumed with gusto.  As we transferred to our train in Genoa, I was thankful for my foresight in making reservations, because the train appeared quite full.  Although I regretted having to displace people already sitting in our seats, my guilt was assuaged by the sheer relief that we were not the ones having to drag our bags through the entire train looking for a place to settle in.

Once in Milan, we had plenty of time to make it to the Swiss train -- our fourth and last train of the day.  As the train approached Geneva and my helpful parents waiting for us in the train station, I felt the pricking of tears.  We had done it!  Three months in Europe!  I acknowledged the surge of gratitude for the blessing of an amazing shared adventure with my kids, then we gathered our bags from above, beneath and behind our seats, and we stepped off the train onto the platform.