Saturday, February 09, 2008

On the Road Again

Well, almost. While it was originally my plan to get gone early Friday morning (It's friday morning, oh good grief), I suddenly find myself with super secret Venetian gift missions which need to be accomplished. Which also gives me an excuse to mail my dead weight to Brendan rather than carrying it around for several weeks. So today, I have decided, will be a day of making tomorrow better. And if that means an extra day wandering the streets of Venice, well, it is difficult in the extreme but I shall selflessly bear the burden of it.

I go to the train station, I discuss scheduling options and I obtain the correct train reservations to use with my Eurail pass. Then, I shop. Oh The Horror. The Horror. Had I all the euros in everywhere I could spend half of them in an afternoon in Venice alone. Gifted and encumbered, I head to the post office. I am prepared for difficult negotiations. Right. I am inadequately prepared for the ACTUAL difficulty involved with using the Italian Postal System. There is a strange tendency for people to insist that you do not actually want what you have just told them that you do. Sigh. Ultimately I win. The Italians were fools to think they could convince me of anything. I am a Rock of Conviction and Insistence that things Go My Way. And Annoyance. Oh ye Gods the poor Italian Postal Workers. But it all turns out okay in the end. Hopefully my package will beat me home.

Brendan, may all other sound engineers give him their fancy microphones, has scanned my tax documents and sent them to me. So I do my taxes online from the hostel in Venice. E-filing=sweet. Direct Deposit=Very Sweet. Amount of my actual refund=Depressingly Small. Doesn't the IRS realize I AM TRAVELLING?!!! People I know really need me to buy them cool stuff. That they didn't ask for. Like a Tea Cosy covered in Cats! (Truly, I actually did buy that for someone while I was in Canterbury, They know who they are. But it's really VERY cute! I promise!) Alright, fine, perhaps having to budget properly is for the best. Whatever.

Having explored train options, I have another mission. Figure out where I am going. I had thought that heading straight from Venice to Andrea's house in Pau would work, but the Trenitalia people tell me the shortest trip there is to take the train all the way north to Paris and then transfer to another train which takes me to the very southernmost part of France. The Trip involves 3 transfers and takes a total of 19 hours 51 minutes. Retarded. So, I have made train reservations which allow me to spend about two hours in Milan, and then arrive in Nice around 8pm. The Nice Station is a common transfer station on the way to Pau, and as everyone learned from the musical The Boyfriend: "It's Nicer in Nice" and everyone should "Do the Riviera". Well, technically "The Riviera" referred to in the musical is a dance and not a place but my point stands. Nice calls and who am I to say No? So, now I know that I will spend tomorrow night in Nice... I just need to find a place to sleep. Hostelworld.com comes to my rescue: the Villa St. Exupery (awww, like Le Petit Prince, how cute), which is on the all the "Top Ten Hostels" Lists, has as a bed available. And Free Internet. For 16 Euro a night. Booya Indeed.

I book my bed at the Villa, get all my stuff packed for tomorrow and spend the next several hours hanging out with the hostel kids. We all drink gallons of Port with the Brazillians, (right after Natalia showed up, Venice Fish got a flood of Brazillians. Who woulda thunk.) We laugh it up, eating and drinking into the wee hours. Then we all crash. I sleep like an anvil but when my alarm goes off at 8am I am up in a flash. Gotta get on the road...Milan and Nice are calling! I shower, grab my things and say goodbye to Venice Fish. Then I have my very last cappuccino at
Antica Correfazione di Caffe. Sob. As I walk through Venice on the way to my train at Santa Lucia I get a few final pictures of Venice morning loveliness:

The Gondolier who does business in front of the Hostel.


Images of animals and people gracing the walls of old buildings.


A typical old building on the water in Venice.

Venice is truly breathtaking all day every day. I promise myself I will return.

I catch my train, and figure out my game plan for my two hour blitz of Milan on the way there. I arrive in Milan, check my bag at the station, get on yet another of the many fabulous metro systems of my journey and before I know it I am at the Duomo metro station. I discover that I have accidently arrived on the last day of MILANO'S Carnevale Celebration.


Billboard/TV next to the Metro tracks, advertising the festivities. Oh Man.

Then I get above ground:

So much for hitting the Duomo in the off-season. Jeez.

So I walk around the Duomo for a bit. The line to climb the stairs is 49 Kilometers long so that's out. But if you can ignore the millions of screaming children with cans of silly string, there's still a bunch of pretty things.


Ah Italian pidgeons. No statue is complete without them.

I also got to mosey about the Galleria. Pretty Spiff.


The Galleria. Home of Insane Designer Clothes.

I have a gelato in front of the Duomo and then head back to Milano Centrale to catch my train to Nice. I would like to take this opportunity to point out that the Milanese idea of a sensible building to house a major train station is bonkers.


Um, excuse me. You may not realize this but your train station has epic pillars of doom. Little weird. Thought you might want to know.

And then inside:


No wonder Milan rules the high fashion world. They think this is how you should check the time in a train station.

Anyway, I get on my train to Nice without much hoopla. I fall asleep and wake up just before Nice, utterly disoriented. On the list of odd things about "The Villa" where I'm supposed to stay in Nice: it says online to call them when you get off the train and they will pick you up from the tram station. Bit strange but whatever. I call the number and get a generic French answering service. Hmm. I'll try again in a bit. I hunt around for where I'm supposed to go next, can't figure it out, go back to the payphone and try again. The receptionist picks up. I explain my confusion about the next step of their directions. She's a bit stumped, cannot figure out how to explain what a tram is. I now know. I had never thought of the Muni as a tram, just a differently abled bus. I am strange. So it goes.

The Villa is a bit bizarre (some things are incredible, other things are surprisingly difficult. Using your key to open the door to your room, for example.) but the food is cheap and excellent. Dinner for less than 6 euros and a large selection of wines by the glass at 1 euro per glass. Tonight the main course is an enormous plate of chinese chicken and vegetable stir fry. Thank God because I am so starving right now. Over dinner I meet a cool French Nigerian guy. I don't know his name but he's gonna show me around Nice tomorrow. Which is Sunday. Yikes. I crash now.

Coming Soon: The Niceness overwhelms me...

Notes? Notes? What Notes?

1 comment:

Sarah said...

"Sur La Plage, Sur La Plage, everyone looks the same"