Venice, Milan, Cinque Terre

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32. Venice, Milan, Cinque Terre

After an abortive attempt to wander through the neighborhood to the north of my hotel near the Ca d'Oro (kept hitting dead ends), I boarded the train back to Milan around 10:00 for the three-hour trip. I was ready to get away from the tourist crowds of Venice, although it was a beautiful place. There is some backtracking in my itinerary here. It might have been more efficient to have gotten out of the train from Barcelona at Turin and headed south to the Cinque Terre, Pisa, and Florence, and then over to Venice. Then I would only have needed to backtrack the distance from Florence to Venice, instead of all the way from the Adriatic back to the Mediterranean. Not sure what I was thinking when I planned this bit.

In Milan I had about an hour for lunch near the train station. On the way back in, I stopped to take a picture of the station. This was a major mistake, precipitating the second (after leaving a shirt in Germany) and greatest disaster of the trip. I put the camera back into the outside pocket of my backpack, and it even occurred to me at the time that it would be a good idea to put it somewhere more secure. The Milan train station is by far the dodgiest place I visited anywhere. There are beggars — which in itself is already a shock after northern Europe — and even compared with the ones in the US, they are much more aggressive, actually coming up and grabbing you. So of course when I got to the platform and pulled off my backpack, the pocket had been opened — while I was wearing it — and the camera was gone. Unbelievable. Milan is a city of business — signs for the Economist everywhere, for example — and this includes the business of thievery. They're extraordinarily skillful. So be extremely cautious if you visit.

Depression over the loss of the camera was intense for a day. Actually, the camera itself, an old Canon S200, was ready to be upgraded anyway. The problem is that a flash card was inside, containing about 300 pictures. I had inserted it just before arriving at Hellbronner on Mont Blanc, so everything from Aosta, Turin, Barcelona, Sitges, Milan, and Venice was now gone. I spent a lot of time taking pictures — so much that snapping the camera was almost becoming a reflexive habit every few minutes — and the pictures promised me a link with the wonders and details of my trip, no matter how my memory faded in the future. So the loss was really horrible, leading me to hate everyone around me and even the whole country and culture of Italy. I felt miserable imagining the holes in my albums when I loaded my photos onto the web, a constant reminder of the evil here and my own carelessness. But eventually as always, life goes on.

In hindsight I remember some lovely hill town scenery during the three hours west from Milan to Monterosso, but I didn't enjoy it at all at the time, barely even looking out the window from the crowded train car. I arrived at Monterosso, the northernmost and largest of the Cinque Terre towns, around 17:00 and switched to the smaller train which calls at the other villages as well. The next stop down was Vernazza, which I chose at Rick Steves' recommendation, and I have to agree with him here — it does seem the loveliest and the best base. Monterosso has more life, but it also has many more cars and felt much less pleasant. I buzzed a hotel on the square on the harbor, but it was full. Uh-oh. Was the guidebook wrong when it said you could just turn up except in July and August? I walked around slowly and a bit despondently — it was 18:00 and all the room touts I had imagined had already given up for the day, or worse they were all full.

But then a grandfatherly old sailor said "Una camera?", and there was hope. I followed him up a long flight of stairs and into an apartment on the top floor of a building just on the corner entering the square on the road from the station. The room was tidy and small, with two twin beds against opposite walls. Then, the woman who lived here opened the shutters, and I had an astonishing view over the harbor, the town square, and the steep hills rising above! It was wonderful, and only €40. It was really like staying with your grandparents; I had to walk through their living room to get to my room, and there was only one bathroom. They spoke no English, so communication was an interesting challenge. I am not sure if they were on the "approved" list of rooms (perhaps meaning they paid their taxes?); there are signs in the Cinque Terre warning you against taking just any room because it was likely to be of poor quality (which this one was definitely not).

The sun came out briefly through a hole in the clouds, and the light over the harbor was fantastic. It was hard not to begin to enjoy myself again. I hiked up along steep narrow lanes to the Castello for dinner. Here I had a table perched right on the cliff, towards which the floor was somewhat worryingly sloped. Fabulous view, though plastic walls had to be put in place around the dining area to keep out the chilly grey weather. At night, the lights of Monterosso were visible in the distance, rising steeply up out of the water.

Jonathan's Travel Blog :: Europe

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32. Venice, Milan, Cinque Terre

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