From: Rainer
Subject: Rainer's Europe Trip 1998 -- part 28
Date: Tue, 27 Oct 1998 02:12:06 EST

Hi everyone, 

I finished these on the airplane today during our 11 hour flight from Paris
back to San Francisco.  Hope you haven't been too bored with all this.
>From some of the feedback, I''ve assumed you haven't.

Cheers,
Rainer

Wednesday, 10/21 -- part 28

The sunrise over the Ligurian Sea is a beautiful one.  I wake everyone
so they can enjoy it as well.  They are a bit unwilling to get up this
early, but in a few moments everyone is out and taking pictures.  I try
to remember the to recall the saying about the color of the sunrise.  I
think it goes "Red dusk at night, sailors delight; red dusk at morning,
sailors take warning."  It's a red sunrise.  The weather is beautiful
with only the few red clouds on the eastern horizon.

Breakfast is sparse.  Vera inquires about boiled eggs, and they can be
provided.  However, they are the worst boiled eggs you can imagine:
practically raw on one end and almost green hard-boiled at the other.
How do they do that?  Anyway, we finish breakfast and I go out to mess
with the parking meter.  When you deposit money into the meters they
print out a ticket.  They meters are smart enough so that if you buy
more time past 2000, it automatically calculates the end time for the
following morning.  That way, you con't have to get up and get a new
ticket at 0800.  I ask for change at the front desk, and all of sudden
the concierge tells me that I can buy a parking card for 10,000 Lire.
The card has a magnetic strip that is read and written by the meter so
you don't have to use all the time at once.  The rate is 2,000
Lire/hour.  That's much more convenient.

First on the list today is to find the laundry.  The concierge tells us
where to find one.  It's a kind of hide-and-seek game since there are
these little twisty alleys that you can only walk and that don't have
any names.  The concierge always draws on a little city map of Santa
Margherita.  Most of the things we get directions for are next to or
behind the Lido Hotel for some reason.  We kid about it each time we ask
for something else, and pretty soon it becomes a joke.  Just go walk
around the Lido and you'll find what you're looking for.  The laundry
will be 50,000 Lire and even though we drop it off just after 0900 it
won't be ready until 1600 the next day.  Things are definitely slower
here than in Munich.

The train station is on Via Roma, just behind the Lido, of course.  The
train to Cinque Terre, often written "5 Terre" in places, is supposed to
leave at 9:52.  We succeed in purchasing six tickets that are based on
the maximum number of kilometers you'll be travelling.  We figure out
that the train leaves from platform 3 and head over there.  There's some
other, obviously American, tourists on this platform.  Vera talks to one
of the couples nearest us.  Yes this is the way to 5 Terre.  We didn't
know about validating your tickets at the yellow boxes, actually time
clocks, that are in the train station and at the ends of the platforms.
We learn later how to do that.  The 9:52 arrives 20 minutes late.  We
board and end up in the same car as the other Americans who turn out to
be very chatty bunch.  Monika and I, sitting right behind 4 of them, can
help but overhear much more of their babble than we care to:  where
they've been, where they're going, how many kids and their ages, where
the kids are, who's taking care of the pets, which wine to get, how best
"to do" 5 Terre, have you done Hawaii, blah, blah, blah, blah for the
entire trip.  The train stop at every single stop.  The trip takes
almost 90 minutes.  Most of the train ride is through tunnels, which is
clear once you've driven the coast line roads.  Train tracks, you know,
tend to go straight.

It's on this train, from the conductor checking our tickets, we learn
about validating tickets properly.  He's very friendly about it and
speaks very good English.  He must get this all the time.

We get of at Monorola or something like that.  None of the other
tourists get off, thank goodness.  You have to walk through a very long
tunnel from the train platform to get to the village.  The village has
no roads to speak of, just paths, consisting mostly of steps or steep
inclines leading up the hill or down the hill to the sea.  Our stomachs
are growling by now after the less than satisfying breakfast and we find
a pizzaria for lunch.  The pizzas are good, they even have birra al
spina (draft).  It's not great beer, but better than 1664 or Kronenbourg
available in most places.  We finish lunch and head off down the Via
d'Amore to Riomagiore.

The sun is high in the sky, there are no clouds.  The path along the
cliffs above the sea is flat and easy.  There are agave, prickly pear
and some sort of scrub oak growing on the cliffs and hillsides.  There's
a bit too much graffiti everywhere on this popular walk.  Even the agave
leaves have been annotated with "Julio loves Maria", and the like.  The
new coastal or desert birds we expect to see don't exist on this walk.
We see a cormorant or two, some black-headed gulls, and a European
robin.

Riomagiore looks much like Monorola except there's no tunnel between
the train station and the village.  The path continues across from the
train tracks a while, and we follow it until it peters out or climbs
steeply, I don't remember which now.  We turn around and return to
Monorola.  Monika and I aren't very peppy and don't want to climb a lot
so we find a nice spot overlooking the "harbor" while Vera goes
exploring.  I use the term "harbor" loosely.  There are no boats
anchored there.  The boats are lowered into the water from a large
I-beam hoist that overhangs the water on a vertical wall of rock.  There
are little boat trailers parked along the hoist.  The water into which
the boats would boats would be lowered is a tiny cove surrounded by
rocks.  If the waves are up this has got be a tricky maneuver to get a
boat in or out of the water.  There are no boats in the water any where.
The sea is flat and blue.

Vera returns from her exploring, disappointed that the batteries in her
camera poop out.  Of course, the extra batteries that I bought in Paris
are in the hotel.  She and Monika plan to share a camera for the rest of
the day.  Vera's acquired a topo map of the area on her exploration.
After she's regained her breath a bit we head in the opposite direction
towards Coniglia.  After a steep climb we find the trail closed with a
locked metal gate.  While we wait, a man comes along the trail from the
other direction, swings out around the gate overhanging the steep
downhill and passes us.  We think about it for a bit, and being a bit
unadventurous at this point turn around and head back to the train
station.  The plan is to take the train to Varanaza, skipping Coniglia,
which is mostly up in the hills from the anyway.

We wait for train to Varanaza for about an hour.  Vera and Monika have
switched back and forth with Monika's camera and we lose track of who's
got what for the moment.  The train pulls in, we board, and find a
compartment to sit in for two stops.  The train pulls out.  All of a
sudden Vera asks "Where's Monika's camera?"  Oh shit, we left if on the
bench of the platform.

We get off at next stop, Coniglia.  Vera goes into Air France mode like
in San Franciso and says she'll walk back on the closed trail.  She
drops everything and heads out.  It's supposed to be a 45 minute walk.
I at least give her some Lire and tell her to buy herself drink at the
other side end.  She's gone.  Monika and I walk after her a bit and find
a spot overlooking the sea in the shade.  We can see the trail from
where we are and follow Vera's progress through the binoculars.  I watch
her swing around the gate that locked the trail from the other side.
She did the trail in much less than 45 minutes.  While Vera's gone,
Monika and I try to figure out what the loss may be.  The camera is one
thing.  It can be replaced.  We've already done that once before on this
trip.  I was more worried about the irreplaceable items like the
pictures and the stuff Monika's crammed into her outside camera case
pocket.  I knew at one time she'd kept her collection of foreign coins
there.  Pisa was her favorite place and I was really hoping that her
Pisa pictures weren't on the film in the camera anymore.  They weren't.
Monika remembers inserting a new film this morning.  So only the Cinque
Terre pictures would be lost.  The foreign coins had also become too
bulky and she'd recently moved them elsewhere and they were in the
hotel.  The only thing in the side pocket of the camera case were a
couple of Pisa parking receipts and some other ticket stubs for her
scrap book.  So, the loss would be mostly the camera.  Vera's pictures
of Cinque Terre since here battery ran out would also be gone.

Vera returns over an hour later without the camera.  She's pretty winded
and I bet her knee hurts more than she admits.  She checked with
everyone walking on the trail the other way, with people in and around
the train station.  She even thought that there might be a lost and
found!  She did everything but buy herself something to drink.  So we
head off to find some liquids.  Surprisingly, our mood isn't what I
thought it might have been.  It's now too late to go Varanaza so we
wait for next train back to San Margherita.

The train arrives and we board.  There's not anyone else in this car.
We wonder if it's because of the smoking sign.  Later we figure out
it's because this is the first class car.  We only have second class
tickets.  The conductor doesn't say anything when she comes by to
punch our this-time-correctly-validated tickets.  But I can guess what
she's thinking.  At one of the stops, a mother and her son board and
join us in the car. After a bit the little boy comes over and asks me
something.  The noise of the train going through the tunnel with one
of the windows open (smoking section, remember) makes it impossible for
me to hear let alone understand what the boy is saying to me.  We
go back and forth a bit -- him saying something and me not understanding
him.  I get out of my chair and get closer to him.  Monika says that
he's speaking German.  How did she know?  Anyway, I finally understand
that he's asking if the train is going in the direction of Monterosa.
Well, too bad, but the train stopped at Monterosa before we picked him
and his mother up.  They get off at the next stop.

While on the train we plan what to do next.  Since we need to stay
another day just to wait for the laundry, and since Monika and I had
been looking forward to a day just hanging around the hotel, parks, and
harbor, we figure Vera will return to Cinque Terre tomorrow and visit
Varanaza -- something that's been driving her every since she saw
Dietrich and Angie's pictures of the place.

We get back to hotel about 1900 after a terrific struggle to get the car
out of the train parking lot.  Turns out that the machine won't give
more change that 4000L. The bill is 25,000.  I get change from the
reluctant train ticket person for 50,000, all 10,000 bills.  Each time
the machine spits out the bills, it shreds one of the three so it can't
be used again.  Vera gets more change from the reluctant train ticket
person and we finally have the right combination of readable currency
and face values to let the automated parking meter cashier happy and let
us leave.

Dinner is in the hotel.  It's not as good as yesterday, but okay.
Everyone is tired and it's an early night.  No clouds have moved in and
I wonder if I had that sailor saying right about red and yellow dusks.
We'll see.