Day 4 - Cinque Terre Train Adventures

March 15, 2019

We were into our fourth day away from home and had not really done anything yet. We were as close to Cinque Terre as we were going to get and decided today was the day. We asked the hotel staff the best way to get there by train, they were a little bit surprised we weren't going to use our car.

The train trip would involve three legs:

• Montecatini to Viareggio (about 60 minutes)
• Viareggio to La Spezia (30 minutes)
• Then on to a special train in that stopped at each of the five towns in Cinque Terre (another 30 minutes to the first town). This train also stopped in Levanto, which was just north of the Cinque Terre towns.
• Additionally, we decided to walk to the Montecatini train station, which took about 30 minutes.

Along the way we passed the town of Carrara. It is famous for the marble quarried from the hills above the town. This was Michelangelo's preferred source of marble.

The trains worked out on schedule and we were in La Spezia in the early afternoon. The trains from there run to the five towns with passengers having hop on/hop off privileges anywhere on the route. 

We elected to go to the last town of Monterosso and work backwards.

It turned out that this was one of the smaller sites and there wasn't much going on there. Additionally, the single public toilet was out of order.

It did have a nice view of the ocean and Edith took advantage of the surf to dip here feet in the Ligurian Sea.

We boarded the train and went back to the fourth town named Vernazza. 

It was bigger and more commercialized than Monterosso.

In Vernazza they had one public washroom that was in operation. It had an attendant who controlled access, and after each use she took a mop in and gave it a quick clean. This resulted in quite a lineup.

One last look at this town.

I picked up another new bird species here, the very common Yellow-legged Gull. It was once considered a sub-species of the Herring Gull (which is found in Eastern North America) but was split off into a separate species a few years ago.

Yellow-legged Gull - Vernazza Italy - March 2019 - World Species #7

And Edith took this photo of me taking the bird's photo.

By this time it was getting into the late afternoon and we decided we'd seen enough and didn't need to visit the three other towns. The first train that was coming was heading north and Edith thought it would be fun to go to the last stop, a town named Levanto just beyond the five towns of Cinque Terre. I was a little dubious about this but agreed.

We got on the northbound train, passed back through Monterosso and then stopped in Levanto. However, the train kept heading north, it did not turn around. We decided to get out at the next stop and try to get on a southbound train. Luckily, this did work out for us. 

We discovered that the northbound train was heading for Genoa. This would have landed us 183 KM from Montecatini looking for a hotel for the night in Genoa.

The southbound train took us back to La Spezia and we switched to a train for Viareggio. Upon arrival there we prepared to switch to the train heading for Lucca and then Montecatini. However, there were some signs posted in the station (in Italian) that mentioned something about Lucca. 

We went to an agent and asked what they meant. It turned out that there was a track problem between Viareggio and Lucca and no trains were running in that direction. She told us to go outside the train station and wait for a bus that would take us to Lucca. We asked for more details but they were sketchy at best, perhaps due to language problems.

Outside the station there was a collection of tour buses but nothing that looked like a Trenitalia bus. I went back in to ask if she meant it was a city bus and she told me it was #60. We waited about 30 minutes and then a #60 bus came along. I waved my train ticket at the driver, but he shook his head and drove off. it was now about 8:30 PM.

Then a young man approached us and asked if we were looking for the bus to Lucca. I said yes and yelled at Edith to follow. We got on the bus and then waited for another 15 - 20 minutes while they rounded up other passengers. Finally it set off for Lucca. The ride was at least 30 minutes, perhaps 45. We got to the train station in Lucca and bought tickets for Montecatini. I was glad they were still running trains at this hour.

That train came along and it was another 20 - 30 minute ride. There are two stations in Montecatini, Centrale and Termini. The latter would be closer to our hotel, but we hadn't used it and weren't 100% sure the train would stop there. We got off at Centrale and made the 30 minute walk back to the hotel from there. We were ready for sleep as soon as we walked in the door.

This was our first brush with near disaster, the events that make up great stories afterward. It could have been worse, we might have ended up in Genoa.