We woke up at 5am and scrambled our stuff together in an effort to get out of the house on time. But of course when we were ready to go our lovely host brought out tea and cookies for a little breakfast to tide us over. This made us most definitely late. But we did arrive finally at the central station in Milan with exactly 1 minute until our train was set to depart. With another exasperated flee through another busy train station we found what I thought might be the right platform and asked the luggage boy driving by which was the train to Venito (we had to go through Venice to get to Treviso). He waved an arm and pointed to the left and said some seemingly exasperated words and we Ran.
We jumped on board and with relief we found a nice group of seats to relax in with our backpacks. As the train began to role out of the station, I thought it might be good that we had actually jumped on the right train...and, well, we hadn't. Venice was east and we happened to be going south. Fail.
And it so happened that there wasn't a stop for at least an hour...and we couldn't just grab a connection, we'd first have to go back to Milan, then get another train to go to our original destination, Venice. Ughhhh.
Well, we could get mad or we could enjoy the scenery so enjoy it I did. And I wrote, and I relaxed.
At whatever station it was that we were supposed to go to, I decided to be smart and go talk to the ticket desk to find out what our options were. To my great disappointment, he explained that we'd have to wait an hour for the next train (at this point 9:30), we'd get to Milan at 11, and have to wait for the 12:30 train back to Venice, putting us in around 630pm. More ughhh.
We went back to the platform to wait for out train and one arrived that said it was destined for Milan. But...it was a night train. I was over it at this point so I just jumped on and we made our way to a compartment (passing one of the train attendants in the hallway and receiving some odd looks and quick questions he decided in the end to just ignore us). Figuring out how to shut the door, there we sat, hoping we wouldn't get found out and hoping that this one actually went back to Milan.
And it did! With good speed as well. We actually made it back for the 9:30 train to Venice!!
Ah and we were elated with this! We got on board, asked if this went to the station we needed in Venice and when we received the affirmation! Thank goodness.
Well it so happened that this train decided to be extra-ordinarily slow and late. Two hours late for that matter. I managed to figure out a way to let Peirpaolo know that rather than getting in at 12:30, we would be there closer to 3.
But ya know what, we did make it. And to our relief Pierpaolo was there awaiting us and he let us know that his mom was preparing us a great big lunch. Welcome to Italy.
Italian trains... When Kristin and I were going from France to Cinque Terre, the train workers had a 15 minute strike while we were on board...it was interesting.
ReplyDeleteAlso, Venito? Pretty sure the Italian word for Venice is Venizia...
It is sad that such things are happening. Treviso is a worthy destination.
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