From the airport to the railroad station in Milan was about a half hour bus ride it required catching a shuttle bus which ran every thirty minutes. However by the time the three hundred of us got through the customs line, got our money exchanged, found the shuttle bus and waited until they got a full load a lot of time had elapsed. So when we got to the RR station in Milan our scheduled train had already left. It was then we learned how frustrating it can get after having been on the plane for over ten hours with hardly any sleep to try and find out when the next train would departed for San Remo ( our destination), the cost of tickets, the track the train was to leave on and the time it would arrive in Geno, where we would have to change again to get to San Remo.
I had to make a call to the hotel at San Remo and put some coins in the telephone slot, got the Hotel but the party answering did not speak English so hung up after a few attempts by both of us to get our messages across. So then a young fellow said that it was less expensive if we bought a phone card. We would be charged only for the time we used and it would be good for several three or four three minute calls. So after finding a merchant that sold such cards and who spoke a few words of English I purchases such card, inserted it into the slot on the phone for such usage and this time made contact with the Hotel. Wow, at last some progress!! But then to find the track from which our train would be leaving. Some trains are local trains, some are express trains, some let you use your train pass and others charge extra. Finally we found what looked like the right departure track and we were soon on our way.
We traveled through some very nice farm land, where the crops where ahead of our crops and one of the main crop in that area was rice. We were told by some people traveling from Bern Switzerland that the rice from this area was some of the best rice in the world. We had never seen rice farming before but we can compare it somewhat to the way cranberries are grown in our area. Only rice is an annual crop while cranberries are perennials. However they did have what the cranberry growers refer to as beds which held the water on the rice fields during the growing season. There were also a lot of vegetable farming as well as corn and hay fields. A lot of hay was in the process of being baled either in the square or round bales.
Arriving in Genoa, >http://www.mi.cnr.it/WOI/deagosti/regions/liguria.html#Genoa < the birth place of Christopher Columbus: go to this WEB site for more info on Columbus: >http://deil.lang.uiuc.edu/web.pages/holidays/Columbus.html < we had to transfer to a train coming from Rome, again we had a problem locating the track when a couple of women from Chile came by and heard us trying to get more information about the train they volunteered to help us. They were also going the same direction and one of the women could speak very good English. At her advice we took a train that left twenty minutes later but was an express train. However it was overcrowded so we, along with a number of others we had to sit on our luggage the first half hour or so until there was room in the train itself. We arrived about a half hour ahead of the time we had told the Hotel we would be there and were very tired so decided to take a taxi to the Nyala Hotel. . We were greeted by the manager, Giancarlo Negro, and after a few minutes of conversation in English we were shown to our suit on the 2nd floor with a fantastic view of city of San Remo and the Mediterranean Sea. At a little after 8:00pm the dinning room opened for dinner and we had our first Italian meal. We were more tired than hungry so only ordered part of the seven course spread. The full evening meal at Nyala Hotel is 70,000 Lira, translated into our money was a bit over $40.00 per person. The room was really nice, the bed very comfortable and we went to bed shortly after eating and as I said in my last weeks report we were sound asleep by the time you read that report.
The next morning we got up and had what the Europeans call their Continental Breakfast. It was a complete smorgasbord breakfast with about everything one would want for breakfast except pancakes or American scrambled eggs and hashbrowns. There was fruit, fruit juices, cereal, boiled eggs, yogurt, famous European hard rolls, butter, cream cheese, marmalade, cheese, sausage and other cold sliced meats etc. Very delicious.
After breakfast we took a walk around the grounds, they were so lovely with all kinds of flowers and many different colored roses with blossoms almost the size of our peonies. Also the hotel manager Mr. Negro was kind enough to let me use his computer to send, "We have arrived " messages to our children via e-mail. We also got e-mail messages from them which were sent directly to the hotels e-mail address. A phone call would have been $1.15 to 1.50 a minute whereas e-mail was the cost of a local phone call. What a fantastic media.
San Remo, like most Italian cities along the Rivera, is build on the steep and rocky slopes of the mountains sides where one marvels at the ingenuity of the builders. Most buildings in the residential area are apartment type buildings with an average height of four or five stories with the outside mostly cement and stucco. Orange red tiles are used for roofing materials and a variety of colors along with the many flowers and palm trees , intermixed with orange and lemon trees in most yards make the landscape very pleasing to the eye. One can see why writers and poets the world over have come to this area to live, get inspiration and write. From our hotel balcony here at the Nyala, one could hear the early morning crowing of roosters, the barking of all kinds of dogs, the singing of many types of song birds and the constant roar of the Italian Scooter as they buzzed up and down the road past our Hotel.
Later in the morning I went down town San Ream and got some money exchanged at the bank (bank). This was quite an experience, as I had never been in an Italian bank before. In order to enter you have to be admitted by pressing a button which allows you to open the first entry door, after you are through that door, it will close and lock before the next door is open. That then will close and lock so that if you had any intention of holding up the bank it would be almost be impossible to get away with the money.
The exchange rate was about 1734.00 lira for one dollar and remained around that figure most of our stay there. There was a service charge in most places which in effect lowered the exchange rate to more like 1700 Lira to the American dollar.
I did not spend a lot of time down town that first day but just sort
got myself orientated as to how to find my way back to the Hotel. The roads
in Italy except for their Interstate are very narrow and winding. They
do not in many cases have sidewalks. There was a brick paved trail from
the Hotel down to the business part of town. It was very steep. One could
go down in about ten minutes but usually took me about twenty to thirty
minutes to walk back up. The next day I also went back down town and ventured
a little further going to the park (gardin) and down to the beach. San
Remo has a lovely parkway along most of the beach front where the tourists
and the natives come to relax & enjoy. Many painters have their wares
laid out on the parkway. There was some really nice pieces of art work.
On Saturday we took a taxi down to what we call a "Farmers Market" but
it was more like the Cranberry Fest market with hundreds and hundreds of
merchants displaying anything from apples to electric Chinese toy rickeshays.
It was an interesting couple of hours spent. We then took a city bus back
to our hotel giving us a chance to see another part of the city. It took
us through the greenhouse area which we could see from our Hotel. Hundred
and hundreds of greenhouse, one of the ladies riding with us informed us,
this was where many world florist get many of their flowers go to:
> http://194.243.254.13/sanremog.htm
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On Sunday, our last day there I again went down town and took some more pictures, stopped by the San Remo Casino, (Photo and info on SanRemo Casino - In Italiano) > http://www.casinosanremo.com/ < which at one time was on the order of Monte Carlo located a few kilometers up the beach just across the border into France. But they say is more like Las Vegas now. The slot machine rooms, with hundreds of slot machines reminded me of the many Native American gambling casinos seen here in Wisconsin. Almost all machines were being used to capacity. There was a cover charge for going to the gaming rooms upstairs plus the fact one had to have a tie and business suit so I passed on that one.
As mentioned before the streets on the whole are very narrow and winding, the cars are much smaller than American cars but what really is amazing is the number of Italian Scooters much like our Mopeds only a bit larger, more powerful and noisy, but kind of neat, if I was younger they would appeal to me. They are fast, small and easy to get around in traffic or park.
Monday morning after breakfast we went via train to the Royal Sporting Hotel at Portoverne about a four hour journey. It was a beautiful day and the train tracks run along the beach and through many a tunnel. We arrived in La Spezia shortly after noon and then had to take a taxi over to the Hotel which was about a 30 minute drive and cost about 40,000 Lira or about $25.00 in American Money. Portovenere is a beautiful little village on the edge of the Mediterranean Sea and the Gulf of the Poets and near the Gulf of LaSpezia.
Our next report will tell about our stay in that area and our trip home including an emergency stop at Heathrow airport in London, England.
For those of you who might be interested in the Italian history there
is a detailed report on the WEB site at
> http://www.mi.cnr.it/WOI/deagosti/history/0welcome.html
<
PREHISTORIC ITALY - Men and Culture from the Stone Age to the Iron
Age THE EARLY ITALIC TRIBES - Introduction