Night Bus to Cinque Terre, Italy

(June 21-22) Matt and I got on the one and only bus that leaves from Tossa to Girona, Spain at 7:30 am. It took alittle over an hour and I got car sick from trying to read on the winding road. We had two options to get to Genova, Italy which would eventually lead us to Cinque Terre and eached looked alittle grim. We could either take a 15 hour train ride and get into Genova at 2 am or we could take a 10 hour bus ride that didn't leave until 8pm and get into Genova at 6am. We didn't want to risk getting into a town in the middle of the night so we decided to kill some time in Girona and wait for the night bus. We locked up our bags and set off in search of the unknown.
Nothing kills time better than sitting in a cafe, eating a croissant, drinking a cappucino and surfing the internet. Since it was my second cup of the day, at only 9am, I was twitching. We had received some sad news about a relative so we found ourselves not only wandering in a foreign town but wandering in our thoughts. The internet keeps us connected but in times of tragedy or even great joy it make us realize how disconnected we really are. With the heat and our hearts feeling heavy we did what we could in Girona, stopping often to rest and reflect. We cooled off in an Irish pub and watched some footie on the telly. We even had our last round of tapas.

The night bus wasn't as horrid as I imagined. The bus was very large and modern. The toilet didn't permeate the air and make me want to vomit. The bus wasn't full so we were able to sprawl out and have our own row. They even showed a crappy Leonardo Dicapprio movie in Spanish. We managed to catch a couple of winks in between gas stops, smoke breaks, passenger drop offs and international border checkpoints.

Once in Genova we caught a train to Monterosso the eastern most village of Cinque Terre, the five fishing villages along the coast. We both struggled to keep our eyes open on the short train ride to Monterosso. Everytime I vowed to myself to stay awake I found my eyes betraying me and my head bobbing. The bobbing would startle me back awake but only momentarily. I was worried we would miss our stop.

The train literally dropped us off on the beach at Monterosso. At 8 am the sun was blazing overhead and the clear blue waters were calling to us but we couldn't play until we found a place to stay. Backpackers approached the train station from both directions so we figured we'd have an easy time finding a room somewhere. We walked to one end of town, nothing. We walked through the cool tunnel to the other end of town and were shocked at what some of the hotels were asking.

We consulted the guide book and set off to find the hostel they listed. We paused briefly to verify an address when a woman who chanced upon us with our largely awkward backbacks asked us if we needed a place to stay. One of the fantasies I had about traveling with just this type of encounter, a kindly person approaches and asks if you need somewhere to stay and next thing you know they are making you dinner as you sip on chilled local white wine on a veranda overlooking the ocean with the sun setting in the distance. But in the fantasy we hadn't taken a bus all night and we were not exhausted and skeptical of people riping us off for a "room" so reluctanly we said yes we did need a room. She made a few calls and found us a room. She said she would take us to her friends place if we paid for a cab to the other side of town. Um, ok? There were no cabs to be found so she told us to wait in front of a certain hotel and that someone would come and collect us. We had no map and although she said she was from there, Matt and I guessed otherwise, she could not give us any other logical or illogical directions to our rendevous point so we just heaved our packs back on and set off to the other side of town. We figured we would try our luck with this hunt for buried treasure or we'd find something else. It was only 9am we had the day in front of us.

The hotel the woman told us to wait in front of was not listed on any of the free town maps. We just wandered to the last street in town and turned opposite the ocean. I was just telling Matt how I was broken. We had already walked this similar path not an hour earlier and here we were doing just what we had when we first got off the train. We had no idea where to go let alone who the mystery person would be that would take us to salvation. We stopped in hopes that the signs pointing to hotels would have the one we were looking for, they did not. A middle aged Italian man in shorts, flip flops and a small back pack hanging off his shoulder approached us and asked us if we were looking for a room. We decided we'd go with him if he was our contact or not and by luck he was the man we were looking for.

He lead us on a short walk to the end of the street followed which lead into a path that hugged a dry creek to a condo complex. Lizards scattered as we tried to keep pace with him. The climb was slightly uphill and it was hot and we were both puffing for air. As we grew nearer to the condo I kept thinking we'd be staying with him and his family in a spare room that used to be their oldest son's who now lives in Milan with his wife and small baby. Even as he opened the door to the apartment and we put our bags down it still took me several minutes to process that he didn't actually live there and that the whole place with kitchen, living room, bathroom and two bedrooms was ours for the taking. We were worried that at 30 euros a person we were going to end up in a dumpty little room with a bed on the floor, but 60 euros for an apartment where we could cook and watch soccer matches in our chonies was beyond ideal it was priceless. Satisfied that we scored such an amazing pad we slept soundly with big fat smiles on our faces.