Day 19 - Santa Margherita Ligure
A down-time day, today. I prepared the blog entry, slowly, during the morning. By the time lunchtime came around, I decided to head across the road to a trattoria for a light bite. As I walked out of the apartment building, I was confronted by a street market that had probably been running all morning that I was oblivious to. It was stretched all along Corso Matteotti. It looked a bit like a cross between Handmade Markets and Trash and Treasure. Some very classy looking clothing on offer, and grocer stalls, side-by-side. As I sat having my pizzetta and coffee, some of the stalls started to pack up. By the time I ventured out in the afternoon to buy my train tickets for tomorrow (about 3:00 pm), the whole street was clear and had been mechanically swept/cleaned.
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The train ticket buying exercise was another lesson in travel arrangements. I had carefully picked the train to get me to Bergamo, a town/city near Milan, from which airport I am flying to Greece. I went to buy my seat reservations at the station ticket office (I still haven’t mastered online purchase) and discovered that the train I (thought I) was booked on was full – no seats available. I’m learning that, ‘booking’ a train trip on my Eurail Pass app doesn’t guarantee me a ride, at least not if seat reservations are required. I suppose, on reflection, that’s obvious but there’s no mention of that in the app process, and often the seat reservation is only ‘recommended’. Anyway, in negotation with the ticket officer, I discovered an earlier train trip that would get me to Bergamo in good time for my flight, so I re-booked that journey on my app, then bought a seat at the ticket office; job done. I am now committed to learning how to buy seats online so that I can get the journey I want when I find it.
While I was walking to the train station, I came to the realisation that the painted facades on buildings were, at least sometimes, to make up for absent architectural details that were present elsewhere on the building. The building shown in the photo has window details facing the street, but the same details on the side wall (right side of the building in the photo) are painted. In this example, the painting is quite convincing as it took me more than a moment to realise what I was looking at, which is why I photographed it.
The rest of the day passed with reading – I finished Richard Osman’s latest Thursday Murder Club book, The Impossible Fortune, which I loved, especially now with the actors from the movie to flesh out the characters in my head – and preparing for my trip to Greece.
| Daily facts: Location: SML Temp: 24 Weather: Sunny and warm |
Hi Tim, I can related to your train booking experiences - Booking trains in foreign countries has always caused me angst, even in the UK where you’d think language was not the impediment! Or in Italy where language didn’t even matter :)
ReplyDeleteMy problems are mostly with understanding the system so that I can manipulate it correctly. I assumed that if I booked a 'journey' against my pass on the Eurail App, that got me a seat on the train. If I then paid for a seat preference, it locked that booking to a seat. Seems not though. Anyway, I'll keep perfecting my technique and eventually remove the constant stress from the process (I hope).
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