Train challenges

First, I want to remember a technology visionary, Steve Jobs, who died yesterday, after a long struggle with cancer. The technology he imagined and mainstreamed is what enables me to share these words with you.

Now I'll whine about the train system a little bit. It's a great infrastructure, but occasionally tricky. You probably already read about our earlier late train/changed train excitement, so in an attempt to lessen the stress of standing in line at the station to but a ticket for today's travel, I went onto the internet yesterday to examine schedules and buy the tickets. That went very well, made payment, and then walked to the village station to pick up the paper tickets. There I learned that the station in Manarola does not link to the Italian train system (only the local Cinque Terre system), and I would need to go to Monterossa, another village in the Cinque Terre (translates as 5 lands), because they were connected and could print our tickets. So I went back into our village, extracted Jenae from her shopping, and explained what I needed to do. She decided to go with me, so we bought two local tickets to go to Monterossa (€1.80 each) and rode 15 minutes. Went to the ticket counter, explained what I needed, the agent smiled and said "Domani" - tomorrow. Their machine was not functioning, and they could not print tickets. They suggested I go the other end of the string of five villages to La Spezia to get my hardcopy tickets.

Monterossa is pretty and has a big sandy beach, so we did some people watching, had a drink, and an hour later bought tickets to return to our original village (another €1.80 each). This morning we packed, went to the local station, bought tickets (€1.80 again) to La Spezia, where we could get the Italian train system tickets to Florence. That all worked out, but the punchline is that I had to take 3 train rides just to get the main system tickets!