Tuesday, July 30, 2024 Adventures in Italy: The Conclusion

(To start at the beginning: Adventures in Italy Part 1)

Bordighera to Genova to Milan to Malpensa Airport – August, 2016

Good news for you: this might be one of my shorter emails. On the other hand, this is me writing, so you can never tell. We are currently sitting on the airplane headed for New York; we just left Milan and I have 8 hours to devote to this email!  😉

Yesterday was all about getting from here to there in 4 Acts, mostly boring ones.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you!

Act One.  Bordighera to Genova
FYI: when the locals say “Genova,” the accent is on the first syllable and the “v” is barely enunciated, so I think I now know why we say “Genoa.” Just wanted to wrap up that question from a few days ago.

When we checked out of Hotel Marligure, they gave us a complimentary bottle of extra virgin olive oil (known charmingly in the cooking world as EVOO).  Alas, we couldn’t keep it, so we gave it and the rose to Ombretta when she picked us up to bring us to the train station.  We enjoyed our stay at HM; the only real oddity was that the key to our room was fastened to a heavy brass bell-shaped thing about the size of a large egg.  Weird, but quaint. 

We found out at the train station that we could have gotten a train going directly to Milan without transferring at Genoa. Ombretta inquired about it for us in case we wanted to change our plans, but the details were a little too complicated, so we stuck with the original plan.

The trains are very comfortable and provide a smooth, quiet ride, especially if you’re on an intercity train. The first few trains we had taken were regional trains, which are a little less roomy, and make a lot more stops.  Before you get on any train, you have to validate your ticket, which generally means putting the ticket into a little machine which stamps it. Our tickets to Genova and Milan were electronic and we had reserved seats (another option on intercity trains) in the first-class cars.  A porter comes through to check the “biglietti” (tickets), so you either show him your paper ticket or your phone.

Act Two: Genova to Milan
We had about an hour to wait in Genova for our train to Milan, so we found a little cafe in the station and got some lunch.  We felt seasoned as travelers by now and the whole process went much more smoothly than ordering the meal in Milano Centrale. I even managed to recall enough Italian to ask for “due piatti” (two plates) since we were sharing a sandwich. 

The train to Milan was about 90 minutes.  I’ve been re-reading “Watership Down” on this trip and got through quite a lot of it, occasionally putting it down to work on a crossword puzzle. Our seating area had six seats, all of which were occupied, but people pretty much keep to themselves – not a lot of chit chat except the occasional “grazie” or “arrivederci.” 

Act Three: Milan to Malpensa Airport
See how quickly this is going?  We hadn’t purchased tickets in advance to the station at the airport because we wanted to leave it up in the air as to whether or not we’d want to stay in Milan for a short time.  It was going to be around 4:30 p.m. when we arrived at the station and after going back and forth on it, we decided to skip the walkabout in Milan and go directly to the airport and then our hotel so we could have the evening to relax. 

Getting off in Milano Centrale station, we were on familiar ground now – platform 18, our old friend!  We found the list of parenzes – departures – and saw that if we hurried, we could still catch a train to the airport without a lot of waiting. We rushed to the ticket machine and got our tickets, but the platform was way on the other side of the station, so for the first time, we found that had to put on a little speed.  We got to the platform with just a couple minutes to spare, but the validation machine wasn’t working. Hoping that wasn’t a big deal, we got on the train anyway.  It wasn’t – the porter validated our ticket with his own puncher. 

One more hour on a train. It really wasn’t a bad way to spend the day and much more relaxing than if we’d rented a car and had to navigate to all these places on our own.  

Act Four: Malpensa Airport to Crown Plaza Hotel
At the Malpensa Airport, we tried to hire a taxi to our hotel but the taxi driver told us that there was a free shuttle we could catch, so Kris called the hotel to find out where to get the shuttle and we were off. It turned out the shuttle wasn’t free, but it was only 4 euros each way, so that was quite a bit less than we’d have paid a taxi. The downside was that we had to wait about a half hour for the shuttle to arrive and take us on the 10-minute drive to the hotel.  

It was really great to get to the hotel and be done with all the traveling for the day. We went to the hotel restaurant for cena (supper) and had another excellent meal, which included another variation of pesto pasta.  I am definitely going to serve more of this when we get back home.  I still have some pesto in the freezer from last year, but haven’t used it much.  I’m also going to make some sun dried tomatoes, which we had on an appetizer once; fabulous!  It’s been a fairly tomato-intensive week, actually. Anyway we finished our last dinner in Milan with gelato; I’m going to miss giving myself permission to eat that every day.  I call it “vacation eating,” one of the pleasures of traveling. 

There’s also the related “vacation spending,” in which you feel an insane desire to spend your money much more liberally while traveling. However, we didn’t do any real shopping here (other than for meals/food), mostly because we don’t have any room in our baggage for extra stuff. Maybe next time!  Now that we’ve done this trip successfully, we’re already talking about where we’ll go next. You can always dream, right?

Arrivederci! I hope you’ve vicariously enjoyed your trip to Italy with us.

I’ll be doing some “vacation deleting” of this post in the morning.