Lynn gets to include all of the tourist scenes from our trip to Italy but I'm here to give you the back story on how we got around! Flying from Tripoli to Rome was an easy couple of hour flight once you take into consideration getting to the Tripoli airport after 45 minutes of rain the morning we left. If you think street flooding at home is crazy after a couple of inches of rain, here, it only takes a few minutes since the street drains serve as garbage recepticles rather than drains. No one worries about it; they just sweep the garbage, dirt and plastic bags down to the storm grates (assuming there is a grate on top of the drain) and plug it up. When it rains, people get out with whatever they have and try to "unclog" the drain. And John Blount at Harris County thinks he has a hard time with SWPPP activites! Anyway, our driver took some back roads and safely got us to the airport in plenty of time. I received a call from our driver coordinator, Najmi to make sure we made it. He had made sure that the driver had the high route to get us there. He knows how to take care of us.
We met up with the kids at the Rome airport as they stumbled off the plane, a bit jet lagged after the all night flight to London and Rome. As you can see, we had decided to carry everything in backpacks, so no rolling suitcases through the crowds. We caught the train from the airport and into Rome and found our hotel for the night near the train station. The picture below is us packing up at 6:45 the next morning to head back to the train station to head north.
We made the successful transfer from the sleek EuroStar train to a regional affair to get to Vernazza in Cinque Terra. Grabbing our packs,we waded our way through the Sunday day trippers through the small town to find the bar we had been told served as the check in point for our apartment. They were expecting us and showed us the lovely apartment below which had two windows with small balconies overlooking the town square and coastline.
The old folks took the twin beds for the first leg of the trip and let the kids have the bedroom. We switched when we got to Elba. After a couple of days in Cinque Terra (see Lynn's blog) we moved back south to Elba. We had no confirmation of our apartment other than an email from the owner saying that they didn't take credit cards to hold the reservation but if I promised to come she would hold the apartment for us. We had no idea what time we could get there so we had to wait until we could get a train and ferry schedule in Piombino to then call and let her know we would be arriving. The only trains going to Piombino were Regionals which stop at most of the towns along the way and transfers at Pisa.
Once the train reached Piombino, it stopped at the station at the end of town. We got off with others and wandered around looking for the marina, which was supposed to be about 200 m from the station. No marina! We looked around and finally someone saw saw us and finally communicated that the train makes a side trip from here to the marina. We all rushed back onto the train just before it left and made the cross town ride to the marina. This would have been muck easier if we had internet connections to see what the schedules were for the trains and boats, but we didn't so we plunged ahead. At the marina station, we found out the ferry line we thought we were going to take wasn't leaving until later so they pointed us toward the other ferry office to make our booking.
Once on board, we finally were able to call the next apartment owner to let them know about our arrival. Unfortunately, the lady with whom I had been emailing was out and her husband didn't speak much english. She finally called back when we were about 15 minutes from shore to tell us that her brother-in-law would meet us and take us to the apartment.
To be continued . . .
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