Running through a dark alley in an Italian town in the middle of nowhere while a rainstorm rumbled overhead. Ducking under a porch overhang for a second to check my map. Thinking to myself that given the overall arc of my life, it suddenly seems so obvious that one day I would end up lost and alone in a dark Italian alley.
But let’s go back 14 hours and see how this scene developed. I’m at Gare de Lyon in Paris waiting for the train to take me south. Four trains that I would have to catch in sequence to get me to the town of Levanto, just west of the Cinque Terre.
This all looked so neat and tidy on the desktop a month ago when I booked these tickets on the EuroRail website. Of course, I could have booked air fare from Paris to Genoa and then taken a train from there and probably be in the hotel just past lunch time but where’s the charm in that? Besides, I had already foregone any time on the coast of Provence and the driving portion of my trip. Least I could do is pass by on the train.
Sitting in the train station I’m getting a mild panic attack. I’m in a strange city hoping that a complicated train schedule plays out as planned, crossing borders, maybe they won’t let me into Italy, maybe my hotel reservations are lost, maybe this, maybe that.
Then I see a mother and her 3 kids patiently and quietly waiting for the train and realize that I’m not some intrepid explorer going out into the wilderness, I’m middle aged tourist in Europe. Things will be fine.
And things were fine. Once you’re past the factories and suburbs of Paris it’s miles and miles of some of the greenest and prettiest countryside that you’d ever want to see. No wonder that people have fought over France for thousands of years.
A few hours later and the scene starts getting rockier and less vegetated and we’re approaching Marseille and the coast. Here and there you see a palm tree or two. The sun has decided to peek out for a bit and the Mediterranean is a bright crystal blue this afternoon. This is a happy uplifting blue that nourishes the soul not one of those somber dark blue-grey oceans that makes one take stock of one’s life.
We pass Toulon. Where Jean Valjean was imprisoned in the novel Les Miserables, another lost opportunity that I would have to make right one day. We dip inland for a bit and return to the coast at Cannes.
In a week or so the well-to-do would be crawling all over this town and everything would cost ten times what it does right now. The big pleasure yachts were already pulling into the marinas.
One of the things that the guidebooks made plain was that if you weren’t flush with the green stuff that Cannes was pretty to look at but fairly inaccessible so not much a regret there though all the oceanfront real estate and the sun drenched beaches were gorgeous to look at.
Pulling into Nice. The old train station is a mix of French, Italian, and even some Arabic architecture. The palm trees growing nearby give it all an exotic feel.
Looking at my ticket and I see that I’m switching to Trenitalia, the Italian rail system, and I’m looking at the departure board (at least I think that’s what it is) and I have a slight shudder of panic. I ask a ticket agent in terrible French where I’m supposed to go. He wisely points instead of trying to relay the information in French that I would not understand.
I’m off again and pass through Monaco which melded into Monte Carlo and somehow both managed to look even more quaint and luxurious than Cannes. I’ve just gone through two other countries without noticing.
Everybody on the train moves over to the right side of the train to look at all the beautiful seaside villas, the yachts, and the sparkling beaches. I’m trying my best not to notice two extremely attractive college students leaning over me to get a better look at the good life and suddenly I’m in Italy and we reach Ventimiglia and time to catch the next train to Genoa.
As the afternoon approaches the skies get progressively darker. A little confusion at Genoa, the city has 4 stations and 2 of them have similar names and I almost strand myself at the wrong station but jump back on board just as the train is leaving.
Some people watching. A gang of municipal workers wearing city overalls gets on, laughing and joking with each other. Wish I could understand their banter. A little old lady with a bag full of groceries and leaning on a cane gets on at one station and gets off a couple stations down. She’s probably taken this train route all her life. A tall thin older man with blond hair wearing a black business suit, golden spectacles, and carrying a briefcase, banker or stockbroker I’m guessing.
The train makes several stops along the coast to little towns here and there. Pitch black and definitely raining now. My only rain gear is an emergency plastic poncho in my pack. Totally unsure what I will find at Levanto so I don’t unpack it but move it to the top.
“Scuzi signorina, est la estacion de Levanto” I ask the conductor. I think I dipped into Latin and Spanish there, but she confirmed it was Levanto.
So back to the beginning of this story and google maps suggest a route to the hotel and off I go from the station walking down the road in the dark with something more than a sprinkle but less than a full-blown rainstorm.
With nothing else to guide me I’ve no choice but to rely on the map and hope I don’t end up lost and push past the alley where I was onto a regular street and go towards some bright lights till I end up at the Hotel Nazionale.
“Oh, you’re from Chile! I was just there on holiday last year” exclaims the concierge as she reviews my passport.
I finally get my room and unpack everything as I’ll be here for 3 full days. I open up my balcony window and notice that the rain has stopped. I haven’t eaten since Paris, so I wander round the neighborhood looking for some place to eat. The only places open are a high-end restaurant, reservations only, a couple bars, and a pizza place with a line out the door. I remember a candy bar I bought in Ventimiglia and go back to my room to wait for breakfast in the morning.
Levanto isn’t one of the Cinque Terre (five lands) towns but it is located next to it and does do a brisk tourist trade on its own as a seaside town. Unlike the Cinque Terre towns, Levanto does have car traffic and is fairly accessible to those who want to drive round northern Italy.
Though as this is off season the weather makes the town somewhat dreary and the locals are still enjoying the last days of a restful Winter and preparing for the season to come.
With no set itinerary I wander round the town trying to orient myself and get some landmarks locked into my mind so I won’t get lost so easily.
The local forecast was for more rain for the rest of the week, so I decided to take a chance and head for Manarola to get that iconic image of Manarola. Even if the rest of the week was nothing but rain at least I’ll get that.
The train station seems more accessible and cheerful in the daytime. I get a single ride pass to Manarola at a vending machine. With decades of tourist experience now, Cinque Terre has most everything well laid out and marked for people to see all of the advertised sites.
I could go into painful and precise detail about everything I did in the next few days, but I won’t. Some experiences you really can’t capture in words or even images.
You have to be there to attach significance or to enjoy the impact of the moment. Whether it was Corniglia and the stairway to the town with its countless twists and turns (there’s a shuttle bus if you don’t feel like walking), Getting lost in the back alleys of Manarola and looking into the countless hole in the wall shops, sitting in the bay of Vernazza and listening to the bells of Santa Margherita chime the hour, going to the top of Riomaggiore and looking down at the sea far below, or finding an out of the way restaurant in Monterosso and listening to an Italian waiter trying to explain the menu to Chinese tourists in English. Even simple things like sitting in a laundromat for an hour and chatting with two Dutch backpackers or stumbling my way through a menu with a very patient waitress take on a meaning that cannot really be explained.
If I were a person of means and leisure I would probably rent out an appartamento or studio in one of the towns and live a Summer here and watch the ocean come in and go out, bargain with the fishermen for the fresh catch of the day at the local docks, listen to the local neighborhood gossip, and occasionally tap out a sentence or two of my great American novel on my veranda while trying to forget or ignore the world going to hell.
But I was just a tourist waking up on my third day here and saying “I’m not doing a damn thing today” to no one in particular. The weather report on my phone was for rain all day long and I didn’t want to get out of bed. But breakfast had strict service hours downstairs and the maid would soon be by to shoo me out while she tidied the room, so I got up.
I wandered round Levanto for a bit before taking a train to the other towns to collect up some knickknacks for the folks back home. One of the problems with backpacking is that you really can’t bring back souvenirs for a lack of space.
The season was already beginning. The train was loaded down with a tour group from Romania (from what little I could pick up from their conversations). Manarola was chock full of people and what I thought were private homes were suddenly open and displaying wares for sale. The world will find you wherever you go.
That evening after downing a pizza and a local brew I wandered Levanto’s now familiar streets. Even the dark alley I had stumbled into my first night here now just seemed pedestrian and plain. For a moment I thought, and I realized that I didn’t know the date or even what day of the week it was and that it didn’t really matter and that this was it. This is what perfect relaxation really is. You don’t have to go to this or that resort or experience this or that to achieve it. You just have to let go.
Getting on the train the next morning and leaving for Prague I felt a pang of sadness at leaving. Not of leaving the actual location but leaving that particular moment in my life. Thinking to myself that I would never be this relaxed in my life ever again.
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