Major rain
yesterday and last night. In one location just north of here they got
29 inches in 12 hours, a record for all of Europe.
We are headed to
Sanremo just short of the French border today. Our choices of travel
are train with a lot of bag dragging and changes or rental car. We
chose the car. It is still raining a little so we take a taxi to the
rental car location. It is about a 20 minute walk but not knowing if
the skies were going to open up again with a downpour or not we
chose the safer ride.
The same lady that
rented us the car at Avis is renting us the car today at Maggorie.
They are all in the same company in Italy. She was very nice and
helpful. However, the car was crappy. It had just been returned. Most
cars are returned in the mornings as the rental offices are closed in
the afternoon due to slow business and they did not have time to
clean this one. The outside was full of bugs and dirt and the inside
was not much better. Vicki's seat had a stain and they had tried to
wipe it but that just made it wet. There was no other car available
so we threw a trash bag over the seat and hit the road.
There are two
routes to Sanremo. The Autostrada or the side roads.
These shows how rough the this coastline is.
When I checked on
trains they were all 6 to 7 hours with a minimum of 3 changes. When I
went to take the screen shots of the route this showed up
But don't trust
Google maps. Nowhere did this train show up on the Trentalia official
sight. It might exist as it is three different train systems but I
never saw it. I would have gladly dragged bags three times and do the
ride in just over 4 hours for 33€ instead of 3:30 of Autostrada and
150€ for sure.
The drive was not
bad but every since the bridge collapsed on this route in Genoa
several years ago they have been inspecting and working on this road
with lots of lane closures. There was only one major slowdown the
rest were just an inconvenience. Going south was a
whole other story. From the time difference in the driving on and off
the Autostrada it should give you some idea of how rugged this
coastline is. There probably 100 bridges and uncountable number of
tunnels. We know. We have tried to count them but usually gave up
when we got in the 30 range.
We
left the Autostrada and wound our way down off the mountain into
downtown Sanremo, turned in the car and walked the two blocks to
Villa Sylvia Suites. It is sort of like a hotel but then not. On the 4th
flour of a building on the pedestrian street lined with old buildings
in the 5 to 6 story range a whole floor is the "villa" It
has about 8 large suites in hotel style. It has a reception desk that
is only manned when some one is checking in.
We
dropped our bags and headed out in search of a Spritz. This is
familiar territory for us. We headed down towards the water and found
a nice seat looking at the marina. We got the Spritz and a big bucket
of chips to accompany it. We have been inundated with pictures from
the Diggers of all the great chicattiy they have been getting and we
have been getting nothing but chips and peanuts. But, we knew it was
all about timing. It was to early to eat as restaurants do not open
until 7 at the earliest so off we went in search of cicchetti. We
found it.
fuzbal action at the first bar
The
big entertainment was watching the manager of the bar move outside
tables and plants around. Move here, no move there. Then he started
moving plants. After all this joking what came out of it was a
private setting area surround by the plants. A lot of work went into
this when it could have been very simple. All we know was it was
great entertainment before dinner.
We
did not go to one of the many highly rated restaurants. We did go to
a highly rated pizza place and did not order pizza. We chose it for
location. A large outside area on the main road. It just felt more
open. Food was average. Vicki got spaghettis with clams and I got the
fried seafood. Both where huge portions and we left half of both.
Something you do not see often in Europe. They eat everything on the
plate no matter what.
Dinner
done we headed back to our room, but not before passing the "private
lounge" created at the bar. There was a couple in the area but
must not be famous as there was no one swarming around them.
Damn, he is back.
When you order a drink at happy hour you get one of these for free.
This plate makes an oyster tour.
The Saudi princess yacht. I is usually in Antibes. It is a old yacht but they have kept it.
San Remo
Don't talk about the young people
October 10
About 9:30 we left Sylvia's and walked the twenty minutes to the station, leaving plenty of time to make the 10:30 Ventimiglia where we would change to the French train to Nice.
Alan came into the station about the same time as us.(will he ever go away). Walking the looong walk underground to the track, about four minutes, there was an elderly gentleman who lost his bag getting on the moving sidewalk. His backward progress was getting him nowhere so I went over picked it up and got on the sidewalk and took it to him. At the track he had to go underground to get to the other side of the track and Alan found the elevator and took him over.
The train was not crowded and we were at Ventimiglia in 12 minutes. There we went under the track to catch our train to Nice. There were police on the platform checking random passports and Vicki got picked. This train was a little more crowded. A fair amount of people got off in Monaco but a equal number got on. Alan had been checked for covid and passport on the way down but the police came through and I saw them check no one but did check masks. The ticket checkers where different. They came through several times and found some offenders. A middle age women with and older lady, neither French or Italian, got busted. It all happened right in front of me in English. The ticket taker took the younger ones ID and entered it into his machine and the machine spit out a long piece of paper that he gave to her. The older lady denied having any ID. During the this whole process the ticket taker kept showing the ladies the big sign that says you owe 50€ if you do not have a ticket. They got thrown off at the next station in the middle of nowhere.
The offender and the conductor
A buck to pee
The sandwich
Detraining in Nice can be a challenge as a lot of people get off and then the big push comes with a lot of people get one. The getting off people are not bad but the mass getting on can be. We were at the door so we got off without much trouble with all our luggage. Nice has a escalator up and over the tracks so we did not have to drag our bags up and down the steps that for some reason seems to get more difficult with each birthday.
Outside of the train station was Paul's a French chain bakery. And as announced as far back as Italy, though contested, I got my first baguette ham and cheese sandwich. The others groused and went off to find something else.
Lunch over, the Europcar office was now open. Breezed through the formalities and we were own our way. We had booked rooms at the Chateau des Barrenques as Alan needed to stay in a show place. It was a very lovely place and beautiful gardens. The owners were nice and have a place in Naples Florida that they have not visited in two years but hope to go this year. The wife is not excited as she described our home land "America is broken" and we all agreed with her. It had the best bed I have slept in in a long time. When I woke up I did not even feel any old man pains.They made reservations for us a local country restaurant for the evening and the food was great. Well almost. Vicki's steak was very tough, but she knew better than to order it but did anyway. The desert was double fantastic. We had all gotten the "menu" which was three courses for 20€.
Damn,he snuck into the backseat again
Great duck
Looks good but was tuff
Fantastic desert
October 11
Today we hoped to get rid of Alan again. He had a rental car reserved in Lyon and was headed off to some town where Chopin lived. Getting him to the rental car place was a small challenge as the whole road system around the train station and under the train station are under construction. We succeeded and kicked him out of the back seat and off we went.
Somewhere in all of this stuff I had got confused. I know you are amazed to hear that but it is true. I had us checking into our little cottage in the country today, but when I messengered the owner and said we would be arriving around 3 we got back a message that said "great, we will be waiting for you tomorrow." That got us off the Autostrada into a rest area to figure this out. Vicki has even questioned me about it yesterday and again this morning but I blow it off saying "no check in is today".
Now what to do? Internet on the phone was painfully slow so we decided to go wander in the country and see what we found. The Beaujolais is beautiful to ride around in with hills and grapes everywhere. We would ride, stop, search on the phone, ride stop repeat. Several phone calls resulted in "sorry we ware full". The Europeans are escaping more than us as they were in severe lockdowns for extended periods of times and they wanted to be out.
At 4pm it was now time to get serious. However, Vicki has to have in depth detail of where she is going to stay and that is impossible when the internet does not work. I finally parked the car in the country and told to call me when she was finished and went for a walk. On the walk I found a Chateau on the weak internet that said it had a room. Vicki being the semi-French speaker I gave her the phone and said "call and book this room!" She was not happy as she was unable to see pictures of the curtains and type of toilet paper they used, but did it anyway. She did it anyway but was informed that "sorry but we are full".
That's it, I declared we are are driving to the nearest town and check in to whatever is there.
Enroute the phone rang and fortunately it was the chateau owner who said he made a mistake and had one room left. Peace in the car again and we drove the 15 minutes with a big smile on our faces.
The Chateau de Grandmont is where we needed to be. This is it's first year of operation and only has 5 rooms. The owner was a great guy and said he really enjoys meeting new people. We are the first Americans to stay there. We learned that finding a restaurant on weekends, especially on a Sunday when many are closed, can be a challenge so we asked if he would make a reservation for us. He said it would be his pleasure. Twelve phone calls later he found us a place at Auberge de Rivolet about 15 minutes away. It was a very scary 15 minutes as it was dark dark and the lights on the car suck. We felt our way there and found the only other person in the restaurant was another guest from the chateau, the first Canadian to stay there. The small restaurant was owned by a Morrecian and the food followed that theme though not as spicy as I would like. We headed back and the GPS said to turn down a dirt road and in the dark we declined and thought it would reroute us and did. All the way around and back to this road and we chose to follow the directions this time and made it back.
