World Adventure

1Oct12
Finally finished our pennants with our cheap room in Florence. We actually managed a full night sleep on one day out of five. Better than I expected. Tried experimenting along the way with various quantities of alcohol in the evening but was not very successful. I think ear plugs might have done the trick for the noise from the late night door slammers and skype users in the foyer.
We were heading off to La Spezia very near the Cinque Terra. Why not the Cinque Terra? The competition has been tough with the number of tourists around at the moment; particularly American guide book zombies who are creating a Congo line across Italy.
It should have been a short travel day to get to La Spezia and we were not rushed to the train station. Then the problems began... Vanessa validated our ticket only to find that our train had been cancelled- so had numerous other trains. The ticket counter was closed and there was no information on the problem. We presumed there was trouble was the tracks due to the heavy rain but later found out it was a strike.
Plan B. We headed off to the bus station to defeat the striking workers only to find that many others had thought the same way. I waited for half and hour in a queue only to find that the only bus to La Spezia left at 7am. Noooooooo I was beginning to believe that we would need to stay another night in Florence.
We went back to the train station and found that there was a train to Lucca which was close to Pisa which in turn was close to La Spezia. It was worth a shot. We jumped on the train and headed off.  The ticket collector told us we were on the wrong train but understood enough english to accept our explanation regarding our ticket and it was an uneventful trip to Lucca. There was a train leaving to La Spezia in 30 minutes. We had defeated the strikers. Then SOP went up against the train on the board. SOP? What does that mean? We found out that the train was cancelled. Damn them.
Our next plan was to catch a bus to Pisa. A long walk to the bus station and a long line to buy tickets. The bus was overfull so we had to wait. The clouds darkened and then a thunder storm developed while we were waiting then the rain. We were amazed at how well the tree we were standing under gave us protection. The second bus was not as full and we easily got a seat. It was a wet trip with a close call when a truck in front of us jack knifed in the wet avoiding a collision was a small car coming around a tight corner. We were not sure if the bus would deliver us to the train station and were expecting a 1.6km walk in the rain but it worked out fine. Even better was a train going to La Spezia in a departure board full of cancellations. All we needed was a ticket and race to the train in less than 10 minutes with our only barrier bumbling Japanese tourists who had no idea how to use the ticket machine. We just made it in time and the train was running. A nice journey with hill towns and marble topped mountains along the way and a short walk to our luxury 3 star hotel room. Well not really luxury but a small step above our previous accommodation. The days journey took 9 hours instead of 3 hours.Vanessa looked like the ghost that walked so it was  a relief for us to be here.
We found a nice pizza man who let us look at the board written in Italian for a while then said are you ready for the menu in english now or do you understand italian? He was charming which is what has been lacking in Florence. He was amused at the concept of a pizza with pineapple which I said was popular in Australia and America. He even told everyone in the kitchen for a laugh. The pizza is very different to Australia. The base is thin and the ingredients are minimal and they are oven baked in less than 5 minutes. We ordered 2 traditional pizzas and could not finish them. Why?  1 ltr lemon gelato before dinner may have contributed.  Oink.