This someone was not happy at the thought of going all that way and NOT getting to Vernazza. So despite our long wait in La Spezia to get to Monterosso, I insisted that earlier delay must have been a anomaly and lobbied hard to go the 4 minutes by train (none of us said "let's walk the 1 and 1/2 hour trail...)to the very next stop, Vernazza. Ignoring the throngs at the station and Rachel's disgusted glances, I insisted we had enough time to catch even the latest train. Well, let's just say at this point, we could have walked and still the train would have been behind us. I am one very stubborn person and have a hard time admitting that just maybe, this wasn't the smartest thing to do. When finally the train for La Spezia arrived (another "anomaly," perhaps?), I continued to insist that we should get off at Vernazza. So with Jean's tacit approval and Rachel's strong disapproval, we got off the train there.
Vernazza is gorgeous and all of us thoroughly enjoyed looking around. It was still basically the same as Rachel and I remembered from 15 years ago but with a bigger, reshaped seawall and a rock pier from which swimmers were happily jumping off. We wished we had ignored dear old Rick Steves and come here first! The views are spectacular and the village so colorful and quaint, surrounded by the vineyards high on the surrounding hills. In such a place, who can worry about such mundane things like train schedules?? It was only 7:30 after all...
Maybe we(ahem)should have worried a tiny bit, in retrospect. Again, the station was mobbed and while I knew the last train from La Spezia to Alessandria departed at 9pm, I persisted in my vociferous defense of the Italian train system, and exasperatedly, told Jean and Rachel to "chill for god's sake! We'll get there!" And we did-in enough time to get to La Spezia to wait for our 9pm train. "Wait" being the operative word of the day...
Whatever one thinks of MacDonalds it is common knowledge, worldwide, that there is always a bathroom for anyone's use in there, hence a tribute should be made to the ubiquitousness of the Golden Arches. And not only do they have a bathroom but what better place to eat and wait when one's train never comes. Mind you, we didn't eat their delicious food, rather we simply ate our recently-purchased-elsewhere kebabs at a table of theirs. (For my money, MacDonalds deserves the gold medal of fast food-dom- so welcoming even when you're just mooching off of them)!
Since I am writing this from back home in our little apartment, obviously the train eventually arrived. My first clue that my faith in the train system was misplaced should have been the column labeled "rit" on the arrival/departure screen. "Rit" for ritardo (delayed). Jean noted this column doesn't exist in Germany or Austria and while we watched the screen change every 15 minutes to a new "ritardo" I wondered why Italy's own Fascist history couldn't have made the trains run on time ad infinitum like in her own adopted country. Needless to say, at this point in our trip, Rachel chose to be as far away from me as possible. While Jean and I camped out in MacDonalds, Rachel camped out on the hard, cold, stone slab they call a seat right next to the train tracks, with only a New Yorker magazine for company. Almost anticlimactically, when the announcement rang through the MacDonalds at midnight that the train was arriving heading toward Genoa, Jean and I headed to the track, and barely looking at Rachel, climbed aboard. Rachel, taking a seat across the aisle from me and Jean, was sending me a torrent of psychic messages, not the least of which was "I told you so, I told you so, I told you so". While I stubbornly made my mind a steel trap from her wordless assault, I remembered with growing dread that Genoa was still only halfway to Alessandria.
(This concludes Part II of our 3 part Odyssey)
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