It's definitely fall and the train ride from Alessandria to Genoa confirmed this. The train tracks cut through the mountains on their way to the coast and the colors of fall add to the beauty of this landscape. From Genoa, we transferred trains to connect to San Remo, via the local Italian Regionale. To get another train misadventure quickly out of the way, we overshot San Remo because a) we couldn't get the train door opened and b) we didn't try another door because we seemed to be inside a tunnel and weren't sure that it was the correct stop location. We were worried that we'd disembark in the middle of nowhere and given the frustrating habit of the Italians to not announce where one has arrived, we stayed on speeding to the next town, Bordighera, seven minutes away.
At Bordighera, we disembarked, checked the return schedule and found that we had an hour to wait until another train would arrive to return us 7 minutes back to San Remo. So, we took the time to have our lunch on a train station bench with a grand view of the Ligurian Sea, a stones throw away. While waiting, I discovered that it's a popular destination for British tourists and keeping with the entire region along this coast, contains vast fields of cultivated flowers. But, Bordighera does have its own unique specialty of producing date palms. The first seeds from Egypt arrived in 411 and since that time this area has supplied the Vatican with palm fronds during Easter week.
So, after our picturesque lunch, we hopped the train back and explained to the train conductor who checked our ticket why it was incorrect. At San Remo we disembarked and quickly learned why it had looked like we were "just in a tunnel". It was because we were; the San Remo station is one huge long tunnel that rivals airports with ridiculously long walks to the exit. It's a new station, moved from the waterfront and cuts through the mountains. So, now oriented to the train station, it was time to discover San Remo.
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