On the road again

In the past 24 hours, I’ve taken nearly every form of available transportation…2 buses, 2 planes, a vaporetto, and now train 1 of 2 to get to Rome (where I’ll take the metro and/or a taxi). Needless to say, the last thing I want to do is sit for the next 5 hours, but what can you do?

It’s only 8am, but I should have definitely been partway to Rome right now. Or even in Rome, had I taken the midnight train last night. Instead, following my good fortune of finding the (free to me) bus full of tourists that went straight to the airport, I ended up stuck in Madrid (where I connected) for quite a while since my plane got delayed over an hour. And that caused me to miss both the 10:20 and 11pm buses back to Piazzale Roma, so I had to take the 11:40 bus, which got me back to Venice around midnight. I then had to dash to the Vaporetto stop to catch the 12:09 boat that would take me to the stop closest to the house (to avoid walking alone, at night, in the dark, and with a wheeled suitcase that takes ages to get over bridges). It was about 1 am by the time I got in and I still had to unpack and repack (Canaries clothes and Rome clothes are a little different!). Mal had looked up the schedule of trains to Rome and told me there was one at 6:30am, one at 7am, and that there were actually a lot. So, I figured I’d let myself sleep in a tiny bit (til 6:45) and not kill myself trying to get on the 6:30 train since it’d mean about 3 hours of sleep.

After a long, toasty, uncomfortable (my bags are SO heavy) dash to the train station, the woman at the info booth informed me that the next direct train wasn’t until 10:30, but that I could take a 8am train to Bologna, where I could then pick up a train to Rome. With the connection added in, it’ll take about 6 hours instead of the usual 4 ½ or 5, but I’d prefer to be making progress (and not wasting my effort of getting ready early). I’ll get in around 2, which is good as I can’t check into my hotel until then, but bad because Robert gets in at 10:15 and I had hoped that we could both head from the train station to the hotel and his convent together (I have no map and a bad sense of direction…). If I’d only gotten to the station a little earlier…there was a 7:30 train…but oh well…this way I had time to get a brioche and realize that the ticket vendor only gave me the ticket for the second leg of my trip, which is bad news since they always check for tickets (I went back to the counter and she gave the Veniceà Bologna ticket to me).

The ride from Venice was uneventful and I made it to Bologna successfully but the train station at Bologna was a little confusing and I was glad I had 45 minutes to figure things out. I found my platform and bought a few things from the vending machine in some sort of semblance of lunch (following an oh so healthy breakfast of a chocolate brioche). I also got persuaded into giving my last 2 euro piece to some kid going on in Italian about how badly he needed to buy a train ticket. Even though I knew it probably wasn’t for any train ticket, the kid caught me at a weak moment and I handed it over…I blame sleep deprivation and Dramamine (definitely not my gullibility…). Once they put up the info for my train, they also noted that it was “in ritardo” which means delayed. I’m beginning to think the infamous Manzullo bad travel luck has started to follow me everywhere I go! We left about 15 minutes late, which isn’t a huge deal, but I want to be able to catch up with Robert in Rome since he’s much more well prepared than me in terms of maps and plans. Plus I just want to get all this luggage off my hands by checking in!

In all these travels, I’ve had some revelations (some of which make me thankful I live in the US and some that don’t):

What Europe has figured out:

*public transportation (without a doubt the majority of subway systems are inexpensive and relatively easy to use and definitely don’t have the negative stigma we’ve assigned them in the states)

*a variety of low budget travel companies (the competition ensures low fares to pretty much every major city)

*a continent wide train system (we don’t have anything that comes close in terms of cost, routes offered, or ease of use)

*being multilingual (if there’s anything that’ll make you feel inadequate, it’s the legions of toddlers/kids you hear speaking two+ languages fluently)

What America dominates at:

*assigning seats on planes & trains (i'm a pretty big proponent of this approach)

*lining up to board said modes of transportation in an orderly fashion (you would not believe the lining up procedure at Iberia…mostly because it doesn’t exist and it’s pretty much a free for all…same goes for Ryan Air…adds unnecessary stress)

*being on time (or at least being profusely sorry and offering compensation when not on time)

*customer service (no, really…comparatively speaking, we’re got the edge on this one)

(I'm actually in Rome now, staying at a Best Western in a slightly sketchy part of town, but the room is clean and quiet and nice. And by nice, I mean TINY, but still nice...all the amenities of my room in the Canaries, just 1/4th the size! The walls are a salmon color and the wallpaper is pretty much velvet, which is kind of weird, but it's all very kitschy-cool. Plus, I'm not going to turn down free wireless, free breakfast, my own bathroom, and a TV! Robert is coming to meet up with me now...time to see all the things I didn't get to see in high school when I was sick!)