From the Archives: An Italian Tale
A friend's post and an old journal unearth a memory of travel joys and misadventures
A post from Hoang Samuelson’s excellent blog Nourish Me about the challenges and frustrations of train travel with family in Europe reminded me of a crazy experience we had at the end of a two-week trip with our then 15-year-old son Sam in late August of 2001.
As my husband Jeff and I are about to embark on yet another trip—though not to Europe but to to Maine and Nova Scotia (more to come soon!), I started rifling through old travel journals hoping I’d find an account of the eventful end of our vacation. Lucky me—I did!
Here are some edited excerpts from my journal. Though Jeff and Sam took many pictures, few seem to have survived. I’ve made do with photos curated from the Web and a cartoon my son created after the fact (see below).
By the time we finally landed on the Italian Riviera, we had already visited London, Paris, Deauville and Bern. This was the final stop. Except for the sticky August heat, it was mostly quite enjoyable—until the very end.
In Monterosso al Mare, August 29, 2001
This is one of the five towns of Cinque Terre on the Italian coast between Genoa and Portofino. We’re staying at Villa Steno high above the town. I’m sitting on the terrace of the villa’s cafe looking down at the Mediterranean over pastel-colored houses with laundry flapping gaily out of almost every window.
Coming to this place1 has been our best decision, though at first as we dragged our overloaded suitcases up the steep hillside toward our hotel, it didn’t seem so. But our room was air-conditioned and the largest we’ve had, with a nicely tiled floor and a terrace overlooking the water and a beautiful bell tower, which rings every hour and sometime at indeterminate points for long periods of time, marking who-knows-what.
Everywhere there are lemon trees and on the steep mountainsides surrounding the town are vineyards filled with grapes that are ripening to make the local grappa sold in every tourist shop. My favorite tipple, however, is another regional wine, Sciacchetrà, which tastes quite a bit like sherry but is lighter and more drinkable. Limoncino,2 the sweet liquor distilled from lemons, is stronger and a little syrupy, but definitely packs a kick. I haven’t sampled the grappa yet. Perhaps I will today, our last (sob!) day.
Reflections on the Joys of Travel (Aug. 30)
At the moment I am sitting on our own semiprivate patio staring over a mass of blue morning glories past several citrus trees over tiled roofs and the medieval looking bell tower to the gray-blue Mediterranean. A powerboat just cut behind the tower and flocks of bird are soaring and dipping with apparently no landing spot in mind. Occasional cat squabbles and rooster crows interrupt the early morning peace. I wish I could stay here for hours, but I know soon I will need to pack and breakfast and plan my day with the boys.
The itinerary calls for a boat ride to one, two or more of the adjacent towns, then a return to Villa Steno for our bags, an all-night train to Paris and flights to London and then the U.S., arriving at 6 p.m. or so local time in L.A. tomorrow! Odd to think all of this would happen in a day and a half, though in truth, it is really two days in terms of hours. Then, of course, it’s back to reality.
I wish life could be more filled with peaceful, contemplative moments like this one and less with the events, words and deeds that jar my nerves and shatter the pleasures of the moment. I wonder if philosophers of old hung out on patios listening to bird noises and admiring morning glories and the sea. They certainly didn’t have kids and husbands constantly barking at them: “C’mon Mama!”
Calm before the storm, Monterosso town square (still Aug. 30)
Jeff and Sam caught a boat to visit the other four towns of Cinque Terre.3 I halfheartedly attempted to buy a ticket just in time to see the boat chug out of the harbor without me!
At the Midi Bar in the town center, I’m looking out at an open-air market in progress while dawdling over a caffè latte and a delicious slice of pizza with tomatoes and arugula. The awning above me is creaking ominously every time the train goes by overhead. The flies are attacking my flesh, which must have grown tastier since I began devouring so much pizza, pasta and gelato over the past two days. Everyone around me is speaking Italian and smoking cigarette after cigarette, with the fumes collecting in my face.
Even so, I’m enjoying a welcome break before the train/plane marathon to L.A.
The Lady Vanishes (Aug. 30-31)
Here’s what I wrote at Heathrow Airport in London and on the flight back to Los Angeles. I had reunited with my husband and son after losing them for an entire night en route.
At 5 p.m. (after Jeff and Sam returned from a rain-soaked boat excursion to the other four towns of Cinque Terre), we collected our luggage at Villa Steno and said our goodbyes. I gave the last of my lire,4 some 35,000 in notes (then worth about $17) to Adrianna, the kind front desk clerk who was the only one who spoke English and had regaled me with stories about her love of travel but lack of funds. Little did I know that I would rue the loss of that money just an hour or two later.
We headed to the station via the beachfront, picking up some cheese sandwiches along the way. Jeff stopped to snap a few final pictures with the cardboard camera he had purchased after losing both of his small cameras (one may actually have been stolen out of his back pocket!). Miserable in the late afternoon heat and humidity, I decided to go to the station a little early and wait for them there.
I had checked on the train time; Jeff had said the listed destination would be Venezia, even though the stop we wanted was Milano. It was leaving at 6:03 p.m., plenty of time on Binario 1. But lo and behold, as I rolled my heavy case out to the tracks, the train chugged into the station. It seemed a bit early, but when I inquired of the steward at the open door, he assured me this was the train for Milano. I can’t swear he said it was going to Venezia as well, but I thought, “Why not get on, get a hand with my luggage and be ready to depart when “the boys” arrived.
But, just about the moment I dragged my luggage aboard, il treno departed for the next station and I realized my mistake. Jeff and Sam would arrive to find I’d vanished and have no idea where I was! I had no money and no ticket. [Note: As I’m revisiting this 22 years later, I’m not sure if I had a passport or if that too was with my husband!]
At the suggestion of a fellow passenger, I decided to get off at the next town, Levanto, and return to Monterosso in search of my family, but while I was trying to make my situation clear to a clerk who didn’t speak a word of English, the train to Milano-Venezia rolled in. Thinking perhaps Jeff and Sam would be on it, I dragged my giant suitcase aboard with the help of two sympathetic young American students. By this point, I was a sweaty, nervous wreck; the process of hauling my luggage up and down steps in the late August heat and the realization of my predicament had turned me into a human water faucet. (Note: In later years, older, wiser traveler Ruth never again brought such an enormous suitcase!)
Here’s the sequence of events that followed:
My newfound friends, Earl and Nick, 24-year-old high school buddies who hailed from Portland, Oregon, were returning to Frankfurt, where Earl was living with his girlfriend while attending engineering school. In a stroke of luck, Earl had a cellphone. (Note: In those days, most likely it was a flip phone of some sort, though even then few people had them.) Earl let me use the phone to call the Villa Steno on the off chance that Jeff might check to see if I’d contacted the hotel.
‘Just get to Paris!’
About 20 minutes later, the phone rang. It was Jeff calling from a payphone (remember them?) in Genoa about an hour beyond Monterosso. He was en route to Milan hoping to catch the train to Paris.
“I don’t care how you do it,” he said. “Just get to Paris!” And then he hung up.
Of course I was vastly relieved—except I still had a problem. No ticket and almost no money, also no bankcard to get an ATM cash advance.
When the ticket collector came around, I tried to explain the situation to him, using my best French and Spanish phrases to no avail. He didn’t understand me, but after staring at my sweaty, miserable face, he shrugged and just let me pass.
In Milan, however, it was a different story.
Earl and Neal had left to catch the train to Frankfurt. I attempted to find someone to help me persuade the officials in Milan that I deserved to get on the train to Paris, even if I didn’t have enough money for a ticket. No dice. Niente biglietto, niente treno! Period! I needed 157,000 Lire—about $75. I actually had discovered $50 in American money that my son had given me for safekeeping and another $50 in travelers checks. It should have been more than enough, but the exchange rate at the train station was so terrible, I barely had enough for the least expensive ticket.
I was assigned to Car 105 at the very end of the train. It was a second-class cabin with six narrow beds, stacked on top of each other bunkbed style. I slept on the top bunk, waking several times as the train creaked and groaned its way through a lightening storm in the French Alps and stopped for prolonged periods at stations along the way.
The couchette, as these sleeping cars were called, grew very hot with so many bodies crammed together. I spent the sleepless hours wondering how would I manage to get from the train station to the Charles de Gaulle Airport and the flight to London that I hoped Jeff and Sam would also be on and how I would pay for it.
But as I was exiting the train, I heard a shout. “Mom!” And my son ran up to me. And just like that my crazy saga came to an end.
It turned out that Sam and Jeff had been on the very same train—many cars ahead in first class! “They gave us robes and pillows and a really great dinner,” they told me. Were they kidding? I’m not sure, but they certainly weren’t packed together like tinned fish! Ah well, as the saying goes, “All’s well that ends well.”
For us it did. But just a few days later, on September 11, 2001, innocent travel seemed like it would become a relic of the past after four planes barreled into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania. Imagine: planes like the one we’d just been on turned into killing machines! The world changed in an instant. We wondered if we’d ever have the courage to travel again. And we worried about the same thing after three years of a pandemic. But of course we did travel again—and we still are.
And that’s it for my trip down Memory Lane. Next spring we’re contemplating a return visit to Italy and perhaps Cinque Terre to celebrate a big birthday. Hopefully the weather will be cooler and and we’ll have our smartphones! What could go wrong? (Please don’t tell me!)
Have you lost loved ones, taken wrong trains, missed connections, misunderstood signs in foreign languages while traveling abroad? Apparently, from Hoang’s story and others I have heard, I’m far from the only one. I’d love to hear yours.
Also, I wonder if you keep a journal when you travel?
As always, many thanks for your likes, shares and comments. And welcome, new subscribers! I’m grateful for every one of you!
See you soon—from the road!
Ruth
Back in 2001, the hotel was highly recommended by travel writer Rick Steves. It seemed that almost every American tourist was walking around with a copy of Steves’ Europe Through the Back Door in his or her luggage.
Limoncino, similar to limoncello, is tied pretty closely to the Cinque Terre region and is prepared somewhat differently, according to locals.
Cinque Terre, literally “five lands,” includes five picturesque towns overlooking the Ligurian Sea along Italy’s northwestern coast. There’s a narrow hiking path linking the towns, which, in addition to Monterosso, include Vernazza, Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore. The area, once a hidden gem, has become a tourist magnet, but we’re hoping it’s still worth revisiting—though maybe not in August!
The Italian Lira was replaced with the Euro the in 2002.
You're going to Maine?! Whereabout? I'm just 50 minutes from Kittery.
Oh my, the anxiety you must have felt. Similar nerve-wracking incidents happened to me while travelling in Southeast Asia. I'd rather not revisit those hours 😅 keeping a travel journal is such a great idea Ruth, it's so easy to forget pieces of our life as me move forward. I'm inspired ❤️