Samstag 30 Dezember 2017
We ate a huge breakfast as it’d be our only meal till tonight, then hopped on a tram for a quick spin around the city. We hopped off at a deserted outer suburban stop and hopped on another one going in a different direction.
Fortunately it was going in a direction we needed to go in.
We checked the board when we arrived at the train station – conveniently located across the road from our hotel – to discover our train was 10 minutes ritardo. We had 40 minutes to change trains in Milan, so still do-able.
This train was slower than other ones we’d traveled on in France and England, and stopped much more frequently. At each stop we became a little more ritardo, and there was mention of technical issues.
In between stops though we travelled through snow-covered landscapes and mountains in the distance that are far bigger than mountains back home.
I was glad to be travelling by train and not hiking!
At Monza we had a 30 minute delay (unspecified and ongoing ‘technical issues’ apparently) – Tim started investigating other options for getting to Venice from Milan, but we arrived in Milan with five minutes to run from platform two to platform five – plenty of time!
A steward came around offering free drinks and biscuits – but my Italian is so bad that I smiled politely and he moved on. After, I might add, an extended conversation with the three other people in my four-seater compartment (Tim was in the one next door – weird seat numbering), where I think they talked about the Australian sitting amongst them too stupid to learn some Italian for her long-awaited return to Venice.
Venice, and one more means of transport today … trams in Basel, trains through Switzerland and Italy, vaporetto in Venice.
Thankfully our huge breakfast had sustained us. Even more thankfully that there was a kebab shop next to our apartment because if we’d had to go further afield to search for food things might have started to get ugly!
Yes, even more ugly than a crowded kebab shop late on a Saturday night where the only option for eating in was standing at a small though tall red plastic table. Not our finest gourmet experience, it has to be said!
Musings from the cold 