Continued Homeless Adventures in Venice and Milan

We got on the train from Cinque Terre bright and early around 7am, unsure of where the destination would be due to the train strike. Oh the joys of backpacking. Our next planned destination was Venice, but with the train strike we weren’t sure when we would be able to get there if at all. The train stopped at La Spezia, so we got off to ask when the next available train to Venice would be. The train lady (who wasn’t really that helpful) said that trains would start back up at 9pm, but there wasn’t a guarantee that anything would take us to Venice. Not having anywhere to go other than the train station Mcdonald’s, we decided to venture into the city and explore. La Spezia was surprisingly pleasant. There was a really cool open air fruit market, Sunday street market and some beautiful parks.

As you’ve seen in photos up to this point, I was starting to look pretty shaggy, not having shaved for 2+ months. I looked homeless, but didn’t think people really treated me differently because of my appearance. That is until I went to buy some fruit in La Spezia. I walked into the fruit stand, grabbed a peach and went to pay the .25 euro. To my surprise the cashier (probably younger than me) didn’t let me pay, pushed my hand away and gave me the “you need this more than I do” look. I couldn’t really argue with him, so I took my bounty and proudly ate the peach that took me over two months to earn. Totally worth it.

After walking the town for a bit, we decided to take a day trip to a small town called Portavenere where we had a few scoops of gelato, grabbed lunch, and laid by the pier for a few hours as Tristan and Kevin completed their tanning competition (Tristan won).

Day trip to Portavenere.

More rays.

We got back to La Spezzia around dinner time, so we grabbed some pizza and headed back to the train station hoping that the train would arrive like the lady said. If you’ve ever seen “The Terminal” you know about the departure and arrival time signs that flip as they change. We looked at those signs with bated breath for an hour hoping our train would arrive. Finally, our eyes lit up as we saw the train we needed to take to get to Venice. It was about 930pm and this was train one out of three we needed to take to get to Venice. We got on board, hoping for continued good news as we got to our next stops. Good news not so much.

After a couple hours on our first leg, we got to our next stop and luckily only had to wait 45 minutes before the next train came. But we weren’t so stoked when we got onto the actual train. It was literally packed to the brim. And these trains had the little rooms in them with private seats, so it was packed like sardines. One car was insane; it had a family of like 8, all packed on top of each other sleeping. I had to sit in the hall way, scrunched for a few hours, but hey we were on the move. Our luck ran out when we got to Balogna. We arrived around 1am, but the next train wouldn’t leave for Venice until about 7am. And because of the strike, the actual train station was too full to sleep in, so we went full backpacker mode and set up camp on the train platform. Since I was already 2.5 months into my trip, I was use to roughing it, but Kevin didn’t enjoy it as much J. What added to his disdain is that he mistakenly thought we got him Mcdonald’s when we actually told him we would get it separately (and we had been talking Mickey D’s for a while, so the buildup was excruciating). At the time, it was very not funny. But thinking back, it’s less very not funny.

Waiting to get stuffed onto a full train.

Home, sweet, platform.

Anyways, we got through the night kind of sleeping on stone benches, while trains zoomed past us the whole night. It wasn’t the most fun experience at the time, but hey it makes a good story. At least that’s what I tell myself. 7am couldn’t come fast enough, so when the train arrived, we got on and greedily hogged a few seats each, so that we could catch a few hours of sleep before we (finally) arrived in Venice.

My first thought of Venice when I stepped off the train was that it looked fake. In a good way. It was like I was looking at a painting. The gondolas, the canals, the small windy streets, the bridges. Pretty amazing. We got in around 10, and decided to unload our stuff as quickly as possible and just wander the streets. We first stopped at St. Mark’s Basilica, famous for all of the pigeons. We then headed to the famous Rialto bridge where we looked for our lost loves, but didn’t find any so decided to get gelato instead.

Trying to catch some pigeons.

Tapas, Italian-style.

Like a painting!

We also met up with Federica, a couch surfer that Tristan contacted and who agreed to show us around for the day. She was awesome. Took us all around town, gave us tidbits here and there, and gave us some pointers on what to eat. After walking and sitting and walking and sitting, we parted ways with Fredericka and stopped by a local fair/carnival and had some delicious BBQ ribs. I’d been missing American BBQ for a while, so this hit the spot. We then proceeded to our actual dinner of seafood risotto, famous in Venice.

V-necks, unite!

Federica! Best guide ever.

BBQ'd meats, how I missed thee.

Seafood risotto.

Panna cotta.

The next morning, we said our goodbyes to Tristan as he headed back to Poland and Kevin and I headed to our final destination together: Milan. We wanted to stop by Milan for a day to check out the fashion scene (and as you could tell throughout my pictures, my dirty t-shirts and mets hat screamed fashion sense). Only one miscalculation on our part: all the stores are closed on Sundays, the only day we would be in Milan. Oh well, we decided to walk around and window shop instead. Besides window shopping, we also did a lot of people watching in front of the cathedral, ate toooooons of food (pasta, gelato (some of our favorite on the trip), lasagna, gelato (more of our favorite), pizza – all within about 6 hours).

Milan Cathedral.

2nd to last amazing gelato.

Last amazing gelato.

We ended the night with some cold pizza in our hotel room while watching tennis in Italian. Exactly how I pictured my last night in Italy. Seriously, hanging out with Kevin was a blast and I was super lucky to be able to spend that much time with him, all while exploring Italy. I still can’t believe it all happened because Kevin facebooked me when I was in the Philippines asking if I wanted to meet up somewhere in Europe. Funny how things work.

Going out with class.

Although my love for pizza and gelato never wavered, I was ready to move on. I said my goodbyes to Kevin and Italy, and got on a flight to my final destination: Paris!