Completo Fulla
Saturday, August 13, 2005
As we checked out of our hotel, the reception guy said ‘the bus to the station is 50 meters to the left’ and he even sold tickets, so we gladly paid the 2 Euro for tickets to the station, saving us about half an hours walk. Nice! We had breakfast there, then got the train to Genova. It was chocka! Then not long into the trip, it emptied out heaps and we had our cabin to ourselves… I felt a bit bad, thinking that other cabins must still be full, but then on a regular trip to the toilet, discovered there were heaps of other nearly empty cabins as well. We both had a wee snooze then before you know it we’re arriving in Genova. As we were getting off the train, the Aussie guy behind us said ‘is that a kiwi accent I hear?’. We started chatting to him and his girlfriend as they were heading down to La Spezia to spend a couple of nights there. We decided to go along with them as Genova hadn’t looked particularly enticing as we came in. We headed down to La Spezia as Jacob (the Aussie guy) had stayed in a really cool hostel there last year and we thought that would be a good place to start. We got down to the city and headed down the main pedestrian street, looking for the hostel… we found it eventually but they were full… and said that we would have trouble getting ANY cheap accommodation in La Spezia as Monday is the National Holiday. We tried another couple of hostels and 1 star hotels, before I suggested that Candace and I watch the bags while Maarty & Jakub try and find accommodation. Turned out there was nothing in La Spezia and we decided to try our luck in Camp Grounds in Levanto, hoping they might have permanent accommodation there. We took the train back up the same line we had just come down and went to the other side of the Cinque Terre, and found directions to the Camping Grounds. As luck would have it, the first one we asked at had a Caravan available at 20 Euro a night per person that could fit 4 people. We were a little dubious and Jakub ran off down the road to check out availability at other places… he came back with nothing. We were shown to the caravan… and what a palace! We thought that when the camping ground people said there was a table etc, we thought we would have to fold that away to get the beds out etc… but no! There was a huge awning with a wooden / lino floor, with table, 5 chairs, fridge, 3 element gas cooker and storage! The inside was great too, with a double bed and bunks. It was seriously awesome and we felt really lucky to have scored such great accommodation. By this time it was after 8pm, and the boys headed off to the market (about a 30second walk) and got pasta, parmesan cheese etc to have cook up. Yum!
We spent the evening drinking and playing cards, including a game they knew called toilet… hilarious. It’s a little like Jenga, in the fact that you have to pull out cards with out toppling the ‘toilet’ that you have built on top of the rest. We ended up getting every single card out and on top of the rest… seriously funny. At midnight we were told to ‘silence’ by the security guard, so after another hour of whispered laughter we went to bed.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
