‘Thank God’ we went by EURail…
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Getting up a 6.45 is hard especially when you need energy for a day of travel, we have found that sleeping in dorms is the easiest way to get angry at each other the next day - you simply need more sleep then you get. So after breakfast we wrote in the suggestions book just how much we enjoyed staying at the hostel, Strangely enough the book was full of the same experiences and advice but we felt that the more people that write in it the more they might take notice, maybe.
Walking into town was the strangest thing, the hostel had mad the excuse of the early lockout as they wanted you to get out and see the city but honestly nothing was open and there was no indication that there would be anytime soon, but we kept walking anyway wanting to get to the Amphitheatre in the city centre, and from there call the hostel in Riva to see about accommodation. It wasn’t until we got to the phones that we remembered how all the phones in Italy are stuffed, not from being old but from people stuffing in paper etc. to stop your money and then coming back later to try and fish it out, funny thing is that you never remember until you put your money in. After the first failed attempt we got out our international phone card and made an long distance call to Riva, less than 100km away. By this stage it was around 9.15 and after getting through to the hostel we were told that they didn’t have private rooms only single sex dorms and that we would have to ring later if we wanted rooms as they were about to lockdown and shut for the day until 5pm. What is the point of this ill never know, but we were determined that we would get out of the city and decided that we would go at any rate and sort out accommodation later when we got there, picked up our bags and headed for the station which was about three centimetres on the map away. One hour later we finally at the station and buying tickets for the 11.30 bus to Malcesine, which is three quarters of the way to Riva but had a lot more hotel options as well as a cable car that climbed the 1700 metres to the top of Mt Baldo.
The bus was a little squashed but comfortable enough for the two hour journey, we started getting out the usual, books and laptop settling in for the ride, unfortunately though I started feeling quite motion sick within minutes. I had never thought of this being an issue, the laptop and books are the only way we pass the time of travel other than talking to other tourist, but this was public transport so there wasn’t much chance of that. The roads out of the city were very busy and it was a good half hour before we were starting to feel that we were in the country and not long after that was the lovely view of the lake. We moved to the front of the bus as we could see that we were getting close and had to press the button before the stop, we had asked the driver to stop and tell us when to get off although he really didn’t speak English and we didn’t understand him to know if he understood us, but sure enough as we pulled into Malcesine the driver turned to us and said something that we couldn’t understand but simply took as ‘here you are, have a great time in Malcesine’.
We were both relieved to see as we stepped off the bus that it was right beside an accommodation agency – how convenient! The choices for rooms were either a four star at 105 euros per person per night, a three star at 80 Euros per person per night, or a one star at 30 Euros per person per night. We settled for the one star after asking the main question we always ask ‘is it safe and clean?’. This is exactly what we found as we entered the room it was a modestly sized double room with an enseuite and a balcony, only issue was that it had been a two kilometre walk from the bus stop. It did however have a very affordable restaurant so we didn’t see the distance as too much of an issue. After we had freshened up we went down stairs and ordered a couple of drinks which turned into a couple of more, deciding just to relax for the day and read our books in the sun, ending with dinner of cabonera and spaghetti. A very nice way to spend an evening.
posted by Maarty @ 12:00 pm,
1 Comments:
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At Wednesday, 17 August, 2005,
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Hello lovelys! I love reading your updates to see what you up too, but man you can write! I am not getting any work done trying to keep up! :-) We are both well. Been in HB for the weekend which was nice. Talk soon. Dal