A Long Day of Travel

We left Lourmarin at about 8 am on Saturday morning and drove to Avignon to return our rental car and get on our first train to Nice. We had learned a few things, so we already had the place to return our rental car saved in our GPS. While Greg and I returned the car, Steve and Jess bought their tickets to the edge of France. Everything was going pretty smoothly. 

We took the train to Nice and then switched trains to the next stop at the edge of France. Steve and Jess had not been able to buy the tickets they needed for Italy in France and were hoping that they would be able to get them quickly in the very brief layover (about 15 minutes). Well, it was clear that they would not have time to get their tickets before our train left, so we ran to our train and said we meet them in La Spezia, Italy. 

In our brief experience with trains in France, it seemed like you could set your clocks by them - they were very timely. As soon as we crossed the border over to Italy, it seemed like every train we took had issues. Anyway, to make a very long story short, Steve and Jess had lots of issues, too. They texted us to say they had bought a direct ticket to Manarola, Italy and could we meet them at the train station at 11:30 pm. 

Greg and I, after taking 5 different trains, finally reached the Cinque Terre Hostel at about 9:45 pm. Meanwhile, Steve and Jess had texted us that one of their trains had problems and that they would be at least an hour late. Well, the hostel had a midnight curfew and the doors were locked at midnight. We also weren't successful initially at being able to text or call Steve back to let him know the situation. 

I basically pleaded our case the front desk at the Hostel. The front desk employee was extremely helpful - he was able to look up the train to see where it was and learned it wouldn't be reaching Manarola until about 12:40 am. He also said that Steve and Jess could ring the bell when they arrived and they would let them in. Well, they finally arrived at the hostel at about 12:50 am - needless to say, we were all really relieved that they were there safe and sound and didn't have to spend the night in the train station.