Italy for the Weekend!

One huge perk about living and working in Europe is that there are ample opportunities to travel. Not only do employees in France get 5 or more weeks of vacation time, but nearby countries like England, Belgium, Germany, and Spain are a relatively short (and inexpensive) train or plane ride away.

A few days after my parents left Paris, my wife suddenly blurted out, "We have always wanted to see Italy -- let's go...  next weekend".

Now, traveling to another country... for the weekend... is an incredibly strange concept for us Americans. Unless you live really close to Mexico or Canada NO ONE does that. And even if you live close, crossing the border and back is such a hassle that it's just not a very common occurrence. (And besides, no one wants to go to the border towns in Mexico.  And Canada is so much like the U.S. what's the point?)

I couldn't think of a single reason NOT to go to Italy for the weekend, so I said, "Yeah, let's do it!"

It's amazing how often impetuous decisions get derailed. Something happens, or you start to get cold feet, or you need more time to plan, and suddenly that thing you were going do next weekend becomes that thing you are going to do in a few months.  Or that thing you never actually wind up doing.  Well, I didn't want that to happen this time so the next day I started researching.

After browsing the web, and talking to some friends at work, I created a list of amazing looking Italian cities to visit. Melanie wanted to take a train and when I charted out the routes I realized that some of the places were going to require five or six transfers! Not ideal for a long weekend.

The first stop for most of the routes was an Italian coastal town called "Ventimiglia", so I decided we should just go there.  A travel website said "Hotel Kaly" was one of the best hotels so I found a room with an ocean view and booked it.

When I got home that night I nervously told Melanie what I had done and she replied, "Well... I guess we're going to Italy for the weekend."

I said, "Yep".  And that was that.

A few days before our scheduled departure we started to get nervous.  Melanie texted me at work to let me know that Ventimiglia has a huge pickpocket problem.  Then I read some bad reviews about the hotel, including one that said, "We were promised a room with an ocean view and we didn't get one.  The hotel didn't even comp us, they just kind of shrugged and said, 'Well, watta ya gonna do?'" Other reviews and friends said, "Don't go to Ventimiglia, it's terrible."

We were starting to think we had messed up our dream trip to Italy; but we already had our tickets and a room reservation, so it was too late to change our minds.

On Friday morning we took an Uber car to the train station and apprehensively began our adventure.

The Gare de Lyon train station handles over 90 million passengers a year!

After a 6 hour train ride, at speeds up to 300 km per hour, we arrived in Nice, France.

France is a very beautiful country. We saw lots of quaint villages from the train.

Stupidly, we didn't think to bring water or snacks, so we were both dehydrated, starving, and cranky by the time we got off the train.  Naturally, life likes to pick those moments to mess with you.

We only had a 15 minute layover before our next train but the monitors didn't have a gate listed and there was no one in the terminal to tell us where to go next.  We could see the letters "t e r" on the monitors, so we slogged our way to the T gate on the other side of the station -- but it clearly wasn't in use any more.

At long last we found a young guy who worked at the station and we tried to ask him for assistance. He was totally disinterested in helping us and kept shrugging his shoulders and saying, "I don't know."  We persisted so he stomped over to a monitor and said in broken English, "No gate!"

We eventually found someone else and he told us to go to gate "G".  So we dragged our stuff over to gate G and waited.  And waited.  There was another passenger there too and we asked her, "Ventimiglia"?  She said, "Yes, but the train should have been here by now."  We watched her bag while she headed off to look for help.  When she returned she was shaking her head, "They just told me to go to "D".  So we loaded up our stuff, went back into the tunnel and found the "D" gate.  There was a train there when we arrived and Melanie and I started to get on it, but the woman called after us, "NO!  NO!  Wrong train!"  Apparently, the monitor was now saying gate "B" was correct.  (I wonder where we would've ended up if that woman hadn't said something?)

So we trudged off to B, hungry, dehydrated, and even crankier than before.  A few minutes later a train pulled up behind us and fortunately Melanie looked up at one of the monitors nearby because it was OUR train... at gate C.  They had moved it AGAIN.

About 40 minutes later we arrived at Vintimille station.  We were in Italy!

We found a cab and directed the driver to take us to our hotel.  We held our breath when we opened the door...  YES!  As promised, our room had a wonderful view of the ocean.

The view from our balcony.

I had made dinner reservations at a highly rated restaurant called "Il Giardino del Gusto".  It was delightful, and we had a fantastic meal.  (Though we both admitted later that nothing really blew our socks off... except the wine.  The wine was incredible!!)

We arrived at 9:00 PM and the restaurant was empty. (Really elegant, right?) 

Cantaloupe and nasturtium sorbet over goat cheese.

Liver terrine and solid gazpacho over a white wine gelée, with herbed crackers

Squid ink pasta with caramelized squid meat

We had about 4 appetizers, 2 main dishes, and a dessert, and I took careful notes on each and every one.  However, remember when I said how good the wine was?  Yeah, it was so good we ordered another bottle.  So my notes go from really detailed to completely indecipherable.  (Unless we really DID eat "eggplat witch potatoor moonshine" and "rabbi olfal ard mashrons".)

Saturday morning was a bit of a blur (literally) but we apparently took a walk down to the beach.

It was a gorgeous day! (That's Monaco, France on the left.)

Melanie loved this little wading pool.

We ate at a restaurant on the beach and I had my first taste of true Italian pizza.  It was divine.

Here's a custom I'll never understand... Europeans eat their pizza with a knife and fork!

Every pizzeria we saw had its own wood fueled pizza oven!

Saturday night we had dinner at a restaurant called "Pasta e Basta".  It was amazing.  First, you choose the kind of fresh pasta you want, then you get to pick from a very large number of different sauces and ingredients.

Hand rolled strazzapreti pasta with tomatoes, bacon, and chopped basil 

I woke up early Sunday morning and went for a walk on the beach.

The beaches along the French and Italian coastline are rocky, and don't have much sand.  People lay on them anyway.

I managed to take this picture just as a wave crashed into the rocks

I got back to the room and told Melanie that I wanted to visit the old part of Ventimiglia, up on the hillside.  She was NOT enthusiastic about that idea and told me later that the only reason she didn't try to talk me out of it was because it was Father's Day.

What an amazing place!  We were both super glad we came.

We felt like we had been transported back in time.

Parts of Ventimiglia are more than 1000 years old!

At one point I saw a small tunnel with a path, leading up a hill. We decided to follow it.

The tunnel opened up and we had a breathtaking view of the ocean, and a door (right).

Melanie took this picture of the door at the end of the path.

What a weekend!  Melanie and I feel so fortunate right now.  A year ago we had a bunch of debt, an overwhelming amount of work that needed to be done on the house and yard, and we spent most of our time watching TV while sitting on the couch.  Now we're free of all that... and taking weekend trips to Italy!

We're both afraid we're going to wake up back in Seattle and realize that this has all been a really nice dream.  Well, if it's just a dream I hope I don't wake up any time soon...