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I started my day sitting in an idyllic cafe having the traditional Italian breakfast of a croissant and a cappuccino, unfortunately interrupted by a noxious old man smoking a cigar upwind of me (sir, really, it’s 9am) and watching some sort of excitable soccer thing on his phone. Presumably he came here from (whispers) the south. No true Milano could bear making nuisance noise in public.

With my flight at 4pm there wasn’t a lot I could do with my day. I moved away from the noxious old man and had another coffee, then I went back to the hotel and lazed about until I had to check out just before midday. I rolled my luggage over to Milano Centrale, found a shuttle bus stop for Malpensa Airport, waited half an hour for the shuttle, then got on it and settled in for the 25 minute ride to the airport.

I arrived 75 minutes later, as there was a car accident on the expressway and traffic was gridlocked for more than half an hour. Note to self: next time take the train. The delay wasn’t a problem in itself, because my flight wouldn't even board for another three hours, but I was trapped in an enclosed space with three dozen other people, every single one of whom seemed to be sniffing, coughing, hacking or sneezing. I caught a nasty cold on my last flight home from Italy; I didn't want a repeat of that. So I huddled as far as I could from everyone else and tried not to breathe.

The good news for my flights was that I got the exit row again for the all-important 11 hour flight from Doha to Perth. The bad news was that I actually had to pay for it this time. I’m starting to worry what my credit card bill is going to look like; the Australian dollar has been in freefall against the euro, and I’ve not been holding back on the spendage. Oh well.

The flight from Milan to Doha went smoothly. The flight attendants, bless them, were as free with the booze as they usually are, and I had a little pre-dinner G&T, a nice glass of prosecco with dinner, and a whiskey on the rocks afterwards. The seat next to me was empty again… I haven’t actually had anyone sit next to me on any flight this holiday. It’s not that I’m ungrateful, just feeling existentially rejected.

I had about three hours in Doha, which I spent sitting in the arboretum, eating a midnight snack and listening to fake birdsong pretending to come out of the trees. Then I boarded another A380 for the final leg to Perth. For some reason the selection of movies on the entertainment system was much smaller for the much longer flight, but between watching, dozing, listening to music and podcasts, and doing crosswords on my screen, I made it through. 

All that remained was to touch down in Perth, deal with the impartial horror of Australian customs and airport bureaucracy, buy up big in the duty-free (credit card bills be damned), be collected by a friend, and get home. 

Last

I woke early and left the hotel a little after 9am, giving myself plenty of time to lug my bags the few hundred metres up to the train station, buy a ticket, and then catch the 10.10am train to Milan. I arrived at the station around 9.30am, and found a biglietto machine… and the 10.10am was fully booked.

Dammit!

Instead I had to buy a ticket on the 12.38pm, in more than three hours’ time. With heavy, bulky bags to carry I couldn’t just go for a walk or do some shopping, so I worked through the next three hours doing some writing and photo-editing in a cafe, dragging the bags down to Emporium to see if I could still access their wifi (nope – they were closed and their steel security shutters blocked the wifi signal), playing sudokus on my phone and standing on the platform checking my watch every 30 seconds.

The train eventually arrived and nearly four hours later I was in Milan. After checking into my hotel, I decided to do one last whip around of my favourite bits of the city. So I had an aperol spritz at the bistro where I’d had my first aperitivo (I wasn’t hungry enough for the full board of carbs), then an old-fashioned at a bar in the Isola district with a name that called to me.

Then over to the Corso Buenos Aires where I finally found some shoes to replace my Florentine leather skate shoes. Then one last late aperitivo at the Monkey Bar near my hotel – something with mezcal, lime, elderflower and fresh basil.

The sweetest little moment of the day was when I was sitting in the Isola, enjoying the gathering twilight, when some guy whizzed past on one of those monowheel motorised skateboard things, blasting ‘You Make My Dreams Come True’ by Hall and Oates. I’m going to miss this place.

Escape

I started my final full day in La Spezia at a little cafe around the corner from my hotel. I sat outside to eat my giant custard-filled brioche, only to find that I was sitting next to a chain-smoker having a lengthy and dramatic FaceTime call with her mother while her poor little chihuahua shivered at her feet. Then, apparently taking this as permission to be socially appalling, the Chinese woman on the other side of me started watching videos in loud, screeching Mandarin on her phone. I gave up on both fresh air and peace and scuttled inside.

It was my final day in La Spezia but also Liberation Day, an Italian public holiday to celebrate the overthrow of the Fascists in 1945. So apart from a few tourist cafes, everything is closed. I took this as a good last opportunity to do some exploring, and walked up into the mountains on the outskirts of the city to get a panoramic view.

Getting up to the first outlook was relatively easy. Skirt around the naval shipyards, follow the main road for a bit, then break off and head up one of those little right-of-ways that have existed for centuries. It was another Kilometre of a Thousand Stairs, but this one was heavily overgrown and generously sprayed with spring wildflowers. Clearly no one used this path apart from a handful of local nonnas who probably powered up and down it like elderly hunched triathletes twice a day.

When the path topped out, there was no clear view, despite the promises of Google Maps. I eventually realised that I had to go up the driveway with multiple No Entry signs, then stop just out of sight of the grand villa/castello above it and get my panorama of La Spezia’s harbor and take some photos.

I then went back down to the main road and continued on to another lookout point for La Spezia itself, with Google Maps promised was just a couple of kilometres up the road. The only problem was… Italian roads. Pedestrians are not much of a consideration on semi-rural Italian roads, especially when the terrain is steep. There tends to be a retaining wall right next to the road on one side, and a crash barrier hard against the road on the other. With Italian drivers of questionable competency and responsibility speeding past on both sides, I was scuttling along the narrowest of safe paths.

But I eventually got to the La Spezia panorama, only to find that it didn’t exist. The view existed, but there was no verge for cars, or indeed me, to pull over and admire it. There was just the road, the crash barrier, and a steep slope down to a valley a hundred metres below.

By straddling the barrier I got my photos… and then realised that the only way back to La Spezia, about a kilometre away as the crow flies, was to backtrack the five kilometres I’d just covered.

Well, bugger.

I once again braved the Highway of Italian Death, and was relieved when I got back to the right-of-way that led down to the city. My Garmin later informed me that it was the fastest I’d ever covered that distance: it’s amazing, the incentive of running away from homicidal Italian drivers.

For my final La Spezia aperitivo, I’d planned to go back to NoMad for more mezcal miracles, but they were closed for the public holiday. So I went next door to Karma, whose cocktails are just as good, and celebrating the joy of La Spezia boozing one last time.

Goals

My day started in a local cafe with a very Italian moment; a couple of middle-aged polizia, in uniform, with guns, standing at the bar, flirting as Italian men do with the attractive waitress, who was pouring them a shot of vodka… at a little before 9am. I got the impression that it would take a literal murder occurring on patio outside to drag them off to do their duty.

But I had places to be. Today would be my best chance to finish my goal of walking between all five of the Cinque Terre villages, with the leg from Manarola to Riomaggiore, even though it’s the day before a public holiday and a lot of people are taking the day off, and thus the train stations and the trails would be packed.

Unlike the trail between Corniglia and Manarola which went up, then flat for most of its length, then down, the trail from Manarola to Riomaggiore went up… and up… and up… until there was a flat bit about the size of my living room, if my living room was infested with dirty French hikers, then down it went until it hit Riomaggiore. But it was actually easier going than previous times, because the trail was so crowded that everybody was forced to stop every 10-20 metres to let others pass, so I never had a chance to get over-exerted.

On the way up I discovered a woke totem pole: a pride flag topped by a Star of St Greta.

Because this hike only took about an hour, as one last Cinque Terre act I took the train from Riomaggiore up to Monterosso, because I realised I’d eaten gelato in every town in Cinque Terre except this one. It also gave me a chance to go down to the beach and pick up some interesting pebbles to add to the collection I combed in Amalfi four years ago.

But before gelato, I was peckish for actual food, so I chose the least overrun ristoranti I could find for some lunch. It turned out that the reason it wasn’t overrun was because it was a fine dining establishment, with main courses orbiting $55-60. But I’m on holiday, and after the culinary fail that was Osteria Inferno, I needed a good Italian meal to reaffirm my faith in their race… which this place delivered.

I started with an amuse bouche of a fried cod ball, served on pickled cabbage, served on a rock, with a piece of bread daubed with black garlic truffle sauce and an olive oil burre.

My main course was a medley of heirloom carrots and octopus tentacles, with a sweet carrot puree sauce and little aerated foofs of goat cheese. In addition, there were tiny little specks of courgette, pickled onion and caper. It was served with a glass of the house prosecco, which was served with all of the deliberation of a fine wine, including a taste test.

For dessert, I asked for an espresso and some gelato, as I wanted to see if posh gelato is different to commoner gelato. However, the pained expression that flitted across my waiter’s face when I asked, and the fact that the gelato never appeared, leads me to believe that they just gracefully “forgot”. Gelato may be considered a cheap street food for children here; I decided to respect their expertise.

However, I still needed to have gelato in Monterosso, so I stopped at a street stall and had a scoop of malaga flavour. I have no idea what malaga flavour is – it may have something to do with toffee – but it was delightful, as all gelato is.

For aperitivo I went inland a couple of blocks to a place called Emporium that I’d noticed on my walks. They didn’t have a cocktail menu but they were well-versed in the classics, so I had an Old-Fashioned, and then a Martini. As I’ve been feeling guilty about eating nothing but bar snacks, and I needed dinner, so I also ordered a tapas-sized beef tartare, which was served with honey mustard and toasted foccacia fingers, and was wonderful.

Polished

Today I decided to take one last day trip on this holiday and ride the InterCity train down the coast to Pisa. This took a while – the 10am train was sold out, the 11.23am train was delayed twenty minutes, and La Spezia train station was so crammed with tourists that it was difficult to actually walk down the concourse – but I got there eventually.

For such an iconic city, Pisa seems a little down at heel and struggling. The rail lines in the train station are thick with weeds, and the walls and doors haven’t been cleaned in a while. Crossing out of the station, there are sketchy people hanging about in doorways, and a homeless man passed out face down in the piazza. Many of the buildings in the main thoroughfares are shabby and in need of either a paint or a pressure wash.

Of course, once you step into the Piazza dei Miracoli, everything is clean and polished until gleaming. Pisa has one golden egg-laying goose, and they are sure as hell going to keep it.

I was surprised that it was relatively easy to get a good photo of the tower. There’s one specific point for getting THE iconic shot that everyone wants, but everywhere else is relatively open. Let others try to hold up the Leaning Tower of Pisa; Explorer Sam is a TINY PLASTIC AGENT OF CHAOS!

It clearly went to his head because he then tried to push over the Baptistry, which didn’t quite hit the same.

After doing the necessary tourist stuff, I just ambled around the rest of the old town, as is my way. Away from the Piazza dei Miracoli and the main thoroughfares leading to it, the city was actually pretty peaceful and charming. It’s an old old town, with crooked little streets and medieval marketplaces, and one can feel like a side character in a Shakespeare play wandering through it.

Well, except for the free wifi at the cafe at which I stopped for a cappuccino. Shakespeare is all well and good but some of us need to check our Instas, babes.

Explorer Sam was just mortified at the filth that passes for crockery here. For shame.

Back in La Spezia, with the arrival of the glorious aperitivo hour, I took myself to the Golden Whim, which sounds like the name of a yacht owned by a couple of wealthy gay men, but is actually a cocktail bar on the same little street at NoMad and Karma. The bourbon-based cocktail was adequate but not great, but as for the snacks, what they lacked in quantity they made up in quality. Along with the normal staples, there was a peeled prawn in chilli mango dressing, anchovies on toast, cheesy potato bread, and fresh housemade crisps, richly flavoured and salty and delectable.

Relaxed

Today was a functional day, spent just relaxing, reading, writing and generally taking a break from death marches and gelato consumption. I got up relatively late, and went out for what the Italians call an “American” breakfast, which is to genuine American breakfasts what Olive Garden is to genuine Italian dinners.

Kind of a travesty, but delicious. At least they used actual bacon rather than just frying up some prosciutto.

Then I meandered around the city, looking for replacements for my beloved Florentine leather skate shoes. Sadly every store was either selling formal brogues, those douchey leather slip-on loafers that Italians seem to love so much, or big over-engineered sneakers in eye-raping colours. The old school Italian shoes I want are not wanted by the men of Liguria. But I found an OVS, so I felt honour-bound to buy a couple of work shirts

On my way home I picked up a panini for lunch, and spent a pleasant afternoon in my hotel room with the french doors to the balcony open, letting in the thrum of the city and the fresh sea air, eating my sandwich and drinking that excellent 2.5 euro Tuscan wine I bought a couple of days ago, writing blog posts, editing photos, listening to music and chilling.

And then it was my favourite time of day; the Aperitivo Hour! I tried to go back to NoMad but it’s Saturday night and the streets were packed, and it was full of customers. So I went to a less popular bar next door, Karma, and discovered that its lesser popularity is completely undeserved. I had a brilliant smoked tequila margarita, with the same basic ingredients as a standard margarita plus freya smoke, which made the flavours incredibly nuanced. And the snacks were next level; just to confirm, all of this was built into the price of the cocktail, which was only 9 euros.

Encouraged by the deliciousness of the first cocktail, I decided to order another. It was a fascinating mix of cherry and basil liqueurs, rosso vermouth, soda, bitters and a dash of cranberry. It was so well-balanced that I needed to concentrate to pick out the individual flavours, but they were all definitely there. It was fruity and floral but not as sweet as I’d feared it might be.

Along with the new cocktail, my waitress asked if I wanted another platter of snacks. “Si, grazie”, I said, in a small shamed voice. But hey, it was dinner.

On my way out I made sure to congratulate and thank the bartender, a hip black guy with mini-dreads, who I’d determined was the creator of these cocktails. He didn’t speak English but he seemed to understand my praise and was happy.

Paths

I would have liked to take today off from hiking, to give my body a little more chance to recover, but with the weekend coming I suspected that the already busy trails would become positively infested with weekenders. It would be better, I thought, to hike today and Monday.

I started where I left off yesterday, in Corniglia. After arriving on the train it took me a while to find the path to the next village – adequate signage isn’t the Italians’ strong suit – but by process of elimination I found it behind the train station. And then, about half a kilometre in, I found the path blocked, with a notice that it was closed for repairs.

Italian signs like this are often best ignored, but this one was ziplocked to a fence panel that had been ziplocked to the walls with no possible way around, so obviously, it meant business. Reading the notice, it turns out that the seaside trail from Corniglia to the next village, Manarola, had been closed for repairs since 2018. Knowing the Italians, in the intervening five years they probably hadn’t even drawn up the plans yet.

Dispirited, I returned to Corniglia train station. I consulted my map, and realised that I could still take the mountain route to Manarola. It would take longer and involve gaining some altitude, but, I figured, if it was too tiring I could just skip my plan to walk on after Manarola to Riomaggiore.

So I did this, but between the little misstep down the sea path, and the fact that the new trail started up in Corniglia rather than at the train station, I’d now walked 3kms without even starting to hike. As compensation, now that I was in Corniglia I could buy some celebratory gelato, and also a cap, since I could feel my scalp burning even in the mild European sun. The only shop I could find in Corniglia that sold caps charged 20 euros for them, which is outrageous for a clothing item that would have cost them, at most, 1 euro. But I figured that if it was a choice between sunburn and sunstroke and losing 20 euros, I’d rather lose the euros.

Once I found the mountain path to Manarola, there began something I like to call the Kilometre of a Thousand Stairs. Stairs after stairs after stairs. I worked out later it was the equivalent of climbing a 200 storey building, while simultaneously walking more than a kilometre. Even with lighter clothing and a little mental preparedness, I still found myself leaning against a post, or a wall, or a tree, struggling for breath, my heart pounding, covered in sweat, and still facing more stairs as far as they eye could see, and cursing my own naivete.

But somehow, the Kilometre of a Thousand Stairs came to an end. I fell to the ground and kissed the sweet, non-vertical dust, then, after a suitable recovery period, got up and continued on my way.

The path now levelled out and passed through densely wooded slopes peppered with spring wildflowers, offering occasionally spectacular views of the Mediterranean far below. It gave me an opportunity to take some more pictures of Explorer Sam, doing the things an explorer does.

Eventually, the woods gave way to terraced vineyards, and it was after a few minutes of walking through these that I discovered the best part of the hike. Apparently, while one is on a gruelling hike through isolated farmland in Cinque Terre, there’s a place where you can stop and have a glass of wine. Not from some itinerant gypsy pouring rotgut into an old jug, but from a charming Italian waiter offering tasting notes while serving a nicely chilled chenin blanc in a proper wine glass.

If I’d turned a corner and discovered woodland animals in waistcoats having a tea party, it would have been less surprising, and also less delightful.

In the unlikely event that they did the same thing on the outskirts of Perth, or, heaven help us all, Amsterdam, they’d cut corners and use disposable plasticware, or only serve warm reds. But this is Italy; of course they take the extra steps necessary to serve wine to hikers in a civilised way. Non siamo animali!

This, right here, is why I love Italy.

After my pleasant glass of dry white, I proceeded on, now, fortunately, almost entirely downhill. There were further spectacular views over Manarola, the sea, and back towards Corniglia, Vernazza and Monterosso in the distance. By this stage I’d hiked for nearly 10kms, and yet I could see Corniglia train station just a stone’s throw away. It’s never been truer that it’s the journey, not the destination.

I had a pleasant late lunch in Manarola of classic bruschetta and a glass of prosecco, then some more gelato, because naturalamente, then caught the train back to La Spezia, pausing only to assist some elderly Americans trying to operate a ticket machine via instinct and intuition rather than reading the instructions on the screen. Once on the train I encountered a ticket inspector, for the first time since I’ve been shuttling back and forth on the Cinque Terre trains. He was in his 20s, possibly gay, wearing his uniform as if he’d slept in it, and going about his work with a fairly unique mix of tired disinterest and dry vindictiveness. He asked to see the ticket of an obese American man who had parked himself next to me, and the American replied that his wife had the tickets, somewhere further down the crowded carriage, then sat back, as if that were the end of it. I need to see your ticket, said the inspector. My wife has it, repeated the American. I don’t know your wife, said the inspector in a tone of mild but pointed exasperation that was somehow even more biting than an active sneer. The American blinked and looked baffled, as if he’d never had a service worker speak to him that way AND expect him to get off his fat ass and fetch something. The stared at each other for several seconds, and then he hauled himself up and wobbled off in search of his wife. It was glorious.

The hilarious thing about the whole paradigm of checking tickets on the Cinque Terre trains is that they are so large and packed, and the distances travelled are so short, that there’s no possible way an inspector can fully check a single carriage, let alone an entire train. This inspector had clearly embraced this, and was content to be a sort of Italian railway grinch, just ruining the day for a handful of people on each trip. I watched as he also busted a dude with a top knot on the Riomaggiore platform, then ground down a flaky French couple and their five noisy children, all without any shred of empathy. I think I may have found my spirit animal.

In the evening I repaired to another nearby bar, Chinasky, for aperitivo. They made me a proper limoncello spritz (ie, one that renders you head-spinningly drunk before you’ve even finished it) with bar snacks of crostini, shaved prosciutto, little needles of hard cheese, biscotti, potato crisps and some little panini things, all for 6 euros, or less than $10.

Trials

One of the chief tourist attractions in Cinque Terre is the hiking trails in the national park that encompasses the five villages. This is relevant to my interests, but I had somehow absorbed the ‘trail’ part more than the ‘hiking’ part, and was not really prepared for what was to come.

I took the train up to Monterosso, at the northern end of the five villages, then walked to Vernazza, then on to Corniglia. By Corniglia, I was sore, I was dehydrated, and my legs were actually shaking.

I had pictured a pleasant walk in the countryside, through dappled woods and maybe a bluebell glen or two, rather than a gruelling death march across a bucking and rearing landscape, and had dressed accordingly. In an uncharacteristic moment of foresight, I’d purchased a pair of Adidas crosstrainers in Amsterdam, to wear when walking or gymming. They proved to be the absolute bare minimum I needed for the terrain. I was wearing a moderately heavy jumper, and I wasn’t carrying a water bottle. When I was leaning against a wall halfway up a particularly precipitous section, my heart hammering, sweat trickling down my arms and soaking my jumper, head spinning from dehydration, I reflected that I could have prepared better.

Fortunately this is Italy, so at both of my destination villages, I was able to buy restorative gelato. I had refreshing scoops of mango and passionfruit at Vernazza, and in Corniglia, a scoop of lemon & basil that was sensational, both flavours perfectly balanced; just what I expect from Italian cuisine.

In the unpleasant bit between gelati, I started to identify the various other hikers by their most salient (to me) features. French couple with sulking tween daughter. American woman who never shuts up. British man eagerly explaining League Soccer to his amazingly patient American brother-in-law. Japanese couple immaculately dressed for the Corso yet inexplicably hiking. Old people taking up twice the normal space on the narrow path because they’re hiking with ski poles, presumably just in case there’s a deep snow drift here on the Italian riviera. And of course, Australian woman swigging a beer while hiking. She must have been a Queenslander.

I got back to La Spezia just after 4pm, and after changing into comfier shoes, I decided to walk to the nearest supermarket to pick up some coathangers (there aren’t enough in my room), some fruit (man cannot live by booze and bar snacks alone) and other odds and ends. However, it turns out that the La Spezia old town is a lot like other tourist-oriented Italian cities, in that it’s all fine if you want bread or Prosecco or $300 shoes, but if you want coathangers, or a screwdriver, or even a fork, there are none of those for sale nearby. I had to walk out of the old town about fifteen minutes, straight up the colonnaded arcade that stretches for a kilometre or so along one of the main thoroughfares, to reach a Conad… which didn’t have any coathangers.

Fortunately while walking up I’d made note of one of those cluttered little variety shops that sells a seemingly random range of cheap Chinese-made crap – plastic buckets, shoe storage, ugly vases, baby gates, electronics cables, off-brand cosmetics that will burn your skin off, brooms, socket sets and, yes, several varieties of coathangers. I picked out the cheapest set I could find, discovered that they were vaguely sticky and smelt strongly of vinegar, then put them back and picked out a more expensive set that seemed more inert.

On my walk back I found another supermarket, a brand I hadn’t heard of before, and popped in for a bottle of wine, some apples, and some chocolate. Later on that evening I went to open the wine and discovered that, because I am a dumbass, I’d bought one with a cork. Fortunately one of the few useful things you can buy in the old town is a corkscrew, which I picked up in a tiny Asian convenience store. The owner didn’t speak English at all, but luckily the motions for using a corkscrew are fairly clear, especially when I helpfully added the ‘pop’ of the cork coming out.

For aperitivo I tried another small bar, Eclettica, just a block away from me. The waiter greeted me warmly and asked if I wanted the same as last time. I looked at him in confusion. He looked at me with a confident smile. I broke it to him that I’d never been in this bar before, and he looked so crestfallen that I envy the charisma of my apparent doppelganger.

All was forgiven when I got what was, basically, a pickletini: Patron tequila, an aged vermouth, and a pickle. It wasn’t as dry as I normally like my martinis, but I do not question the wisdom of any bartender confident enough to create a pickletini.

Sure enough, when I went in the pay, the bartender eagerly asked me if I enjoyed the pickletini – I’m assuming it’s a rare customer who buys one – and we geeked out over the kind of vermouth he used and the fact that his secret ingredient was a dash of pickle juice, making it a dirty pickletini. No free mezcal shots this time, presumably because my novelty has already worn off, thanks to my doppelganger.

I didn’t overdo it with the bar snacks, because I’d decided to follow Marco’s advice and try a local institution, Osteria Inferno, for a proper dinner. It turns out that Osteria Inferno is very popular, and since I didn’t have a reservation, they couldn’t seat me until 10pm. But I’m on holiday, and I don’t mind waiting for a good Italian meal.

And I’m still waiting for a good Italian meal, because dinner at Osteria Inferno ranged from mediocre to bad. I started with a primi of tagliatelli with pesto, which came out in far too large a portion for an entree, and lacked any sort of zing or nuance to separate it from something you’d buy in the supermarket. My secondi was stewed tripe, which I ordered after I’d tasted a wonderful tripe in Florence four years earlier, with a side of mixed grilled vegetables. The tripe stew was just icky, both in flavour and in texture. The tripe was a little fibrous, and they’d used capers generously in the sauce, and that slightly sour earthiness did not work at all with the tripe. Meanwhile the mixed grilled vegetables were… eggplant. I’m guessing the kitchen had run out of the other veggies.

At least the ¼ litre of house white was very nice, and the bill was only 33 euros, so I had not wasted a large amount of money. But I may have to return to my normal holiday diet of booze and bar snacks. And an apple.

La Spezia

Despite being exhausted I only slept for about six hours, possibly due to the calliope of snores I had going on around me – it was actually kind of beautiful when they fell into syncopated rhythms, like a narcoleptic dance party. But there was no need to rush, so I lingered over breakfast, walked over to the train station to buy my next ticket, came back to pack and check out, then rolled the luggage back to the train station to catch the 12.10pm to La Spezia, on the Tuscan coast.

The train was an InterCity semi-express, but even so it took nearly three and a half hours to reach La Spezia, because this section of Italy is 90% mountain and that rarely allows trains to travel in straight lines.

But I wasn’t resentful. After the cold grey hauteur of Amsterdam, it was like being born anew when the train first powered out of a tunnel and into a landscape of warm spring sunshine, earth-toned villas, palm trees and the Mediterranean Sea sparkling away to the horizon.

When the train arrived in La Spezia, I trundled my bags out of the station and down the hill towards the old town, having more or less worked out where my “guesthouse” was. However, it turned out to be the ‘less’ side of the more or less dichotomy. Eventually, using a serious slab of my very limited roaming data, I managed to locate the street address… and found a fish restaurant, a barber, a women’s clothing store, an empty building undergoing construction, and another fish restaurant.

I had a sudden, horrible suspicion that I’d been the victim of a booking.com scam, having paid a thousand dollars to roll my luggage up to a non-existent address.

However, Google Maps was quite insistent that the guesthouse existed, and after several minutes I found a plaque next to an anonymous glass and metal door with the guesthouse’s name on it.

I rang the bell. There was no response.

There was a phone number on the plaque, so I rang that. The Italian phone exchanged chugged and sparked, as Italian phone exchanges tend to do, then connected me with a cheerful man who told me, in broken English, that he’d be right down. Sixty seconds later, I saw, through the glass door, a man trotting down the stairs inside. He opened the door, gestured for me to enter with a brisk “Pronto”, and held it open as I got my bags inside. When I turned around to do introductions, I found that he’d walked off into the building site. He wasn’t the hotelier; just a nice Italian man holding a door open for me.

I wandered around the foyer and up the stairs a little. On the first floor there was another plaque for the guesthouse, but the door was locked and no one answered the bell.

So unless this was the most dedicated and well-thought out scam in existence, the guesthouse did actually exist. But getting into it was proving to be like a reverse escape room.

Several minutes later, a chipper middle-aged man opened the exterior door, called out my name, and introduced himself as Marco, the owner. And within five minutes we were in my room, and I had keys and a town map and the wifi details, and all was well. It turns out that Marco simply epitomises the Italian paradigm that getting 90% of the details right is good enough, hence the slightly incorrect address, the slightly inadequate signage, and the slightly inadequate communication. Ah, bella Italia.

By this stage it was after 5pm, and needing aperitivo, I did what every 21^st century traveller does and googled “cool bar near me” and picked the first one with photos that I liked. It was still a little early for aperitivo, so I did a little reconnaissance walk around the La Spezia old town. I liked what I saw. Multiple artisanal gelaterias? Check. Colonoaded shopping arcades? Check. Cute little pedestrian streets lined with interesting shops and restaurants? Check. Big open air market selling fresh vegetables, fish, flowers, bread and cheese? Check. Statue of Garibaldi waving a sword from the back of a rearing horse? Well, maybe not immediately interesting but at least it proves I’m still really in Italy, so check.

Just before 7pm I took myself to the cool bar I’d identified, NoMad, and made my request for aperitivo. It wasn’t cheap, but I’d hit the aperitivo jackpot. For a start, they had wifi. They also had a mezcal-heavy house-created cocktail list, and I ordered a drink of mezcal, calvados and pear liqueur, which was amazing. For an extra 5 euros (so, 17 euros in total) I also got a tasting board of proscuitto, cheeses, toast fingers, and little paninis topped with cream cheese, sultanas and poppy seeds, or oregano crusted lamb, or cheese, sundried tomato and basil, or smoked salmon. Plus of course, the usual green olives, crisps and peanuts.

When the waitress learned I didn’t speak Italian, she brought out one of the owners, whose English was better, to chat with me and make the usual Australia-Italy connections (“Ah, Australia, my best friend owns a bar in Sydney!”). And then, with plenty of booze, snacks and wifi, I parked myself there for the next two hours, enjoying lo spirito d’italia. I ordered another drink that was fine but less thrilling (a blend of pistachio liqueur, cognac and mango, which the owner admitted was for a different sort of patron, and laughed gratefully when I agreed that it was a Girl’s Drink and I harboured no resentment for that), and they topped up my crisps and olives. When I eventually went in to settle my bill, I chatted with the other owner about our shared love of mezcal, then he introduced me to the bartender to pull apart the function of the ingredients within the drink, then he pulled down a bottle of mezcal he’d just ordered in and poured generous shots for the three of us to down. I opined that it was very smooth and balanced, which he seemed to appreciate.

But at the back of my slightly sozzled mind I was panicking slightly. Surely a mistake has been made here? I am not the person who gets invited into bars to do tequila shots with the owner. Have you somehow confused me with the Queen of the Extroverts I met in Amsterdam? Has some of her boundless social energy rubbed off on me?

I guess that in Perth I’m just some guy, whereas in Italy I’m an exotic Australian. I could get used to this mantle of international mystique.

 

Commuted

The day started at 4.30am. My friend had to start an early shift at work and has a long commute, and I had an early train anyway, so we both said left the house at 5am, said our goodbyes, and I slow walked myself and luggage to Amsterdam Centraal, which is less than 2kms away and only took a little over half an hour.

I settled in for a two hour wait for my train, being occasionally bugged (and once abused) for money by homeless people that somehow exist despite the wisdom and compassion of the citizens of Amsterdam. I was only wearing a light sweater since I’d assumed that the railway station would be heated, but I was wrong. When the time came for my train to depart, I was shivering and pretending that I wasn’t hugging myself to stay warm.

The time for my train to depart came and went without any actual train. +5 minuten, said the board. Then +10 minuten. Then, unbelievably, +60 minuten.

I went off to ask an information desk person what was going on, because with a 60 minute delay, I would miss my connecting train in Basel. When I found an information desk, way over on the other side of the station, the attendant, in the manner I’d witnessed in Dutch public transport staff across the city over the last few days, told me I had to sort it out myself in Basel, with an implication of frustration that I hadn’t already worked this out like an intelligent person.

So back to the platform I went, pausing only to have a ghetto moment of crouching on a bustling concourse next to my open luggage, getting out another jumper to put on over my sweater.

When I got back to the platform, the screen had bumped the delay back to 40 minutes, which would be bad news for anyone who’d taken the +60 at its word gone away for a coffee and then turned up after 45 minuten. But then it bumped back up to +50 minuten, and there it stayed until the sleek white bullet train finally showed up. We rolled out of Amsterdam Centraal 50 minutes late, guaranteeing that I’d miss my connection. So Amsterdam pissed in my face one last time, which probably has a special name in their oh-so-open-minded sex clubs.

A couple of hours later, when the conductor was checking my ticket, he told me that due to the delay, passengers for Basel needed to get off at Ehrenfeld, in Germany, stay on the same platform, then get on the next train, which would take them on to Basel. He rattled this all off in heavily-accented English, and I had to chase after him once I’d found a pen and some paper to write down the name of the station and the number of the train. In a rare moment of public spiritedness, or possibly due to the screeches of American tourists somewhere else on the train demanding to speak to a conductor’s manager, the train’s PA system later spelled out exactly what we needed to do, as per what the conductor had told me. When we were just out of Ehrenfeld, most of us collected our luggage and shuffled to the doors.

Then… oopsie, said the PA. Scratch that. You’ll be getting off at Cologne instead. Cue groans from various cohorts of passengers, as the announcement was made in Dutch, then German, then finally English.

This train will be terminating at Cologne, the PA added a few minutes later. For those of you traveling to Basel… well, we heard a rumour that there’s a 107 sometime after one o’clock that goes to Basel, so hey, you’ll probably be fine. If it exists, I guess it’ll be on the departures board. Well, I’m going on my bratwurst break. Peace out!

I may be loose in my translation, but that was the tone and gist of it.

And so just before midday my late train dumped me in Cologne. After seeing nothing useful on the platform, I went to the main concourse to look at the departures board, which mentioned the 107 and/or Basel not at all.

I was not impressed. I had no interest in being in Cologne. If I wanted to hang out with a bunch of Germans, I’d have gone to a BDSM club in Amsterdam.

I noticed that the departure boards on the individual platforms projected much further into the future than the main station one, so logically, if I walked around and looked at all of them, I might see at which one a theoretical 107 was scheduled. I did this, still of course dragging my luggage behind me like an inexperienced hobo, and eventually found that platform 6 had a 107 just after 1pm going to Basel.

To celebrate, I took my own bratwurst break. It was actually pretty good – I can see why train drivers would prefer it to delivering passengers to their destinations.

Pausing only to take a photo out the station doors at Cologne cathedral, which looms darkly over the train station like something Tim Burton might devise with a really generous budget, I shuffled up to platform 6. In the space of literally five minutes, I was badgered by a homeless man selling newspapers, a possibly autistic man wanting to know if I had any refundable bottles or cans on my person (because sure, that’s something I carry around with me), and a bleary-eyed man hiding a mostly empty bottle of vodka behind his back, who just mumbled something at me in German and only needed a head shake to send him on his way.

But the 170 finally turned up and I could board. Unfortunately my seat allocation was for my original train, the 255, and this was no longer relevant, so I just had to wait until the train started moving and find an empty seat. I eventually sat next to a chatty little old lady from Germany who was off to visit her daughter and granddaughter in Freiburg. When I mentioned that I couldn’t find the restaurant car for a coffee, she offered me an apple instead. But if traditional German fairy tales have taught us anything, it’s not to accept shiny apples from old ladies you’ve only just met.

The 170 was trundling through Baden Baden about the time that my connecting train from Basel to Milan was leaving without me. Around an hour and a half later I arrived in Basel, with just enough time to exchange my old ticket for a new one on the 5.28pm Eurocity to Milan, which would fortunately get me into Milan only two hours later than originally scheduled.

When it came, the new train was crowded, and the passengers were a little rougher than the well-bred Milanese who’d accompanied me on the Milan-Basel run five days earlier. The woman sitting next to me had a fluorescently magenta coat, two purses (one hot pink, the other plum), and a cigarette stink cloud that could be detected from orbit, while the man sitting opposite us had an open beer when he sat down, and he cracked a second one eight minutes into the journey. And these were big German half litre beers, not the frou-frou little 330ml cans we have in Australia.

Fortunately both of them, as well as the majority of the other passengers, got off either before or at Bern. By the time dusk fell, as we were riding through the spectacular mountain passes near the Matterhorn, it was just me and a handful of Japanese tourists in the carriage. We arrived in Milan a couple of minutes before 10pm, and after 18 hours on the go, I wearily dragged my luggage to the youth hostel a block from the station.

It was my first youth hostel. When booking my holiday, I didn’t really have any way of knowing that today was the first day of the Salone del Mobile, the highlight of Milan Design Week. Ordinarily this might interest me, but Milan Design Week is huge, and hotel prices go up with demand. Specifically, my nice little hotel room from last week, for which I paid 90 euros a night, was now 660 euros a night.

Similarly, the shared bunk room in the hostel, which normally goes for around 20 euros, was now 109. To judge from my bunkmates – a nice middle class Indian girl, an Italian businessman, a well-dressed Spanish youth and a buff 30-something partyboy who didn’t end up sleeping in his bunk – I wasn’t the only person who was forced into backpacker accommodation by the functioning of the free market. Even as I checked in, the place was full to bursting, with the bar and the foyer crammed with dozens of people chatting and drinking and watching the soccer on a big screen.

It’s not a place I’d normally consider, but there was actually a really nice, happy, friendly vibe. If I was thirty years younger – and not the fearful, socially inept bozo I was at 24 – I’d probably find it a really enjoyable place to stay and make travel friends.

When the desk clerk heard about my day, he gave me an extra free drink token, because he was a lovely Italian person rather than a supercilious Dutch asshole, who would have no doubt chastised me for not already knowing what to do when a train runs an hour late. And so it was that I finished my day with a complimentary aperol spritz in a crowded bar on the opening night of the Salone del Mobile, which was a darnsight better than sleeping on the platform of a train station with the drunks and that one guy collecting their empties.

 

Sincerity

 I spent my last full morning in Amsterdam wandering around trying to find a “coffee shop” that actually sells coffee. It’s quite a task in Amsterdam, as you can imagine.

It didn’t help that nothing much seems to happen in central Amsterdam before 9am, which is possibly due to the fact that between 6am and 9am an army of African and Middle-Eastern street cleaners and garbage men are required to remove all of the accumulated broken glass, fast food wrappers, drug paraphernalia and vomit of the previous evening. That way, the good, sophisticated, diverse, open-minded people of Amsterdam can step out onto the streets, onto their bicycles or into their electric cars, and pretend that it wasn’t a trash-filled cesspit half an hour earlier.

In case you hadn’t noticed the subtle hints, yes, I still hate Amsterdam. On bad days I despise it. It’s a testament to how much I like my friend that I even set foot in this rotten city. After much consideration, fuming and walking about swearing audibly, I’ve distilled it down to Amsterdam’s simultaneous characteristics of being crass and vulgar, and insufferably smug and self-righteous. It’s the atheistic equivalent of a sanctimonious church lady who is proud of the fact that she’s never even spoken to a Muslim and is adamant that Jesus was white. They’re so convinced that they are the benchmark for enlightened urban living that if you point out that most of the service workers for their dirty jobs are refugees, or that their default of using long-life milk in coffee is an abomination, or that basic 1 bedroom apartments that cost a million dollars isn’t a good thing, or that tolerating empty eyed drug users shuffling around the squares isn’t virtuous, they’ll just sniff and regard you as ignorant and/or jealous. The ambient feeling in many Italian cities is joy; in Amsterdam it’s smugness.

This is despite vignettes like this: broken glass, used drug vial, and a dead mouse. Stay classy, Amsterdam.

After I convinced a chunky young woman to sell me a croissant and a properly sourced but terrible-tasting flat white, I walked up to the Hermitage to have a look at an exhibition of paintings from Rembrandt and his contemporaries. Most of them could be retitled “Rhapsody in Muddy Brown”, but I’m nothing if not creative, so I put some extra effort in.

Candlewax on your nipples just isn’t the same when you have to do it yourself, Godefridus Schlacken, 1700

 

Esther, relieved that the king’s request for her to stroke the tip of his rod doesn’t mean what she thought it meant, Jan Adriaensz van Staveren, 1645

 

All it takes to keep the town drunk under control is a quick lute jab to the ‘nads, Jan Steen, 1677

As you can see, the cheap smuttiness of this stupid city is rubbing off on me. Tee hee hee… rubbing off.

In the evening we got drunk on cheap cocktails on the roof terrace of a friend of my friend, a 30-something Chilean woman with that dialed-up-to-11 extrovert energy that thrills and terrifies introverts like me and my friend. As he said to me later, “You never know what she’s going to do,” in a tone that was simultaneously envious and haunted. Once we were nicely sozzled, we took a tram over to a nearby concert hall for a show by... and I kid you not... the Netherlands Customs Service Orchestra.

I knew we were in for a great night when we saw the Orchestra’s percussion section playing in the foyer. Behold, the majesty of middle-aged doughy white Dutchmen playing a steel drum version of Bob Marley’s ‘I Shot the Sheriff’.

When the excitable Chilean woman asked me halfway through if I was enjoying the show, I had to say, “Yes I am. I’m just not sure if I’m enjoying it on an ironic level or just actually enjoying it”. The wind, brass and percussion orchestra was flawless in their performance, and so were the two singers, especially the little girl with an astonishing voice who is a minor local TV singing show celebrity. When the concert finally finished, it was with two encores and a sincere standing ovation.