April 28, 2025
Bordighera, not Ventimiglia
We've been feeling left out in the last few days, relishing in the train travails of first the Grampies and then Jill and Dave. Such entertaining stories! It seems only fair that we contribute our own experience.
Today's journey was planned and booked long ago, an Intercity ride from Pescara to Ventimiglia, the last stop in Italy before the French border. If you're unfamiliar with the Italian train system, the Intercities are the intermediate option between the milk-run regional trains that stop everywhere and the high speed trains that generally do not permit unbagged roll-on bicycles. If you've got some distance to cover and you've got a bike, the Intercities are the way to go because they make far fewer stops and because if you've get your reservation in early you can book a space for your bikes with no extra fee. We booked this journey as soon as it became available, and we've also already booked our ride back from Milano to Bari at the end of our spring tour.
It's a long way from Pescara to Ventimiglia if you're not a hooded crow or a red kite or a yellow-legged gull. By intercity train it's six and a half hours to Milano and then a transfer to a second train for another four hours to Ventimiglia. So, a long day even if everything goes to plan.
And why wouldn't it go to plan, when as usual we've planned so well! We're staying at Hotel G, which is only - gee - a short three block walk from the station. We're seated at breakfast as soon as it opens at 7 and are on the way to the station at just past 8, an hour before departure. The Pescara station is easy to navigate and understand, there are elevators to the platforms, our departure gate has already been announced when we enter the station, so we're standing on our platform 45 minutes early. While we wait we watch in admiration as three different regional trains arrive and depart on our platform, precisely on time and about ten minutes apart. All are sleek, modern trains ideal for cycling - huge easy to spot logos identifying the bike car, and wide doors with no stairs. You can hardly go wrong on one of these beauts.
And then the Intercity arrives. It's not like the regionals, in any important regard. First of course, it's a much longer train. And it's not modern - it's an old-style train with narrow doors and steep entry stairs. And it's not well branded, so it's not easy to tell which car has the bike storage. In fact, I'm not convinced that it's labeled at all. We wait as always at the front end of the train so we can watch for the bike car as it passes, but don't see it. So it's obviously at the far end of this long train somewhere, on the other side of this throng of folks jammed on the platform that we have to fight our way through in a rush to get boarded before the train leaves without us. Many of you out there will immediately recognize this situation.
It's not at the other end either. Starting to panic now, we finally find an agent who points back to the front of the train and says its car #3. We rush, get to what we believe is car #3, and with the help of the usual train angels that are somehow always around when you need them we manage to squeeze our loaded bikes up the stairs and through the narrow doors and get both bikes onto the train perhaps a minute before the doors close behind us and the train gets underway.
Unfortunately, even though this car had the number three on it, it isn't the car with the bike storage. There's barely room for us to stand squeezed into the narrow space at the end of this car, with other passengers and their luggage crammed in also and trying to get past us. The bike car is at the very front of the train somewhere, on the other side of two long, narrow-aisle passenger cars and then a third one with a wider aisle that doubles as a dining car of sorts.
It's even less fun than you might think trying to steer your bike upright on its back wheel very slowly and carefully through one of these cars without ramming your bike into a seated passenger or lurching into their lap when the train rounds a bend. And it's even less fun than that if you have terrible knees and are blind in one eye.
But finally I make it, find a place to prop the bike and then go back for Rachael's, and to tell her to come ahead with the luggage.
| Heart | 3 | Comment | 1 | Link |
So that's the first car. Two cars later and maybe a half hour after the train has departed we finally get our bikes and baggage to their proper spot and then just sit on the floor exhausted for another half hour until we get to Ancona and the other two bikers on the train get off and free up their seats. After that we can finally settle in and relax for the next five hours until we reach Milano and the end of the line.
| Heart | 2 | Comment | 0 | Link |
The Milano station is packed with folks standing around staring up at the departure board waiting for their gate to be posted, which won't happen for most folks until about fifteen minutes before departure. There's nowhere to sit at all and it looks like we'll be standing holding our bikes for an hour and a half until we luck out and find a focaccia shop that lets us wheel the bikes inside and lean them against the back wall. We enjoy a relaxed hour filling up on mediocre pizza and uploading the videos from yesterday's journal entry, and then once our gate is posted we fight our way through the crowds to gate 21, at the far opposite end of the train station.
It goes smoothly though. We arrive at our gate in plenty of time and we start walking down the length of the train looking without success for the bike car. Finally we come to an agent who points behind us and directs us to car #3. And it's as I suspected - there's nothing at all on the outside of the train indicating that bike storage is inside. You just have to know.
We're on though, and enjoy a relaxed ride for the next four hours until we near the end of the line at Ventimiglia where we're due to arrive at 9:05. We've chosen to end here rather than our original idea of Imperia because there's a hotel just five blocks from the Ventimiglia station so if it's too dark we can just walk. So smart, those Andersons! What a great plan! Along the way we spend an astonishing amount of time plowing through long, endless tunnels - I'll bet we're within tunnels over 80% of the time in the hour before we reach the coast at Genoa, and continue through tunnels much of the rest of the way as the train plows under one headland after another. I'm always humbled for our sorry country when we come to Europe, thinking of what a great accomplishment it was when the MAX line bored through the West Hills on the run to Hillsboro.
And then a very strange thing occurs. One of the points of taking an intercity train is that they make so many fewer stops, only pulling into larger places - Pescara, Fano, Pesano, Bologna, Genoa, Finale Ligure. So mentally I wasn't prepared for the idea that the train would stop five times in the final twenty miles: Imperia, San Lorenzo, Sanremo, Bordighera, and finally Ventimiglia. Bordighera! I didn't even know this small town of 10,000 was even a place, and it's only three miles from the final stop at Ventimiglia. It's pretty much just a suburb now.
So perhaps Team Anderson might be good on the planning side of the ledger but just a bit slow-witted on the execution side. We get off at Bordighera, not paying enough attention and thinking we've arrived. Rachael looks at her Garmin and announces with alarm that we're three miles from our hotel, but I correct her and assure her it's an easy five block walk, one we won't mind making in the dark. But she's right of course, because we've gotten off at the wrong damn stop (and not for the first time, because we've done this one before too).
Maybe it's because we screw ourselves up with such regularity that we've learned to pivot quickly out of necessity. We sit down on a bench in the fading light and regroup, calm ourselves, and check the map hoping that this tiny place will have a hotel so we don't have to break out the lights and bike three miles along the coast in the dark. And it does! there are tons of hotels here, because it turns out that in the past Bordighera was a prized Mediterranean resort that drew the elites of Europe south for the winter. One of them is only a block and a half away - so we walk there, are relieved to see that they're still open and have room for us, and we write off the cost of the hotel in Imperia as just one more assessment of the stupidity tax. Well worth it.
| Heart | 5 | Comment | 3 | Link |
1 day ago
1 day ago
| Rate this entry's writing | Heart | 14 |
| Comment on this entry | Comment | 9 |
2 days ago
1 day ago
1 day ago
1 day ago
1 day ago
1 day ago
1 day ago
13 hours ago