Sunday, January 24, 2010

Cinque Terre


What an adventure!  Ryan and I set out for Cinque Terre Monday, October 26th.  Our train was at 8:40am so we made an agreement we would both arrive at the station at 8am.  I arrive, backpack packed and ready to go when I get a text message that read… gonna be late.  Then about 15 minutes later one that said…I don’t think I’m going to make it…then another 15 minutes later saying GET ON THE TRAIN I WON’T MAKE IT!  I ran up to the platform but the train doors were already locked!  I mean, was I really going to head out on this trip by myself?  I’m glad those doors were locked cause I don’t know how else Ryan and I would have met up with each other!  When he finally arrived at the station we had a good laugh and decided to go to the office and exchange our tickets.  I was lucky enough to travel with someone who was as free flowing as myself so without stress or panic we began our adventure…  It turns out the missing of this train created a chain reaction of missed trains because we had a connection in Chambery and another in Turino.  We exchanged our tickets successfully but decided to stay a night in Chambery and had to Torino the next day, or else we would have just stayed in Lyon another night.  We caught the next train which was about an hour later and headed to a new city in France.  Like Grenoble, Chambery is surrounded by mountains.  It was a charming place.  Ryan and I went straight from the train station to the tourist office where we asked about cheap hotels and what is good to see in Chambery if we only have one day to see it.  They gave us a ton of information and we started searching for a hotel.  We found The Art Hotel which was very close to the train station and had a room for not too much money.  We dropped out bags off and decided to begin out adventure.  In Chambery there is a Medieval part of town.  In many cities in France, I’m sure like in other countries, there is usually and ‘old town’ well, Chambery has such an old part of town its called La Ville Ancienne! (The Ancient City).  We walked around a bunch took loads of pictures had a coffee, then decided to grab lunch to go and head to a well known lake about a 15-20 minute bus ride away.  It turned out to be beautiful weather and we ate our sandwiches by the water.  The rest of the afternoon was spent exploring and eventually we made it back to the hotel and went to be early.  When we arrived in Torino we had to buy our tickets to catch another train to Levanto where we would then hop on another train and head to the towns of Cinque Terre.  Not a very direct trip, I must say but by reading this I hope you will understand that it was completely worth it.  

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