No room at the Inn (Rome)
OK, so here's the full story of how we *almost* ended up homeless in Rome...
Wanting to leave our options open a bit, but also wanting to make sure we've got seats on trains and beds in hostels, we've been booking our train travel and hostels for about two weeks at a time. This approach worked beatifully all through Germany (which is just an all-around pleasand country to travel in), in Paris (we were lucky enough to stay with a friend in Paris), and in Barcelona, but then our luck faltered a bit.
We had booked train tickets from Barcelona to Nice, and then from Nice to Cinqueterra (Northern Italian coast), but when we turned up at the Barcelona train station in the morning for our trip to Nice, our train wasn't up on the departures board. We thought nothing of it initially and a shop keeper in the station actually told us that it's normal for a train listing not to appear until 10 minutes before departure, so we decided to have some breakfast. I started to worry a little when 5 minutes before departure there still was no mention of our train. Nobody else seemed to be worried, and no announcements were made, so we wandered around looking for a rail employee who spoke English, only to find out that there weren't any. Finally, we overheard a local man explaining to some other confused backpackers that the rail employees in southern France had been on strike for a few days, and since it was Friday, it probably wouldn't be sorted out until Monday at the earliest.
So, a bit disappointed, but not too worried, we waited around to get our tickets stamped as "cancelled" so we could obtain a refund (apparently for only 80% even though the cancellation wasn't our choice, and only obtainable in the country of purchaseç: Germany). We tried asking what our options were to get to Nice, but the staff said they only knew about trains, and only spoke Spanish. The thought we could catch a bus, but it wouldn't arrive in Nice until midnight, and we wouldn't be able to find accommodation, as we were in the middle of the Cannes Movie Festival.
To make this long story a little shorter, we finally decided that the best option was to catch a 20-hour ferry from Barcelona to Rome and skip Nice. We'd swing by Cinqueterra on our way to Florence and Venice, and the only down side would be missing Nice.
The additional down side we hadn't anticipated, however, is that there were no hostel beds available when we arrived in Rome on Saturday evening. Luckily we stumbled into the incredibly helpful and cool Yellow Hostel who phoned every single one of the 50 hostels in the area to find us a room. After about an hour, they had no luck, so we decided to wander the streets and see if we could find a cheap-ish hotel. Yellow actually offered us their lobby couches if we couldn't find anything and it got really late, but fortunately, it didn't come to that. Just as I was losing my mind (I'm horribly emotional and irrational when I'm tired, and I definitely was after 20 hours on a ferry) and was about to give up on Rome and push on to Florence or anywhere else, we found a not-so-cheap room in some dude's unfinished guest apartment, and we finally got some sleep and peace of mind.
We woke up the next morning and swung back by Yellow to see if they'd had any cancellations, and fortunately again, they had. We ended up staying with them for the rest of our time in Rome (although we had to check out and check back in to different rooms 3 times) and absolutely loved it. The staff are amazing, the internet is free 24 hours a day, the kitchen is fully equipped, and we met heaps of other really cool guests.
I think a theme for this trip is things working out for the best, not necessarily the way we expect, but somehow. I'm a bit of a pessimist, always designing contingency plans for the worst-case scenario, and Dane is always optimistically trusting that thigs will work out, and time and again it's turned out that if you try to think creatively, put in a bit of effort, and open yourself up to people, things will be OK. A good lesson to learn, I reckon...
Cheers,
AM
Wanting to leave our options open a bit, but also wanting to make sure we've got seats on trains and beds in hostels, we've been booking our train travel and hostels for about two weeks at a time. This approach worked beatifully all through Germany (which is just an all-around pleasand country to travel in), in Paris (we were lucky enough to stay with a friend in Paris), and in Barcelona, but then our luck faltered a bit.
We had booked train tickets from Barcelona to Nice, and then from Nice to Cinqueterra (Northern Italian coast), but when we turned up at the Barcelona train station in the morning for our trip to Nice, our train wasn't up on the departures board. We thought nothing of it initially and a shop keeper in the station actually told us that it's normal for a train listing not to appear until 10 minutes before departure, so we decided to have some breakfast. I started to worry a little when 5 minutes before departure there still was no mention of our train. Nobody else seemed to be worried, and no announcements were made, so we wandered around looking for a rail employee who spoke English, only to find out that there weren't any. Finally, we overheard a local man explaining to some other confused backpackers that the rail employees in southern France had been on strike for a few days, and since it was Friday, it probably wouldn't be sorted out until Monday at the earliest.
So, a bit disappointed, but not too worried, we waited around to get our tickets stamped as "cancelled" so we could obtain a refund (apparently for only 80% even though the cancellation wasn't our choice, and only obtainable in the country of purchaseç: Germany). We tried asking what our options were to get to Nice, but the staff said they only knew about trains, and only spoke Spanish. The thought we could catch a bus, but it wouldn't arrive in Nice until midnight, and we wouldn't be able to find accommodation, as we were in the middle of the Cannes Movie Festival.
To make this long story a little shorter, we finally decided that the best option was to catch a 20-hour ferry from Barcelona to Rome and skip Nice. We'd swing by Cinqueterra on our way to Florence and Venice, and the only down side would be missing Nice.
The additional down side we hadn't anticipated, however, is that there were no hostel beds available when we arrived in Rome on Saturday evening. Luckily we stumbled into the incredibly helpful and cool Yellow Hostel who phoned every single one of the 50 hostels in the area to find us a room. After about an hour, they had no luck, so we decided to wander the streets and see if we could find a cheap-ish hotel. Yellow actually offered us their lobby couches if we couldn't find anything and it got really late, but fortunately, it didn't come to that. Just as I was losing my mind (I'm horribly emotional and irrational when I'm tired, and I definitely was after 20 hours on a ferry) and was about to give up on Rome and push on to Florence or anywhere else, we found a not-so-cheap room in some dude's unfinished guest apartment, and we finally got some sleep and peace of mind.
We woke up the next morning and swung back by Yellow to see if they'd had any cancellations, and fortunately again, they had. We ended up staying with them for the rest of our time in Rome (although we had to check out and check back in to different rooms 3 times) and absolutely loved it. The staff are amazing, the internet is free 24 hours a day, the kitchen is fully equipped, and we met heaps of other really cool guests.
I think a theme for this trip is things working out for the best, not necessarily the way we expect, but somehow. I'm a bit of a pessimist, always designing contingency plans for the worst-case scenario, and Dane is always optimistically trusting that thigs will work out, and time and again it's turned out that if you try to think creatively, put in a bit of effort, and open yourself up to people, things will be OK. A good lesson to learn, I reckon...
Cheers,
AM
posted by Leden at
11:35 pm
1 Comments:
Greetings.
What an awesome trip!
I hope that you don't think I am cyber-stalking... I was thinking of bookcrossers I had met, and was wondering 'what ever happened to Dane?'.
You both look so incredibly happy, and it sounds like you've had a wonderful trip.
Good luck to you both,
Rebecca
By
R, at 8:25 am
Post a Comment
<< Home