“The noblest pleasure is the joy of understanding.” (Leonardo da Vinci)
[Continuing the account of a trip from London to Athens by train and boat, undertaken in November 2022.]
Day 4 – Friday 18th November 2022 – Nice to Milan
I left my hotel at about 8am to walk the short distance to Nice Ville railway station. I was catching an earlier train than was strictly necessary in order to give myself some time to look round Ventimiglia (and to provide some contingency). At that time of the morning the station was busy with commuters and there are trains every half an hour going along the coast in the direction of Italy. When my train arrived on time at 0835 it was full, but a lot of people got off to be replaced with even more getting on. Many passengers were standing, and I was lucky to secure a seat in the upstairs part of the double-decker train, albeit not on the side adjacent to the sea.
The train made many stops on its hour long journey to Italy, including one at Monaco – Monte Carlo station. Going through Monaco was technically a new country for me, but as I did not get off the train I’m not sure that it counts. As far I could tell the entire line through Monaco was in a tunnel and the station platforms in Monte Carlo were below ground. As it progressed the train thinned out slightly, but was still busy with passengers by the time it arrived in Ventimiglia at 0932. There were a lot of elderly women with wheeled shopping baskets getting off there – the reason for which would soon become apparent.
As I had 90 minutes until my next train, I set off to explore Ventimiglia. It is a coastal town at the mouth of the Roia river. On Fridays there is a street market, selling all sorts of produce, which lines many of the streets of the town, especially alongside the sea-front and river.
In my wandering about the town, I was surprised to find a statue to an Englishman, Sir Thomas Hanbury, who had founded the town’s botanical garden.
When I had seen everything I wanted to in Ventimiglia, I returned to the station to catch the 1103 train to Milan. For my train trips in Italy I was travelling first class, as when I had booked Trenitalia were running a special autumn promotion and I could buy first class tickets nearly as cheaply as second class ones. The train from Ventimiglia was an Inter City, rather than one of the Frecce family of services, so first class did not secure you anything extra other than more spacious surroundings.
The train initially travelled along the Ligurian coast, but with only intermittent sea views, as a lot of the route is in tunnels. A little short of Genoa, the train stopped as scheduled at Savona, but rather than moving on after two minutes as the timetable suggested it remained in the platform for nearly half an hour. It then proceeded very slowly to Genoa where it reversed direction. On leaving Genoa it travelled more briskly again, but could not make up any of the lost time. Once in the vicinity of Milan it slowed again due to congestion and finally arrived at Milan Centrale at 1530, 35 minutes late.
I didn’t really have time to admire the splendid architecture of Milan Centrale, but headed straight to the metro station to catch a train for a couple of stops to my hotel. Since metro tickets can also be used on trams and buses, I bought sufficient for my entire time in Milan, as it often can be difficult to buy bus tickets near the bus stop you wish to use.
My hotel for the next couple of nights was rather more old-fashioned than the previous ones I had stayed in on this trip, but was perfectly functional and had a certain charm. After checking in, I just left my bag and headed straight back out again. There was a tram stop immediately outside my hotel, where there was a squad of ticket inspectors checking everyone who had just alighted. I rode on the tram to the centre of Milan and walked to the square in front of the Duomo, which was busy with people milling about in the fading late afternoon light.
I bought a ticket for the Duomo (and its nearby museum). There has been a church on the site since the 4th century, but the current building was started in 1386 and construction has been ongoing almost ever since. After going round the interior of the Duomo, I visited the cathedral museum on one side of the square which contains many sculptures previously housed within the Duomo and it also tells the history of the Duomo’s construction.
When I had finished in the museum, I walked to the other side of the square to visit the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II, the famous shopping arcade constructed in the 19th century.
I then caught a tram back to my hotel. That evening I ate in a nearby unpretentious trattoria, where I was lucky that they made space for me, as all the tables had been reserved. I had a very filling meal of chick pea pasta and spicy sausage pizza.
Day 5 – Saturday 19th November 2022 – Milan
My hotel provided a modest but good quality selection of things for breakfast, along with lovely powerful coffee. The previous evening I had taken the precaution of booking a timed ticket for my first visit of today. As the weather was fine, I decided to walk there which took about 20 minutes and I arrived at the Pinacoteca di Brera about 10 minutes before my 9am scheduled entry. The Pinacoteca di Brera is the main art gallery in Milan and occupies the first floor of the Palazzo Brera, a former Jesuit college, which now has a variety of cultural and educational institutions based there.
There was no problem gaining access a few minutes before the time on my ticket, and the advantage of an early start meant that the galleries were relatively quiet during the time of my visit. The Pinacoteca di Brera contains artworks spread over 38 rooms ranging from the 13th to 20th centuries, but with the Renaissance taking prominence. I had an audio-guide to provide additional information about many of the exhibits. I spent two and a half hours there and when I went back to look at a few things in some of the galleries from earlier in my visit, it had become noticeably more crowded.
When I had finished, I walked through the Brera district of the city, which I noticed was full of restaurants, to the Castello Sforzesco. This red brick castle had been home to the Sforza dynasty who were the rulers of Milan in Renaissance times. There are a number of museums located in the castle complex, but in the end I decided not to visit any of them, but sat in the courtyard for a while to eat my lunch.
From the Castello Sforzesco I walked the short distance to my next stop, the National Museum of Science & Technology, which is named after Leonardo da Vinci. When in foreign places I generally don’t visit science museums, but concentrate instead on local history and art. However, I do make exceptions for ones that are likely to be particularly good (such as the Deutsches Museum in Munich). Milan’s science museum fell into the category of those worth a special visit, not least because it has galleries devoted to Leonardo da Vinci’s many achievements. There was a route marked on the floor to take you through all the different exhibitions, which twisted and turned, such that it was quite hard to work out exactly where in the building you were located. As well as da Vinci, there are galleries devoted to pure science , such as particle physics, the development of heavy industry, and space exploration. The final part of the route brought you outside to separate large buildings where there are collections of locomotives, planes and boats on display.
The timing of the whole of this trip to Greece had, to some extent, been dependent on my next visit. Tickets to view Leonardo da Vinci’s fresco of the Last Supper, painted on the wall of the refectory of Santa Maria delle Grazie only go on sale every three months, with the sale period starting six weeks before each three month period commences. Before I booked the rest of the trip, I had logged on to the ticket website at the moment tickets to view the Last Supper for the next three month period first went on sale, to secure a 15 minute slot for this afternoon. Such is the demand for tickets for weekend viewings that tickets for my chosen day had sold out shortly after they went on sale. The Science Museum is conveniently located a short distance from Santa Maria delle Grazie and I arrived there, as the instructions demanded, just over half an hour before my 3:15pm slot to collect my ticket. I’m not sure why they insist you arrive at least half an hour early, as there are only 30 places for each slot, and given the ticket was handed over instantly, I had 30 minutes to wait in the square in front of the church. A few minutes before the due time we were ushered in to the refectory building and proceeded down a corridor controlled by electronic gates to wait outside the hall where the fresco is located. At the appointed time the doors opened and our 15 minutes began. The hall is large and by restricting each group to a maximum of 30 people it does not feel crowded. Fifteen minutes is about the right amount of time to fully appreciate the fresco.
When our time was up, and we were shepherded out of the refectory, I went for a look round the church of Santa Maria delle Grazie and its adjoining cloister garden.
In choosing a route back to my hotel, I did not pick the most direct way, as I wished to travel on one Milan’s old trams which date from the 1920s and which still operate on just a couple of lines. The tram rattled its way to a stop slightly to the north of my hotel – as we went along on the tram it was noticeable how many people on the streets were taking photographs of the tram as we passed.
That evening I was undecided about where I should go for dinner. As I had been lucky to secure a table the previous evening, I didn’t want to go back to the place I had eaten in the night before, as I thought it might be even busier on a Saturday night. There was another trattoria directly opposite it, which had good reviews, but it opened half an hour later, and the main complaint in the reviews seemed to be the difficulty of getting a table. Between my hotel and the city centre was Milan’s Asian district, which had a large number of restaurants serving different types of Asian cuisine (including Chinese, Vietnamese and Thai). l like to try to eat the local cuisine when I can – but, in retrospect, an Asian meal might have been a good choice in terms of quality and price, given the amount of competition in the area. I remembered that the Brera district that I had walked through in the morning was full of restaurants, so I decided to try there. One which had good reviews had a queue to get in the length of the street when I arrived, and others I tried were fully booked. In the end I found a restaurant with a spare place, where I had an enormous Cotoletta alla Milanese, followed by mascarpone for dessert, with a half bottle of Chianti. While the meal was pleasant enough, it was quite pricey, and ended up being the most expensive meal of the trip.
Day 6 – Sunday 20th November 2022 – Milan to Rimini
My hotel was close to Milan Porto Garibaldi station, where my train this morning was departing from, rather than Centrale where I had arrived a couple of days earlier. So after breakfast I walked the short distance to the station. Before I set off I checked the Trenitalia website and realised that I might have some problems on my journey, as there had been a person hit by a train on the high speed line near Modena and all trains were being diverted onto the slow line.
I arrived at Porto Garibaldi station in good time for my 1013 train – however, it had left its starting station of Turin 10 minutes late and was not making up any time on its way to Milan. Porto Garibaldi is a sprawling station with platforms on two levels and, rather annoyingly, the platform for my train was only displayed as it was about to arrive in the station. It left 10 minutes late and made slow progress getting through the Milan suburbs. The train was a Frecciarossa, so I was served free drinks and nibbles at my seat – being a Sunday, the first class carriage I was in was fairly empty. As expected we didn’t stay on the main line for long before being diverted onto the slow line, so by the time we reached Bologna the train was 45 minutes late. Had I not visited Bologna for a couple of days in 2019, I might have chosen to stop off there.
The train carried on to reach the Adriatic coast at Rimini in the early afternoon, where I got off. Ever since I shared a compartment overnight from Bucharest to Belgrade with a young Romanian woman who was smuggling hard currency out of Romania so that she could have a good time on holiday in Rimini, I imagined it as a glamorous place attracting glamorous people. As I was a little early to check in to my hotel, I initially headed towards the beach and sea. My first surprise was that there was no exit from Rimini station in that direction, and you had to walk round the outside of the station, whose entrance faced the ‘town’ side. When I reached the seafront, I discovered that all the beaches were private, but they had all closed for the season and there was nobody to stop you wandering on to the them. The whole of the beach side of Rimini had a distinct out of season feel to it, with many establishments closed and no sign of the glamorous people.
After a while exploring the beach area, and concluding there was not a lot going on there, I went to check in to my hotel. It was a large modern resort hotel a few blocks back from the seafront. Looking at the list the receptionist used to tick my name off on arrival, I think that I was one of only three bookings for that day. I had been allocated a spacious room on the next to top floor with distant views of the sea.
I stayed in my room just long enough to drop of my bag and went out again to explore the town side of Rimini. First stop was the Domus del Chirurgo (The Surgeon’s House), an excavated Roman mansion with some impressive mosaic floors. While I was looking round, the ticket seller at the door, who didn’t speak any English, came to find me to show me on his phone, using Google translate, that my ticket was also valid in the nearby civic museum.
I then went to the museum that was also included in the ticket. The staff there were also very friendly and welcoming, but also only spoke Italian. The museum is spread over several floors and has an extensive collection on the history of the area, with artefacts from the Roman period taking up the majority of the exhibition, as well as an art collection.
On leaving the museum and going further towards the city centre, Sunday afternoon Rimini was thronged with people wandering around looking at stalls that had been set up in the market square and which appeared largely to be selling chocolate.
I spent the rest of the afternoon until it started to get dark exploring more of the old centre of Rimini. There are more Roman remains dotted about the place, including an amphitheatre. As dusk fell I went back to my hotel.
I decided that going back to the city centre would be a better bet for finding dinner than among the seafront establishments. The restaurant I chose was packed and I was sent up to a balcony overlooking the main dining area to find a table. I had an interesting beefburger with figs and roast potatoes, followed by mascarpone for dessert (for the second night running). To drink I had some locally brewed beer in the style of a Belgian blonde ale.
Day 7 – Monday 21st November 2022 – Rimini to Bari
After breakfast in the sparsely populated hotel dining room, I walked the short distance to Rimini station to catch the 0940 train to Bari. Arriving in plenty of time I went to the platform from which my train was due to depart. There was another train just arriving there that was also going to Bari, but I didn’t want to catch it as the later train that I was booked on had fewer stops and was scheduled to overtake it. My train pulled in five minutes late – it was a Frecciargento – sister service to the Frecciarossa train I had caught the day before. Unfortunately, the seat that I had booked in first class didn’t have a window, so I chose one of the other spare seats, hoping that it would not be claimed by another passenger on the long journey to Bari. Nobody else wanted it throughout the journey, but a disadvantage of not sitting in your allocated seat is that you get asked to show your ticket every time the ticket inspectors come round, as they check on a hand-held device which seats have been booked. As with the Frecciarossa train, the Frecciargento also provided a free service of drinks and nibbles.
The journey to Bari took nearly five hours and most of the way was along the Adriatic coast. I was pleased to see that the sea looked very calm, giving that I would be sailing on it that night.
I eventually arrived in Bari at 1430 and walked through the new town, which seemed rather sleepy, to reach the edge of Bari old town. The old town is an amazing warren of little streets and alleyways in which it is quite easy to lose your sense of direction. I knew, it being Monday, that Bari’s main museums would be closed, but I was happy just to wander about the old town getting quite lost.
One place that was open was the Basilica of St Nicholas, which is a place of pilgrimage for both Catholic and Orthodox Christians. The Basilica, built in the 11th and 12th Centuries, allegedly contains the remains of St Nicholas (as in Santa Claus) who was from Myra in Turkey, but had passed through Bari on his way to Rome and had expressed a wish to be buried there. St Nicholas’s tomb is in the crypt where there were a number of people giving their devotions.
As dusk began to descend, I left the old town to go to the port. It was not at all obvious where, as a foot passenger, I should enter. I asked a security guard at a gate and he pointed to a large blue building in the distance within the port security fence and indicated I should go there. I walked to this terminal building dodging the many lorries that were also driving into the port. At the terminal building the printout of my reservation was exchanged for a boarding ticket and I was told that boarding would commence in a few minutes at 5pm. At 5pm I walked a bit further to a smaller building where my ticket was checked, but they were not interested in putting me or my bag through any of the security scanners the building contained. I was then free to walk directly onto the boat via a passageway that ran alongside the vehicle ramp. This led to the boat’s reception area where there was a line of waistcoated stewards waiting to greet passengers – one of them took my ticket from me, used it to get my cabin key from reception and then escorted me to what was going to be my cabin for the night.
Initially the ferry seemed quite quiet, with most of the other passengers being truckers. But after I had been on board for a little while about a hundred schoolchildren arrived, and the quietness suddenly disappeared. I noticed that most of the restaurant area had been reserved for the school party, so rather than share it with them I decided to have an early dinner when the restaurant first opened at 6:30pm – at that time those queuing up for food were largely lorry drivers, who had their own dedicated area in which to eat their dinners. I didn’t see a menu so it was just a case of looking at what was on offer and pointing. I don’t know if lorry drivers have big appetites, but the portions were enormous – I chose pork steak and chips – thinking I would be served one pork steak, but I was given two large ones and a giant mound of chips. Given they had a captive market, the prices charged on the ferry were very reasonable.
I had finished my dinner before the ferry was due to depart (and thankfully before the school children came to eat) so I went up on deck to watch us set sail. The ropes were cast off on time at 1930 and we slid out of Bari into the darkness of the Adriatic. I stayed on deck for a while until the shoreline lights started to recede, but once we left the shelter of the harbour the wind began to get up and it was quite cold.
As it was too early to retire to my cabin, I visited the bar for a drink, where I could avoid the schoolchildren, who were now starting to rampage round the rest of the ship.
[To be continued – coming next: Greece]
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