Wednesday, June 6, 2012

We caught the first shuttle out of the hotel this morning and then scurried to the train station. We were able to get seats on the first bus to Amalfi, but they were right at the back. Again we had good views of both sides. You’re probably asking, “But didn’t you do that yesterday?” Yes we did, but today Amalfi was the transfer station where we caught our second bus.

The second bus took us further along the coast (with more hairpin turns) to Solerno. The port on Solerno is huge, but we didn’t have much time to explore the waterfront. The bus to Paestum was loading but, since it was standing room only, we decided to wait for the next one. We had lunch in quite a large pizzeria, and it is the worst meal we have had anywhere on our trip.

We needed to get some information about our trip to Rome on Sunday so we wandered over to the train station. We found a tourist information office and they told us the next bus to Paestum wasn’t for three hours. Our guide book said there were two or three buses an hour. She told us there was a train leaving for Paestum in about an hour and we were happy to learn that our three-day pass would cover the train as well.

While we waited at the station a nice gentleman asked where we were going. When I said Paestum he started to give me all sorts of information (in Italian) about the train. He must have recognized the puzzled look on my face as he left me and found Pat, who was standing and studying the train station map. What he was trying to tell us was that Paestum was the fourth stop. I recognized quattro, but we were already on the quattro platform so I didn’t understand why he kept saying quattro.

Finally, after 6 1/2 hours of traveling we ended up at Paestrum. We got off the train and it felt like we had arrived in Dodge after everyone had left. There were no employees at the station, and only bare streets no matter where you looked. Pat knew the way though so off we set

Paestum is known for it’s Greek temples that are still standing, and for the Roman buildings that were built on top of the Greek settlement. The museum had a lot of artifacts and after we finished there we were free to roam the site. It took a couple of hours before we had to face the long trip home.

We were smarter this time and planned to go all the way to Naples by train and then from Naples to Sorrento by another train (all still included in the train pass we had). We caught the train from Paestum at six and we were on our way.

All was going well until we were two stations away from our stop. The train pulled into the station and all went very quiet, except for the noise we could hear outside. Everyone was shouting in Italian, but I think we were held up by a train in the other direction that had problems reaching the station. We eventually saw people walking down the platform with suitcases so at least they were able to get off. After a 15 minute delay we were on our way again.

One more station further along (and one stop before we needed to get off) the train stopped again. No worries, at least not for a few minutes. An announcement came over the loudspeaker (in Italian) and from the responses it got from everyone it wasn’t good news. After a couple of announcements Pat figured out there was an electrical problem. We sat and waited for about half an hour and then there was another announcement and people started moving toward the front of the train. Not knowing what was happening we followed along.

When we got to the front of the train, most of the people had gotten off. We kept asking if anyone spoke English but even the conductors couldn’t help us (or didn’t want to). Finally a young woman told us there was a problem with the track and we were about a six minute walk from our station but she couldn’t tell us how to walk there. She said we should just wait, and we didn’t have any choice anyway as I wasn’t willing to set out on foot. After another 15 minutes we heard the welcomed “andiamo” and everyone piled on board again and we were on our way.

We were mindful of the time because there were only two more trains back to Sorrento. We made the first train with about a minute to spare – we made one wrong turn in the station or we would have had about three minutes.

We finally arrived in Sorrento just before ten. We had to wait until 11:30 for the last shuttle to the hotel so we had a lovely dinner in town. After seven hours on the return trip we finally made it home.

The good news from all of this is that we had no “Amazing Race meltdowns”, and we were still laughing about the adventure at the end of the day.

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