Blue Heron Hill: Venice to Monterosso

We hauled our luggage down the flight of stairs to the street, and walked the short distance to the water taxi station at Accademia. The water taxi took us on a short ride over to the train station.

We'd miss seeing the work-a-day boats on the canals

Vaporettos (water buses), gondolas and the Rialto Bridge on the busy Grand Canal

I had booked all of our longer train trips through RailEurope, located in New York. It was very convenient to be able to call and talk to someone in the U.S., rather than dealing with an overseas office and the huge time difference. We were hoping to take the fastest trains between our destinations, so we had to travel during the day. The overnight trains are an adventure for Americans (sleeping in triple-bunks in compartments with strangers), and they take longer too. They can't go top speed in the dark, I guess. And it's hard to actually sleep, so we didn't want to arrive anywhere exhausted by the rocking of the train all night.

Initially, I tried to go through the various country's online booking services, since my research indicated that I should do so when buying tickets for a group. According to the Italian train site I checked (TrenItalia), I was supposed to book our tickets from our departure city's office, in Venice. I used their online request form and got no response. I had the same experience contacting the French train line (en.voyages-sncf.com) regarding our trips there. Finally, I called Rick Steves' office in Edmonds, Washington, and asked for advice. They suggested I contact RailEurope, and once I did, we got all 4 train trips booked easily, and seats assigned in close proximity for our group of 10. I think for individual tickets, or a small group, I could have booked them online without trouble, but we got a discount with our big group, so a bit of work was worth it.

Our train departed Venice at 10:50 and arrived in Milan at 1:15

Luckily, Principessa and Giovanni bought sandwiches at the station, for the train ride, and we carried anything non-perishable from our apartment in Venice, so we spent the train trip passing food back and forth between the few rows where we were seated. We were able to buy beverages from a bar car on the train.

RailEurope booked all of our seats in close proximity, which made sharing lunch very easy.

After a change in Milan, we arrived in Monterosso at 5:10

We hired a taxi to deliver our bags and a few of our people up the street to the hotel. We're staying at Locanda Il Maestrale, where we stayed in 2014. We liked the location and the friendly and helpful owners on our first visit, and got good recommendations for restaurants then, so decided it would be a good place to stay again.

The owner of our hotel, Giovanni, suggested a great place to go, Torre Aurora, for a drink before dinner. Seating was outside, on a bluff overlooking the Mediterranean, and they served a beautiful plank of appetizers with the drinks.

Katia and Ricardo, looking as Italian as possible. The Mediterranean shimmered in the background.

We all had a drink, and got 2 planks of small bites to enjoy with our beverages. The food was included with the price of the drinks.

Dinner was at l'Ancora della Tortuga, another great recommendation of our host. The entrance is on the side of a cliff, so it wouldn't be a place we'd run into on our own. They have tables outside along the edge of the cliff, but no outside seating for a big group like ours, and it really wasn't a very warm night anyway. It would be fun to sit out there sometime. The group ordered several seafood dishes, a whole sea bass split by 4 of us, and a few people had pork chops. Wine, beer, some desserts and a few after dinner drinks. The bill was 419 euros. And, Ricardo liked the grappa so much that he bought a bottle to take back to the hotel. It was 90 euros! That's what happens when we're having a great dinner and feeling very festive.