Day 18, part I: Nice to ??

This will be a two-part post today, so you can have some of the suspense we did.

Today the plan was to get to Cinque Terre on the Italian Riviera. We bought our tickets last night to make the trip as smooth as possible and to make sure we'd arrive before 5 pm (the latest check-in before the hotel lady goes home and we end up scrambling to find a room). We woke up early to get in a load of laundry and still arrived at the train station an hour early at 9 am.

Since we had time, we stopped for a cappuccino at the train cafe. We had noticed on the departure board that our train was not "en le houre" (on time) nor "le retard" (late), but "suprime." Brooke & mom decided to do some investigating to find out what "suprime" meant, while Kevin & dad took care of getting the cappuccinos.

The cappuccinos were delivered steaming hot, we paid the waitress, and before our first sip, Brooke & mom come running in frantically saying "we gotta go, now!" We abandoned our 4 full cappuccinos and took off, finding out as we ran that our train had been cancelled because of a French strike.

Our only chance of making it to Cinque Terre on time was to catch a train leaving right then and to do a couple transfers. We made it to the crowded platform (only to find out it too was delayed), eventually pushed our way on to the train and found a few spread out seats.

I write this post (part I) from that train. We're not very confident we'll make our connection, and were not sure what city we'll end up in tonight. Should be fun!