We woke up at 07:45. As it is pretty hot, we had a shower and then grabbed a cappuccino from reception and were off to the train station at the airport terminal. I went to the ti ket office to buy our tickets and congirmed that their details sgreed with mine, but when the lady tried to process the transaction, she picked up a problem with thr result that I went ahead and bought it ia the Omio app.
We found the right platform and got onto thectrain leaving for Milano Centrale at 10:13 for arrival at 11:07. Our trsin for La Specia, with change over at Parma was dye to leave at 11:20 giving us 13 minutes to find the correct platform.
The train was pretty much on time and wecgot to Milan at 11:07. After esablishing that our train is actually going to Rimini and leaving from platform 22, we rushed there srriving at 11;20! There are special places for bicycles, which was partly occupied by other prople luggage, but we managed to get the bicycles in. The train was pretty full and I found a seat, but Danie had to settle for the steps!
With all the "logistics" to get onto the trsin in time and taking 7 hours to La Spacia, it turned out to be a very wise decision to delay our travel to La Specia ny one day.
We have now changed trsins at Parma and are on our way to La Specia. The train is mot do over crouded and one of tgeofficials ar the station showed us which carroage have place for bicycles.
To be continued once we reach La Specia.
We srrivr at La Specia at 16:00. We leave the station, find our barings start cycling. Along the way we stop sa a cafe and buy water. Danie suggest we stop st a pharmacy fir some oontmrnt snd pain pills. His feet started swelling on the plane and it does not look good! We do find one, butvitvis closed. We are compeled to go back to La Specia to find sn open one. Success snd Danie gets some ointment and psin pills.
The problem with the navigating apps I use is that you, sometimes, only find out afterwards that you missed a turn! This does happen, but I pick up the error quickly. Turn around and go up the correct road. This happens to be a 16.5 km climb acsending 700 meter. Not to bad for the distance, butvitvis going to take us 3 hours to concute it!
After 2.5 km we get to a "sundower" stop. As we have not had anthing to eat since breakfast, we each order a sandwich and water. We take stock! Carry on and probably sleep in the bush as there is very little indication of accommodation in the next 25 km or we go back and find accommodation in La Specia. Sanity prevails and we dicside to go back.
The people next to us hear our discussion and we start chatting to them. We ask about accommdation and they suggest we try La Gracia, which is down the coast from La Specia. That means we must carry on with road where we took a wrong turn earlier. An other lady from a nearby tabke approach and offer us accommodation, but she is only willing to accept two nights and that is too much. So we decline.
We go down the hill and check out the suggested places, but everybody is full! Now the only option is to go back to La Specia. Along the way we try a couple of places indicated on Google Maps but find that they not longer exist!
So it is all the way back to La Specia. In the end we do find accommodation on the fifth floor of an aparment around thr corner from where Danie bought his medication earier!
A very intetesting day. We did cycle 40 km, if I include the 2 to get to the train station at the airport and did climb 533 meters. Total cycling time 4:30.
We went for a drink after we had a shower and looked at our options for tomorrow. We decided to opt for a ferry tide to Cinque Terre, but everything was booked out until next Sunday, so there is a change of plan again. We sleep until we wake up and go for Riomagiorre, get accommodation there for two nights and take ferry to Cinque Terre and back and continue on our journey on Wednesday. Lets see how this pan out.
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