Day 18: Rapallo

On Wednesday morning, Xavier was kind enough to drive us to Martigny so we could catch a train to Sion, where we were able to hop on the train we were supposed to have taken from Geneva. After about 5 hours of travel we arrived in Rapallo, Italy. Rapallo is a coastal city located between Santa Margherita and Cinque Terre. When we arrived we wanted nothing more than to jump in the Mediterranean, but we soon discovered that the majority of the coast is made up of private beaches…. Very inconvenient. We ended up finding a small, crowded, rocky beach- but it was exactly what we needed. So refreshing!

For dinner we took the train (for all of 3 minutes) to Santa Margherita to meet Aunt Nance and Ellie at their hotel. It was so fun to see them! We had a drink at their hotel bar and then walked to a beautiful, outdoor Italian restaurant where we stayed and ate and talked for hours. Nance and Ellie have been traveling around Europe with their family, and we were lucky enough to meet up with them on their last night before they head home.

It was a beautiful day, and we expected the same from the night as we settled in to go to sleep. Big surprise when we woke up to the loudest thunder we’ve ever heard in the middle of the night! Can’t wait to see what Italy has in store for us!

Travel Blunder: We heard a train approaching as we were walking back to the train station at 11pm to head back to Rapallo after dinner. We figured trains didn’t run very often at night so we really needed to catch it. In our nice dinner clothes we sprinted into the station, only to find that the train was a few platforms over. Allyson refused to run across the tracks like all of the locals so we were forced to take the long way around. We just barely made it… and then realized we didn’t have tickets! We hopped on the train and hid from the conductor until we got to our stop.

Culture Shock: White is the new black. Everyone we saw out last night was dressed head to toe in white. Andrew thinks it’s the new fashion, Allyson hopes that there was a theme party that night because she didn’t pack anything white for this trip!