Europe 14 - Day 13

Introduction

Our odd night in the Hotel Michelangelo in Milan was followed by an equally odd breakfast in the basement of the hotel. We found the place, were directed to a table and searched out the coffee. There was a large machine for this purpose which looked reasonably easy to operate but I was immediately accosted by a waitress who shooed me back to our tabl. She told me she spoke English and she would sort out the coffee as the instructions were in Italian. (Espresso and Americano is obvious in any language...). Well, we did gets cups of something that resembled coffee but she fussed about, brought more sugar after telling her that we had plenty, then she brought hot water in case the coffee was too strong, then she bought a pot of tea (wrong table). But we found the croissants and other food and we were soon out of the place and walking back across the mad road where all the taxis circled the railway station like vultures. We needed to find our train to the coast at Rimini.

Milano to Rimini by train

The Mussolini-era Milan Central Station is a grand building. Through the main entrance you can climb broad sets of stairs or risk the elevators (we took the stairs). The place was crowded with people, milling around, buying tickets, complaining (well that's what it sounded like in Italian). I had bought tickets with reserved sets over the Internet and the instructions were to validate these in a big yellow machine on the platform. All I had was the booking number. Found the machine, entered booking number and sure enough it recognised that we were booked to travel from Milan to Rimini on the FB9809 departing 10.33am. The option to print the tickets would not work. I tried again. Same result. Tried a different machine, same answer. Too late to worry, but as we headed for the train we spied the train conductor who looked at my printout and indicated that was all I needed, pointing to the train and our carriage. And sure enough, the ticket offical who came through the train looked at the number, poked at his little ticket machine, smiled and said "Grazie.." and moved on. Simple. Soon we were off through Milan and into the countryside as the train headed south-east to the coast. We passed across the broad delta of the Po valley. one of the most fertile regions in Italy. We passed Lodi, the Po River, Parma (of ham fame), Reggio Emilia (of cheese and education fame), Modena, Bologna (of sausage fame), Imola, Faenza, Forli and finally Rimini.

The train hall at the Mussolini-era Milano Centrale