Our 2 daughters, Madhura & Anagha moved to Europe - Trieste, Italy and Leeds, U.K. a few months ago. So we decided to take a tour of Europe visiting them, having a sort of family reunion (sans our eldest daughter, Asawari - who's too busy and has just enough leave left for visit to India later this year) away from home and then take a conducted tour (by Trafalgar).
Our first experience was during the check-in to Cathay Pacific flight (taking us to Rome). My dear wife, Pranita, had told the Flightcenter (booking agent) people at least 3 times to confirm the vegetarian food request. However, at the checkin, the agent said there's no such request in the system - one cross for Flightcenter. The lady at the checkin did , however, take steps to ensure some arrangement (& so did the staff onboard) for our special dietary requirements.
Our first stopover in transit was Hong Kong. This was the first time in almost 20 years that we flew to Hong Kong. I knew they'd built a new airport on Lantau Island in the meantime but didn't know how big/good the facility was extremely impressed with the new airport. Had a free Wi-fi connection so I used my iPAD to chat with Anagha, letting her know that we're on our way.
When we got out of the aeroplane at Rome, I was a bit apprehensive about how things will pan out there - being in a non-English speaking country (and not knowing the local language - Italian). However, things worked out pretty smoothly. People at Information desk could communicate in English and signs were clear enough to follow. Took us just 1 minute to get past the immigration.
We had to take a long walk to the railway station. We had to take railway to the main train station (Rome Termini) from where we had booked a train to Manarola - a touristy spot in mid east of Italy - one of a group of 5 villages together called Cinque Terre (Chin Que Ter E) (From google translator I understood these to be 5 lands). This was a 5+ hour journey (after some 24 hours we spent coming to Rome from Sydney).
On the train I had my first pleasant experience with the local officialdom. We had done the traing booking over Internet and had no printed tickets and thought none were required except the PNR number & booking details. However, the ticket-checker told us that even though tickets were not required on the train we were on, the onward connection (we had to switch to another train at La Spezia onto what's called a regional train whic is a different train network) required a validated ticket. That's when we knew the concept of ticket validation...where you must insert the ticket you bought into a small yellow box (5" wide x 10" high) which stamps it with date & time of travel before starting our journey. The ticket-checker phoned his colleague explaining the situation to him & had him print & validate our tickets. When he came on board before we had to take the next part of the journey, he handed those tickets over to us. Would such a thing ever happen anywhere in India, or for that matter in Australia where we now live? I doubt.
For stay in Monarola, we'd done booking of a 2 bedroom apartment thru' Arbaspaa at Aparymento Imere in a place called Groppo. Doing it from Sydney & not knowing the terrain of the area, little did we know that the place was another bus ride away from Manarola - a small village up the hill & the last bus is at 7 p.m....meaning we've to be back before then. And my daughters joined us at Manarola an our or so later. The person - Dominico - who came to greet us at the station was kind enough to take us with our heavy luggage (he helped us carry it up the hill to his car) in his car to the apartment. The apartment turned out to be a very nice 2 bedroom/kitchen furnished with all utensils & linnen and it overlooked a green plush valley & mountain. In the evening we all went walking up the hill to the next village, Volastra . Turned out to be a very pleasant walk with the Mediterranian sea view in the west & hill all around us.
Next day, on 22nd April, we bought a Cinque Terre card , 10 Euros each, that allows unlimited access to regional train ride in Cinque terre, national park + bus ride from Manarola railway station to Groppo. The whole area in mountaneous on the east and the Mediterranean Sea in the west. Most houses are built on the slopes of the hills. It's a very picturesque area indeed. We took 2 long oceanview walks (a 1 hr and a 2 hr walk). A beautiful place to visit at least once.
On 23rd morning, while settling the bill for the apartment, we had our first brush with local corruption. Wven though the agreed amount for the 2 day's stay was 205 Euros, the lady owner asked for 20 Euros more "for Police"...something we couldn't really argue against but something we do plan to complain about to the booking agent, Arbaspaa.
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