Sunday, January 13, 2019

The Northern Italy Diaries, part I

Town Square in Mestre

I usually post our travel notes right after a trip. This last trip we returned to fall clean up, election work, and publicity for my book In Search of Elena Ferrante. The travel notes got lost in the shuffle. Fading memories are a downside of posting months after a vacation. What remains are a few highlights—the best and the worst of the trip.

Travel is getting harder, for sure. It’s much more difficult to get an upgrade. So-called premium seats in economy were uncomfortable; I can’t imagine how bad the non-premium seats must be.

Last year we flew SAS to Scandinavia. The premium economy seats were so good, we didn’t feel any need for an upgrade. We thought about going to Denmark this year—in part for the pleasures of SAS—but the lure of Italy was too powerful.

We have never been to Northwestern Italy, so we decided it was time to see this region, while we're still capable of international travel. Since there are no longer direct flights from Philly to Milan, we flew into Venice, but since we’ve already been to Venice four times we decided to pass on going into the city. Getting in and out of Venice is not easy and with more and more cruise ships stopping in Venice, the crowds are unbearable.

We used to be capable of getting off a transatlantic flight and immediately hopping onto a train for 3 or 4 hours, but sadly that’s no longer the case. So we decided to spend the first night in Mestre (essentially a suburb of Venice) and take the train to Turin the next day. It turned out to be a good decision as we found a wonderful hotel, the Villa Barbarich. The restaurant was probably the best value we’ve ever had in Italy. restaurant at the Villa Barbarich

There’s not a whole lot to do in Mestre but we weren’t up to doing much more than unwind. However, there is a beautiful town square—evidence that Mestre was once a wealthy town. We hung out there for a few hours sipping (in my case) Campari, (in Rick’s) Fernet Branca.

The next day we dealt with the challenges of train travel. If the elevators are working, it’s manageable. If they’re not--and this time the elevator to the platform was not--it was a struggle. Fortunately there was someone who could help us. One of the great pleasures of traveling in Italy is the Italian people who are almost without exception kind and helpful, especially to old folks.

At this stage in life getting our luggage into the overhead bin is impossible and unlike planes, there are no attendants to help. Our way of dealing with this is to always get business class—it doesn’t cost that much more than economy—and get there early so we can put our luggage in the small space allotted for luggage that doesn’t fit into the bins. Granted if we could only learn to travel super light, this would be less of a problem.

Aside from the luggage problem, I like train travel. The train from Mestre to Turin isn’t a scenic spectacular, but there were some glimpses of Lake Garda and the seats are so much more comfortable than those ever shrinking economy class airline seats.

Next stop, Turin.

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