All aboard the train to Venice...?

What is it about trains on this holiday?

Arriving at Como, there was the issue with the attendant at the station.  Leaving Como and heading to Venice, it was another old-fashioned problem: being too late for the train.

In principle, we'd left more than enough time.  We planned to catch an earlier-than-necessary ferry back to Como, leaving a good hour and a half to make our way from the ferry terminal to the railway station.  Time enough to maybe have some lunch on the way through, not that we had high expectations of Como after our first visit earlier in the week.

The ferry was late leaving Bellagio but made good time down the lake, giving us just over an hour for lunch and transit to the station.  Lunch was easily solved: we ordered some quick snacks from a restaurant on the square, whilst Vicky had a quick look around the church.  Still basking in time, we left the restaurant and started our walk - dragging our various luggage - to Como station.

Turns out that we'd got two things wrong.

Firstly, contrary to first impressions, Como is actually quite nice.  Our first impressions were wrong; away from the lakeside, there are beautiful streets with elegant Italian boutiques, worthy of a later return visit.

Secondly, and more critically, my (hereditary?) sense of direction doesn't work so famously well in small, nested streets of high buildings.  Well, that's my excuse anyway. 

By the time we hit the main road, we were 10 minutes from the train leaving without us, but who knows where we actually were?  No where near the station, that's for sure.  There might be about 100 places marked on the huge road sign, but I can guarantee that the station wasn't one of them.  (Actually, after my experience in speaking Italian at the station earlier in the week, I can't be so sure, but none of the little pictures on the sign looked like a train, so I reason that it can't have been on there).

The one thing that I knew for certain was that we'd come much too far away from the shore, so we followed the main road back towards the town, but still nothing looked familiar. 

We took a random turn to the left and ended up at an almost-comical movie-like crossroads: my instincts told me to turn right, even though we could see nothing of interest at the end of the road.  Vicky suggested turning left, citing the mass of coaches on the road as a good indicator of a possible station.  In any case, the debate was inconsequential: the time of our train had passed already; we were left to consider how we would complete our journey, thinking already that it might involve another trip through our least-favourite station, the dirty Milan Central.

We headed to the right, much slower now, realising the race had been lost in any case.  At the end of the road, we found the first and only sign we had seen for the station, helpfully right outside its doors. 

This is probably the right time to point out that the Italian railway system is most definitely not as efficient as the ruthlessly-managed Swiss railways.

Even though the signs indicated to the contrary (something which seems common in Italy), the train to Venice was delayed and was pulling in to the station as we arrived, some 10 minutes after the scheduled time.  (I reflected that, had the same happened in Switzerland, scores of people would have lost their jobs; not just for the late-running of the train, but for the poor management of the information screens.)

The battle wasn't quite over; having boarded the train, we had to navigate our way through it to our seats.  Normally this shouldn't been too traumatic, but there were a group of Americans trying to find their seats, complete with huge bags and huger egos.  Being British, we stood politely in the aisle and waited for all of the fuss to die down. 

As we waited, I wondered just who had been luckiest with the train being delayed as it was?  I think it was the attendant at Como station.