Day 16 – Wednesday 8th June 2011
Rome in rush hour is certainly an experience! At side roads cars are pushing their way into the main flow of traffic. At traffic lights all the motorbikes and scooters filter to the front. Some of them have no regard for the red light and go anyway, most can’t even see the lights to know when they turn green... but that’s ok because there are 2 ways of knowing: cars behind will beep their horn if you don’t move within half a second of green; and the pedestrian lights are still visible... after a good 10 or 15 second wait on amber (Italian pedestrian lights have an amber as well), they turn red and the green light for cars is usually only 1 or 2 seconds after.
Things get a little more tricky as I get further in. Cars are double parked, taking up one of the two lanes, and the cobbled road is about to begin. I barely have time to check the direction I’m travelling, then I shoot up a side street. The scooter coming the other way clearly doesn’t care that this is a one-way, single lane, narrow street. He flies past me.
I get to a square. It’s pedestrianised but there are still a few cars and scooters around. I know the road I need to take, but it’s one-way... the wrong way. I stop to think what to do as a scooter buzzes past me and down the street. Oh well, when in Rome...
I get to the train station. Trains to Ancona are still cancelled due to strikes. I decide to cut my losses and buy the ticket to Bari (well, actually it’s 3 tickets: Rome to Napoli; Napoli to Taranto; Taranto to Bari). Anything to get out of Rome!
The train comes and I go. Ahh, it’s good to relax!
I have a 3 hour wait at Napoli. I decide to use the time to see if I can get a refund for the ticket to Ancona, especially as the queues here are much shorter. Customer Care sends me to the ticket queue. The ticket people send me to Customer Care. Back to the ticket queue, then Customer Care... then one of the Customer Care people walks over with me and gets it sorted. All that effort and they still didn’t give me a full refund. I get a measly €12.60. Well, it’s better than a kick in the teeth.
There’s still a bit of time so I get a couple of slices of pizza (yum!) and pop across the road for a drink and a bar of chocolate. I hadn’t bought a bar of chocolate on this trip yet and just felt like treating myself.
I get back to the bike where there are 2 cleaning trolleys around it. I go to take it away and one of the cleaners tells me something along the lines of not leaving it like that because of the police... either they’ll go through all the luggage or treat it as a bomb (I didn’t quite understand his hand gestures). I apologise and move on. Really, I knew that anyway, but I just didn’t want to drag an overloaded bike with me to all the places. Nothing was stolen and no one else cared.
The train to Taranto is 5 hours. I manage to get a bit of kip as I’m going to need it: the train from Taranto to Bari leaves at 4.18am and I need to decide whether it’s worth sleeping at the station (risking sleeping past the time and missing the train) or trying to stay awake.
After more essential snoozing on the train, I decide to try to stay awake. There are a number of homeless people sleeping at this station (just like at the others), including 3 dogs. Every so often the dogs would get excited about something and chase each other out and down the street. At one point a police car came and they got all excited again. The police car deliberately raced off and the dogs all followed!
2am comes and there’s an announcement that the train to Bari is waiting at the station. I take the opportunity: bike on; me on. Now I can sleep!
Stats
Mileage = 7.00 miles
Riding time = 48 minutes
Average speed = 8.7 mph
Top speed = 25.0 mph
Total mileage since start = 772.9
Rome in rush hour is certainly an experience! At side roads cars are pushing their way into the main flow of traffic. At traffic lights all the motorbikes and scooters filter to the front. Some of them have no regard for the red light and go anyway, most can’t even see the lights to know when they turn green... but that’s ok because there are 2 ways of knowing: cars behind will beep their horn if you don’t move within half a second of green; and the pedestrian lights are still visible... after a good 10 or 15 second wait on amber (Italian pedestrian lights have an amber as well), they turn red and the green light for cars is usually only 1 or 2 seconds after.
Things get a little more tricky as I get further in. Cars are double parked, taking up one of the two lanes, and the cobbled road is about to begin. I barely have time to check the direction I’m travelling, then I shoot up a side street. The scooter coming the other way clearly doesn’t care that this is a one-way, single lane, narrow street. He flies past me.I get to a square. It’s pedestrianised but there are still a few cars and scooters around. I know the road I need to take, but it’s one-way... the wrong way. I stop to think what to do as a scooter buzzes past me and down the street. Oh well, when in Rome...
I get to the train station. Trains to Ancona are still cancelled due to strikes. I decide to cut my losses and buy the ticket to Bari (well, actually it’s 3 tickets: Rome to Napoli; Napoli to Taranto; Taranto to Bari). Anything to get out of Rome!
The train comes and I go. Ahh, it’s good to relax!
I have a 3 hour wait at Napoli. I decide to use the time to see if I can get a refund for the ticket to Ancona, especially as the queues here are much shorter. Customer Care sends me to the ticket queue. The ticket people send me to Customer Care. Back to the ticket queue, then Customer Care... then one of the Customer Care people walks over with me and gets it sorted. All that effort and they still didn’t give me a full refund. I get a measly €12.60. Well, it’s better than a kick in the teeth.
There’s still a bit of time so I get a couple of slices of pizza (yum!) and pop across the road for a drink and a bar of chocolate. I hadn’t bought a bar of chocolate on this trip yet and just felt like treating myself.
I get back to the bike where there are 2 cleaning trolleys around it. I go to take it away and one of the cleaners tells me something along the lines of not leaving it like that because of the police... either they’ll go through all the luggage or treat it as a bomb (I didn’t quite understand his hand gestures). I apologise and move on. Really, I knew that anyway, but I just didn’t want to drag an overloaded bike with me to all the places. Nothing was stolen and no one else cared.
The train to Taranto is 5 hours. I manage to get a bit of kip as I’m going to need it: the train from Taranto to Bari leaves at 4.18am and I need to decide whether it’s worth sleeping at the station (risking sleeping past the time and missing the train) or trying to stay awake.After more essential snoozing on the train, I decide to try to stay awake. There are a number of homeless people sleeping at this station (just like at the others), including 3 dogs. Every so often the dogs would get excited about something and chase each other out and down the street. At one point a police car came and they got all excited again. The police car deliberately raced off and the dogs all followed!
2am comes and there’s an announcement that the train to Bari is waiting at the station. I take the opportunity: bike on; me on. Now I can sleep!
Stats
Mileage = 7.00 miles
Riding time = 48 minutes
Average speed = 8.7 mph
Top speed = 25.0 mph
Total mileage since start = 772.9
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