two backpacks and a diaper bag

Friday, May 11th. La Spezia-Genova-Nice. I’m getting tired of all the moving around. It has been a wonderful couple of months and I am excited about the other places we are visiting, especially getting three more new countries, but with the way Arthur sleeps at night, the moving around from place to place is getting to be overwhelming at times. Maybe I’m just saying this because I’m tired right now. Let’s see how I feel in a couple of days.

We got to the station on time, as per usual. There was already a train on our platform. The sign wasn’t clear and the train was dark so we thought it wasn’t our train. We also were there 30 minutes early so we thought this train must have been an earlier train. But then we saw people go in. So we looked for the conductor, showed him our ticket, and asked him if this was our train. It was.

So we got on and made ourselves comfortable. From La Spezia to Genova, we had first class seats. We had two seats facing each other and another seat across the aisle, which was part of a cluster of 4.

About half an hour into the journey, Sean put Arthur to sleep in the car seat. He then placed Arthur right across from me. About 15 minutes later, a guy in the cart came by to sell snacks. He stopped right between us.

As he handed a passenger a water bottle, one of the iron drawers on his cart got stuck. He jammed it in. Sean and I looked at each other. We hope it didn’t wake Arthur. But the drawer still did not go back to how it was supposed to be. So he kicked it in. Sean politely told him there was a sleeping baby right next to him. He looked surprised and quickly apologized. I quietly laughed to myself. The car seat was covered so he wouldn’t have known there was a sleeping baby in there. It was funny that the drawer just happened to get stuck when he was parked right next to Arthur, not anywhere else in the cabin.

Miraculously, Arthur did not wake up then. He got woken up later when new people got on the train and there was a confusion about reserved seats and double booking or something like that. Anyway… this journey was only 1 hour and 45 minutes long. We didn’t get to see the whole shindig.

Once we got off the train in Genova, we took the elevator down to the tunnel. As we walked towards the main area, we saw a screen with all the departure list. It turned out, our train to Nice was departing from the same platform as before. So we took the elevator back up and waited on the platform.

We were a bit hungry. Good thing there was a vending machine with snacks on the platform!

The train heading to Nice arrived 10 minutes before its scheduled departure. We got on the train quickly and found our seats.

We had three seats again. This time, we had 2 seats in a cluster of 4, and another seat across the aisle. Thankfully, when Sean was in the bathroom, the guy who was supposed to sit right across from me saw that Sean’s seat was open. He decided to take Sean’s seat. When Sean returned, Sean said that they could just switch seats instead. So as the train departed the station, we had the whole cluster for ourselves. That worked out well.

An hour later, though, a passenger took the empty seat in our cluster. She had mistakenly sat in another seat, and when the conductor went around to check for tickets, he told her to move to her actual seat because another passenger needed that seat.

So she moved next to Sean. She wasn’t very friendly. She was quite withdrawn and she had a somewhat angry face throughout. Anyway…

Thirty minutes later, Sean used the car seat to put Arthur to sleep. Lately, it has been difficult to put him to sleep. He would be so tired and yet he still put up a fight. This was especially difficult because our carriage was right next to the dining carriage so there was a lot of foot traffic for people going into the dining carriage. I’m glad Sean was patient, though. Arthur finally fell asleep and Sean placed the car seat right next to me.

At some point, the lady next to Sean received a phone call. She was talking quite loudly. Sean had to politely ask her to not be so loud because of Arthur. Seriously, though, it wasn’t that we were sensitive to the noise. She was just really loud. Other passengers also looked at her when she was talking.

Sure enough, when she got off the phone, Arthur woke up. He had slept for maybe half an hour. Could have been longer. Grrr…

We still had another hour to go.

The last thirty minutes of the ride was quite scenic! We passed Monaco Monte Carlo station and hit the French Riviera.

Once we reached Nice, we took an uber to the Airbnb. The owner of the Airbnb showed us around the apartment and told us where the nearest grocery was located.

We went to the grocery store as per usual, went back home, and cooked dinner. Tomorrow, we planned to go to Monaco. My second new country in this trip! Country number 62! Yay.