MT2 began bright and early on a Saturday morning. Really, really early. As in, flight from Stansted at 7:10 and taxi from Boss House at 4:00am early. Everyone was pretty good natured about it, and after some napping on the bus, and a lot of caffeine at the airport, the trippers felt much less inclined to punch one another in the face. With some help from security and the Ryan air ground crew, strategic use of iPods, and sticking fingers in ears while screaming “LaLaLaLa, I can’t hear you” for most of the flight, the trippers were able to maintain the mystery until we were taxiing to the terminal at our first destination: Torino, Italy.
Stop 1: Torino
After a bus ride to the centre of town, we were off on a quick walking tour which included Piazza Castello (site of the Olympic Medals ceremonies and infamous IOC orgies cocktail parties), the best gelato in the entire world (according to Benson) from Fiorio, unspectacular pizza and pasta from La Pianeta, and a walk up via Roma. After two hours in Torino, it was time to head to the train station for the next leg of the journey to…
Stop 2: Monte Carlo
Wait, nope, we’re turning east, not west. Turns out we’re headed to…
Stop 2: Rapallo
Rapallo is a medium-sized beach town on the eastern end of the Italian Riviera. After getting off the train, we had a five minute walk to our hotel, which Greg had to do barefoot, as he somehow managed to leave his shoes on the train. We were all just thankful that he was able to get off the train without leaving his pants on it as well. We arrived at the Bates Hotel Hotel Portofino, which turned out to be a very cool, very old hotel run by some extremely nice people. It was decided that the girls would take one room and the boys would take the other down the hall. When the girls walked into their darkened room, what did they find? A swarthy turbie asleep on the bed. Had Tom hired a Mystery Hooker for the rest of the trip? A great idea for future trips, but no, after the lights came on it turned out to be Mystery Guest #1, none other than Fanny Pack, aka Bum Bag (in the UK), aka Stephanie D’Lima. When Danielle realized what was going on, she squealed with such delight that you’d think she just found out that one of her SIMS was pregnant.
After getting all the hugging and stuff out of the way, Greg and Ash went out hunting for cheap shoes (see Greg’s mishap above) while the rest of the crew relaxed on the terrace. They came back shoeless, but with an amazing bottle of fizzy purple wine grape juice gone bad that was shared by the group. After a walk through Rapallo (that may have included a couple of gelato stops) we boarded the bus for Portofino.
Stop 3: Portofino
Portofino is an amazing seaside resort town full of mega-yachts, Russian oligarchs, mafia mistresses, fugitives from justice, and generally people with too much money/too-small dogs. Even though we weren’t wearing Uggs, furs, or €500 sunglasses, they still served us dinner, and it was great. After dinner, it was a bus ride back to Rapallo, a walk along the waterfront (more gelato), and we decided to turn in.
Something the ladies learned on the trip: if you are prone to mosquito attacks, and severely allergic to their bites, then don’t sleep with your window open. The next morning Ash was fine, but the D’Lima sisters looked like they’d attended Fight Club the night before. (And it’s possible that’s actually what happened, they’re both pretty badass). Though we tried to convince Danielle that rather than mosquitoes she’d actually been attacked by miniature vampires all night, just like in Twilight, and that it was awesome, she wasn’t convinced and the night in Rapallo is still a black mark on their trip. Despite our bug problem, we forged on.
Stop 4: Cinque Terre
After a run-in with the conductor on the train who tried to fine us €500 (yeah, sure, we didn’t have tickets, but the ticket office wasn’t open… sort of), we made it to Monterosso and started walking/climbing. Tom proved what amazing shape he was in by stopping often to chat (wheeze) with the obese and/or elderly Americans who were attempting the hike. We made it to Vernazza where most of us took a swim in the Mediterranean, the exception being the trip organizer, who should have been smart enough to bring a swim suit, but wasn’t. From Vernazza, a train to Corniglia, a hike up with 1,000,000 stairs from the station to the town, then back down and on the train to Manarola. From Manarola, the supposedly romantic walk along the via dell’amore to Riomaggiore brought us to town number cinque of the terras.
As we were buying our train tickets to our next destination, we got some shocking news: Train Strike! Ah, crap. We said our hurried, tearful (for some) goodbyes to our Mystery Guest and sent her on her way, then jumped on the first train that was headed south. When we got to La Spezia we found chaos. No one knew which trains were running and which weren’t, and our outlook wasn’t promising. We hung out in McDonald’s and consoled ourselves with Spaghetti McFlurrys while Benson babbled away in Italian trying to figure out how to get us to our next stop, Pisa.
Stop 5: Pisa
Finally we finagled our way onto a passing Eurostar train and headed to the armpit of Italy, Pisa. Like an armpit, Pisa is smelly and not particularly nice to look at, but it did have one thing we wanted to see. We hopped a bus for the Leaning Tower of and spent a half hour taking photos (meaning attempting to take trick shots of us laying on the lawn so that the tower looked like it was our dong). After that, bus to the Pisa Airport, and our trip was almost done.
Stop 6: London
After a flight delay, we finally made it back to Stansted, only to be greeted by The Worst Queue Ever Known to Man at immigration. Were we going to make the last train home? Would we have to sleep at Stansted/get fired from our jobs? It was touch and go, but we finally made it, and everyone was home and in bed by 2:00am. None of us were very productive the next day at work, but it was worth it.
Mystery Trip 2 was now History Trip 2, and despite a few curveballs (malarial mosquitoes, lazy Italian train workers) the trip was mostly a success – we saw new stuff, and no one died.
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