Pietrasanta, Pruno, and Viareggio

February 14-15, 2009

went to Pietrasanta, Pruno, and Viareggio with Margaret and Christine.

We left our house at 5:30 in the morning to catch a 6:10 train to Pietrasanta. Our tickets were kind of confusing and didn't say a train number, so we had to pick between two different trains that left at 6:10, but we asked one of the train workers and thought we were getting on the right train. After riding the train for several hours (the trip was only supposed to take just over two hours), we started to wonder if we had gone the wrong way. After looking at the train route map, we decided that the train went to Pisa Centrale then turned and continued to Viareggio and on to Pietrasanta. But when we got to Pisa Centrale it turned around and started back towards Florence. We still thought we were ok, though, because it looked like maybe it went back three stops and then went to Viareggio and Pietrasanta. So we rode the train back three stops to Lucca, but at Lucca we heard announcements saying the train was going back to Santa Maria Novella (the train station right by our apartment). We quickly asked a train worker if we were on the right train and he said we had to switch to the train to Viareggio. Luckily we were at a big train station where we could switch. So the man told us what track to go to, and we waited for the train to Viareggio. The train came and we thought we were finally on the right track. This train brought us to Viareggio, the big station two stops before Pietrasanta, and stopped. We figured it just stopped longer at big stations, but a man came and told us we had to get off; Viareggio was the end of the line. So we got off and went in search of a train to Pietrasanta. We found the right train and which bin it was coming to and finally got to Pietrasanta. Although it took us 3 trains and about 6 hours to get there (instead of 1 train and only 2 hours), it didn't put a damper on our moods. It was an adventure and we were all so proud of ourselves for figuring it out, especially since we did it almost completely in Italian.

When we got to Pietrasanta, our first goal was to find our hostel so we could drop off our bags and then wander the city. That turned out to be quite a lot harder than we expected. We found a map right away, but it didn't show where we were on the map, so we misread it and had to come back several times. Eventually we found the center of the city and another map, but we still guessed our location wrong so we spent quite a while wandering streets looking for our street (Via del Teatro) until someone was able to give us directions. We were so excited to have finally made it, but when we got to number 14 where our hostel was supposed to be located, there was just an empty building. We stood there in shock for a few minutes before sending Margaret into an Internet cafe to ask for help. She talked to the people inside for a good half hour trying to figure out where this hostel was. Finally they saw that the address said Via del Teatro 14, PrunoPietrasanta. Apparently Pruno is a tiny little town up in the mountains outside of Pietrasanta. The Internet cafe people told us that we had to take a bus up to the town. We decided to eat lunch on the Duomo steps and walk around the city for a little while before trekking up the mountain.

Soooo we bought tickets for the bus (at which point I got complimented on my Italian), and headed up to Pruno. We were actually pretty excited to be staying on the mountain even though we didn't get to spend much time in Pietrasanta. There were a bunch of other kids on the bus around our age or a little younger. One of the boys started talking to us. Between his broken English and our broken Italian we were able to make some small talk and he said that he was coming up to Pruno later and he and his friends could show us around the town.

When we finally reached Pruno (around 2:45), we immediately saw the sign for Ostello La Pania, the hostel where we had reserved beds. Finally a part of the journey was easy..... or so we thought. We climbed up the little mountain path to the hostel and rang the bell but no one answered. Since siesta is usually from 1:00 to 3:30, we thought that maybe the people were sleeping or out to lunch or whatever they do during siesta. It was freezing cold though, so after waiting half an hour (during which we continually exclaimed about the amazing views), we finally asked a woman and a man that we saw if they knew where the hostel people were. The woman called the hostel number for us and after a lot signals and simple Italian words managed to communicate to us that the man who runs the hostel, Lorenzo, had to drive up from Pietrasanta so he would be in Pruno in about an hour. She told us that we could go wait in the ristorante/bar to get out of the cold. Before going into the bar, we walked around the town and realized that it only has three streets and probably not more than 50 in habitants. When we went into the bar, the owner immediately knew we were the girls from the hostel. Luckily he spoke English fairly well, so he asked what we were doing for dinner and offered to make a reservation at a restaurant two towns down the mountain since his was fully booked (we had forgotten that it was Valentine's Day). I don't know if this is typical of small towns everywhere, but everyone we spoke to in Pietrasanta and Pruno was so nice and helpful and did more than we asked to help us out. Finally Lorenzo showed up and was mumbling about not receiving our reservations. He spoke English, so although there was obviously a mix-up with the hostel, at least we could understand him. After shuffling papers and pretending to look for our reservations for several minutes, he finally said, "Actually the hostel's closed. It's under construction." That definitely threw us for a loop. He told us about the other options in the area; there was another hotel slash bed and breakfasty type thing in Pruno, some place in Pietrasanta, and some place in Volegno (the town just before Pruno), but every one was going to cost at least 27 euro. Since we had planned for the hostel which cost 18 euro, we couldn't afford that. Lorenzo spent a lot of time talking on the phone and talking to everyone who came into the bar. Considering how small the town is and the fact that half of its population came into the bar at some point during this, I'm quite sure everyone in the town knew about the three American girls who tried to stay at the hostel. We thought a couple of the people in the bar offered to let us stay in their houses but Lorenzo told them no. Of course we were eavesdropping on Italian so we easily could have misunderstood what they were talking about. Lorenzo finally got the bed and breakfast in town to let us stay the night for 20 euro but we couldn't have the breakfast that was supposed to be included. Although Lorenzo was really helpful finding us a new place to stay, his whole attitude towards the situation surprised us. It was clearly his fault for not taking his hostel off the hostel-booking website yet he never once offered to pay the difference for any other place we stayed and any time he offered us a new place he seemed to think we were just being picky by not choosing the expensive ones. I don't know if maybe he had this idea that all Americans are rich, but eventually he understood that we really couldn't afford the other hotels.

So finally we had the whole accomodations thing figured out (it was about 4:30 by this time), and then Lorenzo dropped the next bombshell. No buses run to Pruno on Sundays. This was something we should have already realized cuz I had seen a bus schedule at the station but somehow we missed that important fact. Luckily Lorenzo was still feeling helpful so he did some more calling and finagling and set up a ride for us. FINALLY we had everything figured out and could actually enjoy being in Pruno. Despite everything that went wrong, we never stopped having fun, but we started getting frustrated when we couldn't figure out where to stay, so by the time we were settled in our room, we were ready to just relax and take in the views. The bed and breakfast we wound up in was attached to the church on one side and the bell tower was attached to the other side, more specifically, attached to our room. Before Lorenzo left, I asked him what time the mass would be at in the morning. He told us that it would be around 9:30 most likely, but really whenever the priest woke up, so listen for the bells.

After a couple hours of lounging around, taking pictures out the windows (we had an awesome view of the mountains and of Volegno), and recharging our batteries, it was time to head off dinner. We had to walk about five to ten minutes down the windy mountain road to the restaurant. Apparently it's the only restaurant for the town it's in (I don't know the name) and for Volegno so it was easy to find. When we walked in, the cook immediately knew we were the three girls from the hostel and pointed to a table that clearly said it was reserved for "ostello" ("hostel"). We felt like celebrities with the way everyone on the mountain knew who we were. As we were waiting for the cameriera (waitress), we realized that the menu was oral. We still don't know what a lot of the different foods are in Italian (I don't know what most of the stuff is even in English), so we were kind of worried, but the waitress was sooo nice. She didn't speak any English but she said everything very slowly for us and enunciated. Italians always run all their words together and if there are two vowel sounds in a row, they just blend them, so she really had to think about enunciating everything so clearly. I ordered the ravioli, which wound up having nuts on it, but they weren't too hard to pick out. I just hope I didn't look too rude, searching through my food and picking stuff out. We didn't order an antipasto, but the waitress brought us some of the stuff that comes with the antipasto anyway, which was really nice. The antipasti were all trays of meats with little bowls of tomatoes and onions and stuff like that to eat with it, so we didn't get that, but the waitress brought us a bowl of the fried bread (in addition to the regular bread that comes with any meal), and a dish of this weird thing that had a similar consistency and taste to grits. We never did figure out what it was, but it was pretty good. And because it was Valentine's day, there were chocolates at each of the place settings. All in all it was a really good meal.

After dinner, we were trekking back up the mountain and we remembered that we had agreed to meet the Italian boy at 8 (which was when our reservation for dinner was), but at this point it was about 10:00. We felt kind of bad for blowing him off, but were kind of glad it didn't work out because we hadn't realized before that Pruno is so small there is absolutely nothing to do at night. The real attraction of it is the view, which is obviously much better when it's light out. Just as we were talking about this, we heard a Vespa coming up the road towards us. I jokingly said "Watch that be the Italian boy." Well, lo and behold, the Vespa stops just a little bit up the road from us and the Italian boy and his friend get off. It was so funny. So we talked to them for a little while, but then we told the boys we were going to bed and headed back to our room. We felt really bad that they had come all the way up to Pruno just to see us. We were planning on going to Carnivale the next day, though, and the boys mentioned that they were also going, so Christine gave them her number and said we could meet up with them there.

The next morning, we woke up to CRAZY church bells. They started going off just before 9 and rang for a solid ten minutes. It was unbelievable sounding. We took that to mean the priest was up, so we got up and got ready to go to mass. Christine and Margaret aren't Catholic, but they wanted to see a mass, so we all went to church together. The bells rang two tolls at 9:30 and the mass begin about ten minutes later, so we figured out that the crazy bells are the wake up signal and then they ring the bell again to tell everyone to come to the church, and then mass starts.

A man from the bed and breakfast was supposed to drive us about halfway down the mountain to Cardoso where the bus comes twice on Sundays. The first bus wasn't until 1:50, so we had most of the morning free. We spent it walking around Pruno, taking pictures, and exploring the mountain. We found little overgrown trails into the woods, so we went on them. It was sooooo cool. We found a couple little abandoned houses built into the mountain. One of them was just a little corner with a window poking out of the stone. I couldn't even figure out how anyone would get in. Margaret had on heels and Christine didn't trust her balance, so they didn't explore too far, but I clambered all over, crossing the little streams trickling down the mountain and jumping from rock to rock. It reminded me of playing in the woods when we were little, except ten times cooler. Vic and JC would have loved it.

Eventually we went back to the bed and breakfast and Emilio (I guess he's one of the owners or someone who works there or something) gave us a ride. We were really excited to ride in an Italian car, but it turned out to be a Ford station wagon so not that exciting after all. It was still an interesting ride, though, because he went around those tight mountain turns like they were nothing. From Cardoso, we took the bus down to Pietrasanta, and then another bus to Viareggio for the Carnivale. Carnivale was INSANE. Before we even got into the actual carnival, we could see the giant floats, and people everywhere in crazy costumes, and confetti and silly string coating the streets, the people, the buildings. The costumes people wore were ridiculous. The most popular kind of costume was this sort of fuzzy potato sack. The potato sack ended in shorts and then you wore tights underneath with these fuzzy legwarmers at the bottom. They also had hoods, but no one wore the hoods up. I guess they were all supposed to be animal costumes since they all had different kinds of ears attached to the hoods, but they were so weird. They were all different colors, some obviously not animal colors. It wasn't even kids wearing this silly costumes. It was mostly college-aged kids and grown-ups wearing them. A lot of the kids were dressed up as characters or bumble bees. We didn't look out of place, not being in costume, but we were definitely in the minority. There were a few rides and food places, but the main part was the parade. The parade route was a loop, so it never ended. The floats were HUGE. Most of them were at least as tall if not taller than the buildings around...... the 5 or 6 story buildings. I've never seen anything like it. A couple of them were kind of gruesome, cannibal-type floats, which was weird. Every float had zillions of people on and around it, dancing and singing and acting ridiculous. And it wasn't like big parades at home where the spectators can't go in the streets. We were in the middle of the road watching this parade. The spectators became part of the parade. Everytime a float came by though, event workers would be walking along with it, clearing people out of the way. Even then, you had to duck as the corners went by, so you didn't get whacked. The marching bands didn't even try clearing people out of the way; they would just push through. My pictures probably don't capture it very well, but you can get an idea of how huge these floats were and how close we were. In a lot of my pictures you can't see the whole float, but that shows how close we were. If we weren't careful, we could have lost limbs to the floats as they passed.

When we were all Carnivale-ed out, and had taken the requisite pictures of touching the Mediterranean Sea, we decided to head home. We continued to practice our Italian by asking for directions to the train station. The train station was crazy with everyone trying to get home, and the next train to Florence was leaving in like five minutes, so we had a mad dash to the ticket window, threw our money at the teller, and sprinted up to the platform. We got there right as the train was coming in, and a rush of people tried to get on, so we just shoved our way on without double checking that it was the right train. It turns out that the train that was supposed to come after the Florence one came first so we found ourselves back at Pietrasanta. That was at least a town we recognized so we decided to get off there and find another train back. We eventually figured out that if we had stayed on that train, it would have turned around and ended up back in Florence eventually, but instead we waited in the Pietrasanta train station for 40 minutes until the same train came back headed to Florence.

On the train we noticed that the couple sitting across the aisle appeared to be sketching floor plans, which was funny since we were all taking notes and drawing things in our sketch books, too. When we were almost back at our station, Margaret asked the couple if they were architects. We talked to them for a little while, and it turns out that the man, and maybe the woman too, works at a firm right by the piazza we're designing for our studio project. Through a mix of Italian and English, he told us to check out their website and come visit the firm sometime. He said that students come work there "to get a little experience," so like an internship. He said they've never had American students, but the way he said sounded like they never had, but maybe they should consider it.

So after countless mishaps, mix-ups, and mess-ups, we made it safely back to Santa Maria Novella train station all in one piece with a weekend full of great memories. I think everything that went wrong just made the trip that much better, especially since only the hostel mix-up cost us any extra money (2 euro).

Although originally I had been a little jealous of my friends who were going on expensive trips every weekend, I'm really happy with everything I've done instead. This whole weekend only cost about a third or less of what a lot of my friends have been spending on their weekend trips. And I had thoroughly enjoyed spending some time in the city by myself on the weekend that everyone else went away, too, so you really can have an awesome time in Italy without spending huge amounts of money.