Day 34- Italy Trip - Travel To Ischia

After 10 delightful days, it was time to leave Lucca. We packed up the farmhouse and headed for the train station around 9 a.m. for our 10:30 a.m. train.

I dropped off the entire crew and the luggage at the train station then drove over to drop off the rental car. I was lucky enough to drive behind the skinny orange truck that had fascinated Buds our entire stay in Lucca.

Driving behind it was making me laugh. It’s so tall and so tippy looking. It’s like watching your 12-month-old learn to walk with that huge baby head making her wobbly.

I enjoyed a beautiful, sunny walk by the Lucca city walls to meet up with my gang at the train station after dropping off the rental car with no problem.

Monkey got us to our correct platform to wait for our train.

We had an 80- minute ride to Florence.

Then we jumped on the fast train to Naples.

Traveling on the train has been such a treat. The children enjoy exploring. There is fascination in walking from car to car; finding the food car; locating the bathroom; making up stories about your fellow travelers.

On the second train I was seated next to a young white American woman from L.A. who was headed to Rome for her flight back to the U.S. She spends half the year in Italy, half in the U.S. She owns a company that offers yoga and life improvement seminars for groups of 8 people or so. She rents a villa and they tour around Tuscany.

I tried to hunt up her website to link to, but it turns out there a lot of companies offering women’s yoga retreats at a villa in Tuscany.

She left us in Rome, then I was seated by a well-dressed white Italian couple. They looked like they were just headed out for dinner in Naples. No luggage, enjoying each other’s company. The train makes life easier.

When we stopped in Napoli, we had the good fortune to easily find Felice, our taxi driver arranged through Erika, our hostess in Ischia. We piled into Felice’s taxi and Buds and I watched in shock and awe as we careened our way to Napoli Centrale dock to await our ferry to Ischia.

We agreed more than once that we were grateful that driving in Naples was never in the plan.

Felice delivered us to the dock, went with me to purchase the tickets for the correct ferry, called Erika to make sure she knew what time we’d land in Ischia, told us to call him for any other travel we need to do in Naples, shook hands and left us to our own devices.

We had about 90-minutes until our ferry left, so plenty of time to explore the cafe, read books, and break as many unknown rules as possible.

Things you cannot do at Napoli Centrale dock that we did:

1) Lay down on the glass benches.
2) Set all your luggage on the glass benches.
3) Put your feet up on the glass benches.

The gentleman who worked so hard to get us to adhere to the rules was very kind and respectful each time he corrected us. I suspect he was relieved to see us go.

The inside of the ferry made me laugh because it had the feel of the Casino Queen where Nathan and I used to go gamble when we were in grad. school in St. Louis.

Thanks to the time change, it was dark by the time we arrived in Ischia.

After the nearly 2-hour ferry ride, we disembarked and looked around for Erika who always meets her guests at the dock.

We piled into her car with Buster sitting on Buds’ lap in the front seat. (You play by different rules when you are traveling.)

The drive to the apartment went quickly, and once again I was grateful to not be driving; lots of one-way streets (they should be one-way, but aren’t), tiny alleys, and converging of traffic from many directions.

When we arrived at our beautiful apartment, Erika had a complete meal waiting for us; spaghetti with ragu, cheese-filled biscuits, water (still and frizzante), crusty bread, red wine, parmesan cheese, and chocolate-covered hazelnuts for dessert. And she’d baked a yogurt cake for our breakfast and left us juice and milk in the fridge.

Though we had had a full day of travel we didn’t feel too tired, but what a relief and delight it was to realize we wouldn’t have to venture out again to find food thanks to her planning and kindness.

She and her husband quickly took care of the last bits of business and left us to eat our dinner and settle in to our new home.

It was a delightful, easy day, and then in the morning, this:

Tough to tell, but that’s a castle right there.

More on Ischia soon.