Italy Trip - Days 41 - 48 - Sicily
Ooooh, jeepers-creepers! We’ve finally arrived at my favorite part.
I didn’t want to go to Sicily. Sicily is sooo far south. We didn’t know anyone who had gone there. It seemed so foreign for some reason. Mobsters…you’ve heard the rumors.
Buds thought we should go. Stretch as travelers. See something new for us, too.
I told Buds, “You plan it, we’ll go.”
We left the days open on the calendar.
I waited to see what would happen.
By golly, he not only planned it all, it was fantastic, and my very favorite place of the entire adventure.
We stayed in three distinctive locations while in Sicily, and I’m going to give them each their own post because of the unique flavor of each.
This post focuses on the travel portion. To get to Sicily, if you don’t fly, you get on a train, which eventually gets loaded on a ferry. Yes. The TRAIN gets loaded onto the FERRY. It had to be seen to be believed.
We were up bright and early to have Erika take us to the ferry for our exit from Ischia.
Reliable Felice met us one last time at the Ferry Terminal to drive us to the Naples Train Station. (And we knew he wouldn’t miss us this drive because we accidentally underpaid him for the Pompeii excursion, so we owed him money. Oops.)
The Naples train station, which was large and modern and comfortable, was a good spot to pass a couple hours while we waited for our departure.
We had a very long train ride ahead of us, so we purchased first class tickets. We took a little food with us, and we had our water bottles filled up, but we were looking forward to enjoying some espressos and food on the train.
We found our spots on the train, and were pleased with our seats, right at the back of the train.
After the train set off on its long journey, the children explored the train, as had become our habit. When they returned, they had surprising news.
There was no food car.
Buds and I were sure they were wrong. This was an eleven hour train ride. The other trains we had been on, some for short runs of only a few hours, had all had food cars.
Off we went to make sure they just hadn’t missed it by not walking far enough down to the other end of the train.
Of course, they hadn’t missed it. There was no cafeteria car.
We had read that the south got little love in the train transportation area, but this was the first sign we had seen of that being true. There may be some other reason for there not being a way for folks in the train to eat, but I’m not sure what it would be.
As well-fed folks, we ended up being hungry by the end of the trip, but it was fine. The biggest issue was having several packs of saltine crackers as our main food, and running out of water because of the saltines.
A little wrinkle, and it’s funny now.
We learned our lesson: Always take extra food on the train.
Overall the trip was smooth and uneventful.
The tracks run right along the coast, so it was a beautiful ride.
And finally, the moment of excitement arrived. Time to cross over to the Island of Sicily on the ferry.
Loading a train onto a ferry is actually a simple process when it goes smoothly, and a very slow process when it doesn’t. Having a seat at the back of the train so we could watch the folks who did all the work was fascinating. They were very kind about letting us look over their shoulders while they worked.
When our train finally arrived in Siracusa, Sicily, in the dark, on a rainy night, we were so grateful to walk out of the train station to quickly find a cab waiting to whisk us off to our first Sicilian apartment. In general, we found many fewer English speakers in Sicily, and our cab driver was no exception, but he was kind and helpful, making sure to point out the correct alley for us to walk down for the last bit of our journey on that night.
The entire journey from Ischia to Sicily was an interesting beginning to the final portion of our entire Italian Adventure.
