It's Sunday evening now... Where had we got to? Ah yes, the evening of Friday 24, and waiting for the train at Siracusa...

The sleeper train to Rome, that is. And, pretty much on time, up it rolls, and on we get:



Someone has turned the heating up to Etna-temperature, but apart from that, all good. Fairly rapidly, the tickets are checked; the goodies are distributed (they supply you with two little bottles of water each -- and if we'd known that, we wouldn't have lugged along so much of our own -- plus they give you toothbrushes, soap, and a towel, to use at your dinky little washbasin); and the breakfast order is finalized (which is not complicated, as you don't get that much choice). Somewhere in the middle of all this, we consume our picnic tea.

Now, the interesting thing about this train is that it boards the boat to cross the Strait of Messina...

We experienced this once before, in China, in 2018, when we crossed from Haikou to the mainland. That was a much bigger deal. The strait is wider, so both the train and the boat are bigger, and a lot more folding up is required to get the one onto the other. Getting us from Messina to Villa San Giovanni, on the other hand, was a much simpler affair. The train just drives onto the boat, as does its friend from Palermo. When they get off the boat, they become one train (sounds almost biblical), and thus spliced, continue to Rome.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The first thing that was a surprise to us was the locking of the train toilets quite a while before embarkation. Oh no... We'd been enthusiastically rehydrating after the thirsty rigours of the day, and now no toilets... But it wasn't as bad as it sounded. As soon as the train is on the boat, you can get off it (the train, that is), and go and use whatever facilities the boat has to offer. (Again, this was different from our Chinese experience, when you stayed on the train for the duration -- but then, as I said, the folding up was so complicated there that if you let people off, they'd probably never find their way back to their compartment...)

The timings, in case you're interested: The train leaves Siracusa at 1746; stops a few times along the route (most of which we'd done already by now); and at 2055 it leaves Messina (where we'd briefly been just a few short weeks before) to trundle over to the boat. You arrive in Villa San Giovanni, on the other side of the Strait of Messina, at 2220, and once they've stuck the trains together, you're on the way again by 2250.






I adore night trains... There's just something about them that says TRAVEL in really big letters. And I normally sleep reasonably well. Not this time, though... It continued to be confoundedly hot, and, as Nigel pointed out, this train seemed to have two modes: Stationary, and hacking along the track as though all hell was behind it.

Never mind. We're on time. And just before 0500, the attendant is beeping us awake with the infernal device he put in place last night for that very purpose. But he does make up for it shortly afterwards by bringing us our breakfast. Not the most epic breakfast. Not as good as the one we had on the way to Venice. But we were pretty hungry by then, so everything was welcome. And the coffee was good.

We were pulling into Rome only slightly after the scheduled time of 0605.

Rome, however, was not journey's end. It was supposed to be, in the early iterations of this plan. Then we found out about Rome's 2025 Jubilee... Rome is always crowded these days, I'm told, but this is likely to make it way, way worse. OK, skip Rome, we decided. So, for a while now, the plan has been to change trains in Rome, and then travel straight on. To Bologna.

I'd been to Bologna in 1994, and remembered it as a very beautiful city, but that was a work trip, and there wasn't any time for detailed explorations. So this is a good chance to put that right.


Our new train left at 0650 (time for a quick coffee between trains, then), and two hours' non-stop running gets you to Bologna. It had come from Salerno (south of Naples), and must have left there terribly early, as our compartment was full of splayed and sleeping people.

There are no view photos. This is because: a) we left in the dark; b) the weather had dumped a pall of fog all over the land; and c) once you've rattled through Florence, 94 per cent of the line -- yes, an astonishing 94 per cent -- is in tunnels.

And then we're in Bologna. It's not quite 0900, and we have no guarantee we can access our new apartment until 1500. It's cold, damp, and raw. And what's happened to the light...? In the south, even dull days had that incomparable light...

OK, strategize. First, you need to dump your bags. This is expensive (EUR 28 for four bags for five hours), but you have to suck it up, or you're really sunk.

Then you need a way to fill in six hours in Bologna (actually, our landlord messaged us at 1245 to say the flat was ready, but by the time we'd emerged from the museum we were in, walked to the station to collect our bags, and then walked to the flat, it was about 1430 anyway).

So, not in chronological order, our day consisted of:

1. A church. The Basilica of St James the Greater. A "church of much fresco fascination"... Particularly interesting are the Bentivoglio Chapel, an important early-Renaissance monument, constructed in the 1460s, and the Oratory of St Cecilia, with a series of frescoes from the very early 1500s.


2. A museum. The Davia Bargellini Museum. Full of interesting things to look at:






3. Two cafes. In the first we ordered mortadella foccacias, breakfast then being many hours ago. (Mortadella, by the way, is a Bologna invention.) In the second we felt the temperature called for hot chocolate (the drinking kind, as opposed to the spooning kind). We'd scoped out a nice little cafe, with just a couple of occupants. We ordered, sat down, and within minutes all the tables were full, and another 20 folks were traipsing through to sit on the terrace...

4. Two bookshops. Bologna, you can tell from just a glance, is FULL of bookshops. Good ones. Well stocked with interesting stuff. The second one we lighted on offered second-hand books, so although I've drawn a blank on the new titles I was looking for, I did come away with two books for EUR 10.

Having collected our bags, we headed for our new pad. Which is ultra-roomy and high-ceilinged:






You'll notice I mentioned our portico. This is one of the first features to strike you about Bologna. Porticoes are everywhere. Really, everywhere...

The next thing you become aware of is the colour palette. Amber, ochre, saffron, burnt sienna, peach, bisque, terracotta, cinnamon... It's all very harmonious, and very beautiful.

And in Bologna, it's out with the limestone and in with the brick. I don't mind. I've always liked brick.

Some examples of all this from yesterday and today:















In short, it has all been a bit of a roller-coaster recently. But very satisfying. And this is a lovely place to spend our last few days in Italy.