I thought it was going to be an ordinary day of riding trains however I got to experience something quite unique but we’ll get to that in a second. Today started out with us going to Rome train station to active our eurorail passes. One thing to note if you do get a eurorail pass and you don’t activate it online at the time you buy it you will need to go to the train station to activate it. Go at least 1 hour to an hour an half before getting a train as you will need to get a ticket and then wait in line until your number is called to actually see someone to active it. After you get your ticket then go to one of any number of boards around with departures to look for your platform number which won’t show until about 6 minutes before the time of departure. Be careful of people that come up to you asking if you need help as they will either want money or try and pick pocket you.
We took a train from Rome to Naples on the fast train and then took the intercity train from Naples to Villa San Giovanni now this I s where the unique thing happened which was a total surprise. The train stopped nothing big there right…. well then the train was split in 2 parts and 1 part which had 8 cars was pushed onto a ferry boat of course all power is turned off. The second part went on its way to a different destination.
That’s right a ferry boat and then after a second pair of 8 cars were pushed onto the ferry boat we got out of our train car and go outside onto the ferry boat. You could go up on deck to look around and breathe some fresh but a little chilly air while watching the sun start to set. It took about an hour and 10 minutes from the time we stopped until the ferry got moving. The whole ferry ride took about 30 mins. Once our train was pulled off the ferry at Messina train station we got power again and the engine car was put on. Amazing feat that this happens many times during the day and we only had a 10 minute delay. I love trains so this was a wonderful surprise to experience.
Another interesting thing I noticed while riding on the trains was that there was lots of greenhouses along the route from Naples to Messina. It turns out that Italy is one of the leading countries for this. Italy also has the first underwater greenhouse which has now become the first underwater farm called Nemo’s Garden in Noli, Italy. You can check out more about this at the below link. It’s really quite a fascinating project.
