More train travel

What is this? I should have a contest to guess what this is. How about I keep you guessing till the end of this post to tell you. What's this got to do with trains and train travel, that's the question?

During our trip to Italy, in March this year, the girls thought the graffiti was such a kick, so Karin took a bunch of pictures of all the graffiti she saw. I was surprised by graffiti during my first trip abroad, 8 years ago. I took a lot of pictures too. I thought to myself, Oh, the French are into graffiti like the Americans. In fact, there's graffiti all over Europe.

Trains are great places to do homework, I think, she's doing homework here or she was preparing to play a game with her sister. I don't rent cars, for one, it's too expensive, for another, I don't want to drive when I'm on vacation. I let someone else do the driving, I just sit back, relax, read, chat, sketch or just look out the window to see the changing scenery and look forward to my next destination.

More graffiti along the train tracks, they are every where.

Anticipating arrival at the next destination on the itinerary. This is the second time in my life that I've anticipated this next stop. The first time was very exciting, I waited with bated breath, this time was not so but I was excited for the girls. We are approaching the train station in Venice. There are so many special places in the world and this is one of them. Oh, Venice, Venice, Venice.....

It is very relaxing on the train. 5 years ago when my nieces were still very young I took them to France and during one of our outings on the train we were stuck on the tracks for hours, the reason was, some French woman killed herself by jumping in front of our train not long after it left the station. That kind of put a crimper on our days' outing, she inconvenienced us by committing suicide. Sorry to sound so callous. We've had trains break down before and had to bussed somewhere to take other trains. I prefer trains to buses, even though buses are cheaper because there are bathrooms on trains. Sometimes one has to take the bus if there are no train services to a particular place. It is always good to find out how long the trip is and be sure to empty one's bladder before embarking on the bus. One doe not have to worry about anything if one is going with an organised tour group, I've never done that before though sometimes during trips I wished I had a tour bus waiting for me. We were in Erice, Sicily, last year, when it poured and we couldn't find our way to the bus stop, we took the city bus to get there. There were other tourists there and they all rushed into their waiting tour buses. That was the only time I wished I could do that. Apart from that time, I'm happy to be an independent traveler. We did eventually found the bus stop, we waited an hour in the toilet before the city bus came, we were drenched, wet and miserable. Would I travel again independently? Absolutely! We didn't find the bus stop on our own, we asked an Italian guy who couldn't speak English but took us in his new BMW to the bus stop. That was so nice, we were drenched, there must be a big puddle in his car. Thank you, who every you are. To this day I'm still grateful. The next day, on the train, from Trapani on the west side of Sicily to Catania on the east side of Sicily, we met with some really nice people from Germany, Sweden and England. It was the ultimate amazing trip.

I wish I could be in Catania, Sicily again soon. This is the main train station in Catania. There is another smaller train station in another part of town called Borgo where a little train takes people around Mt Etna, it is the mean of transportation for people who lives at the base around Mt Etna. One can take the metro from Catania main station to Borgo and from Borgo, take the 'circumetna' to all the little towns, some of them are really pretty but these are farming towns, the soil are the fertile volcanic soil. Mt Etna has erupted many times and have left huge sea of lava rock all around the mountain. In Winter and Spring, the higher towns and Mt Etna are covered with snow. It is an amazing sight, at the towns near the coast, palm trees sway and bougainvilleas bloom but just a few miles up near Mt Etna, there's snow. We were there in March and came upon snow and snowing. The lava rock gets covered with snow and it looks ominous and has an out of this world feel to it. It looks like the first picture in this post. That is the lava rock being covered with snow.

Renfe, the Spanish train, here, a few years ago, going from Seville to Granada. This is the Spanish version of a fast train, supposedly the Spanish trains are the most comfortable because they are on wider tracks, that makes the ride smoother and have larger aisle space. This was a very comfortable journey. My sister and I were staying in Seville but went on a day trip to Granada to visit the Alhambra. The Alhambra is a fantastic place and well worth seeing.

The very futuristic TGV station of Avignon, this place is so huge, this is just the waiting area, the tracks are upstairs and on the outside.


A little secret, Paris Charles de Gaulle airport has a huge train station, the various TGV trains go to all corners of France and from there you can pick up connections to all over Europe. Fast trains in Europe and the TGV always require prior booking, at least a day ahead. One cannot buy a ticket and jump onto these trains, there's assigned seating and requires purchasing a ticket at least a day ahead.

The topic on train travel in Europe is too massive to be tackled in a comprehensive way in a little post like this, it'll take a book. These are only the experiences I have so far, others have written about it and even then can only cover it from their experiences and their perspectives. To have fun in Europe, one must tackle the train systems there.