On our recent trip I was reminded how much I love train travel. The reminder happened quickly, about an hour after our departure from Letojanni, when the train was loaded onto a ferry for the short hop across the Strait of Messina to the Italian mainland. I know of no other place that does that.
Ferrying the train across the Strait of Messina, Sicily 2023
But beyond the uniqueness of trains on boats, travel by rail offers many amenities, especially compared to airplanes. Trains are comfortable, spacious really, easy to move around in. The countryside is immediate and available, so close it feels touchable - the Tyrrhenian Sea, Vesuvius, gritty Naples. And your fellow passengers are the same, close, willing to engage, share pictures of their children and ours with them. Ultimately, train travel becomes a welcome part of the journey, a story in itself - not another airport to dread with the crowds, the rush, the tension, so cramped you can barely cross your legs. Modern trains are fast, efficient but they feel slow and relaxed.
Leaving Sicily, 10/2023
Trains lull me. They place me in an unfamiliar dream where my vision abstracts to a mix of reality and fiction. I doze. I wake. I make a picture. I read. I walk to the club car and get an espresso. I make another picture, this one stranger than the last. I could do this forever.
Leaving Naples for Rome, 10/23.