For some reason (mostly my enthusiasm, sorry Lib and Bea) we embarked on a long journey by train from Napoli (Naples) in the south of Italy to Montauban in the South of France. Somebody smarter would have flown from Naples to Toulouse or something in an hour.

The basic plan was to leave Ischia in the morning, take the ferry to Napoli, then spend the day at Pompeii before climbing on to the EuroNight train from Napoli to Nice, then a couple of regional trains via Toulouse to end up being picked up by friends from Monteban about 5pm the next day.

I’m writing this from the first of the regional trains. So far we are 3 hours late, getting there by 8pm tonight, all going well.

The saga began Sunday, when we were trying to book the night train. Sheesh. It should have been easy but it took ages on the phone call being charged at Euro 0,50 a minute. Lib persevered and eventually got there. Ok, we have a reservation, and a receipt number and had instructions to pick up the tickets from a special counter in the station.

We arrived in the station at Napoli, checked our bags and Lib went off to get the tickets.

Oh, there is no counter of the right sort. She queries several people and get sent this way and that, and the treinitalia bureaucracy starts to kick in. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for their own booking system. Oh, and they blame the computer, of course. In the end we find out that we don’t have a reservation. They kindof claim it is something wrong with our credit card. But they verified all that and gave us a receipt number over the phone.

Great. So Lib keeps arguing with them and trying to get somebody to get us a reservation on the train, and I go off to check the credit card on the internet. All the internet booths were in use. Hmm. In the end Bea and I were sitting on the ground outside of the Club Eurostar lounge using the laptop to get the bank statement. So, yes, they’d reserved funds and probably cancelled the booking later. (I’ll check that they did cancel the credit card, and if we have still been charged, we’ll have to get our bank to sort it out).

In the meantime, Lib managed to get new tickets issued and it all ended up ok after a couple of hours hanging around Napoli station. This turned our more or less full day in Pompeii into only a couple of hours in the heat of afternoon before returning to Napoli for a quick dinner.

Bea was pretty excited about the night train to Nice. She will tell you with excitement how we had a triple bunk bed and that Daddy was on the top, Mummy in the middle, and how she was on the bottom. It was a pretty nice ride on the night train, though it took me half the night to work out that I needed to rearrange the luggage to get some air circulation up near my bunk where it was very hot and airless.

The night train was late into Nice, which is why we are now about 3 hours late, turing the trip from Ischia to Montauban in a 36 hour trip. Enough.