A night train to the land of gelato and pizza
- Anna McBrayer
- Oct 29, 2016
- 2 min read
We surprised the boys with another trip to destination unknown this past week. They came home from school and we said, pack your bags we’re catching the 11 pm overnight train to Rome!
We actually shared a couchette with a faceless man albeit a very nice one. It was dark when we boarded and he started his trip a few cities before us. He was very patient with us as we tried to quietly scramble to get the kids settled in their beds. He disembarked before we woke up. I hope we didn’t ruin a good nights sleep for him!
We woke up the following morning to a 2 hour delay. The next stop was a beautiful little fortified city called Orvieto just outside of Rome and one of our favorite stops some 7 years ago on our first trip abroad with FLC students. It’s the home of my favorite cathedral and the St. Patrick’s Well with it’s double helix stairway. So at the last minute, we hopped off to do a little reminiscing.
The church has a very detailed gothic facade and the body of the church provides a stark zebra striped black and white walls built with local stone. The inside had a lot of remarkable frescos that depict judgement day. The images of hell and the demons are actually quite terrifying not only in the frescos but in the stone sculptures of the facade as well.
We got the boys excited about all the sights in Italy. The cathedrals, the vineyards, the museums, but in reality, we were all just excited to have an excuse to eat as much gelato and pizza as we could in 5 days.
One of the things anyone traveling abroad struggles with is just how different things are done every time you cross a boarder. The tickets, trains and transportation are very different in every city and country. When you budget for traveling, budget for mistakes along the way. When we left Orvieto to head to Rome, we purchased our tickets and boarded the train only to find out that in Italy you must validate your tickets before boarding. After a 31 Euro fine for not validating (which was more than all four of our tickets combined) we arrived in Rome. We were lucky we were tourists. Had we been Italians, it would have been 31 euros per person! Ouch!
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