Well, that was a day we weren’t quite expecting. Today we were leaving our overnight location, St Moritz and heading to Venice in Italy. This was going to be our most challenging journey of all the journeys we have on this holiday as it involves 4 legs over 8 hours. It all started ok, we get out of bed in our hotel in St Moritz and headed down for breaky. After that we head back upstairs and grab our stuff and then the porter gives us a taxi ride to the train station for our first leg, the 10 o’clock train to Thusis. We get on board and this train takes us back along the same line as the Glacier Express except on this train you can slide the window down so I spent the entire leg standing up and sticking my head out the window. We get to Thusis a couple of minutes early. At this point we have 9 minutes to transfer to a bus at the bus port to take us to Bellinzona. 2 minutes prior to arriving at Thusis we thought we were transferring to another train but my 453rd check of the ticket proved vital as I discovered it was the bus and not the train we were getting on to next. Phew, tragedy averted!! We find the bus without too much of a problem and we are on our way. The next connection could be hairy as this bus ride is reliant on road traffic that could potentially hold us up but ol’ Giovanni the bus driver has clearly done this route before and he puts the hammer down. This bus route proves to be the most amazing route we have travelled to date, an absolute cracker with views I didn’t think existed. I can’t explain any of it in a way that will do it justice in this blog. All I can say is, if you ever get the opportunity to travel the road between San B and Bellinzona, do it, it is incredible. We get to Bellinzona and we now have 12 minutes to find our next connection to Milano. We find the platform but the train isn’t there, it’s running late!! OK, it’s only 6 minutes, shouldn’t be a problem as we have a 20 minute transfer time at Milano. We get on board and we have seat reservations but this doesn’t seem to concern any of the other morons on the train and we end up sitting all over the place in different seats. At this point we’re all tired, we’re travelling with two kids and we are in the middle of an all day train ride. This one old woman insisted she had to sit in our seat because it was an aisle seat and her hip is no good and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. What I said to her was “No worries, my daughter will sit over here and we will work around you and.......” What I felt like saying was “Get you fat old wrinkly arse off my seat and go and sit in your own seat you silly old......” But I didn’t. This train leg is only 1 hour and 25 minutes, one of our shorter train rides, so we can put up with a little inconvenience. As our scheduled arrival time gets closer we start loading up by putting our back packs on, grabbing any other bags we have and eyeballing our suitcases ready for the mad dash, standard procedure. The train starts to slow down and I ask this bloke if this is Milano Station and he tells me no it’s not, apparently the train is running 20 minutes late. I’m sort of not too happy right about now especially considering this is a 1hr and 25 minute train journey and the train is 20 MINUTES LATE!!!!! Regardless of this fact I still think we may be a chance to make our connection even though its 20 minutes late and I don’t know what platform we have to get to at this point in time. The train finally pulls in to Milano and we bolt, we run as fast as we can to an electronic board to see the platform number we need to get to. We have a look.....no number, just some words scrolling where there should be a number. We grab some Italian train worker who’s sitting down having a fag and drag him over to the board to translate the text and he informs us the train has left. FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFar out!!!!! What now??? I tell Kris and the kids to follow me and I run around like a chook with its head cut off trying to find an info desk. We see one and there are some people talking to this train conductor looking bloke. It soon becomes apparent that they too have all missed their connection to Venice. This train conductor bloke is clearly unsympathetic and tells us that there is another train in an hour and to get on that and explain our problem to the conductor on that train. I say to him “What about our seat reservations” he waves his hands around in a way that pretty much suggests to me that he doesn’t give a rats. We wait until the next train and it’s not at the platform we were advised to wait at so we now have to battle the masses of people who were already at the correct platform. I collar the conductor at the door of the train and explain to him our situation that we missed our train and we now don’t have seat reservations and he just says “get on this carriage” We get on and there are no seats available so we just have to stand there. Luckily there is another older Australian couple in the same situation who got on the same carriage as us and they both spoke fluent Italian. The train gets moving and a different conductor comes to check our tickets. He checks the other Aussie couples tickets first and the wife just launches into this conductor in Italian and they are going at it hammer and tongs. They argued for a good 10-15 minutes. In the end they had to fork out extra cash to stay on. He turns to me and I show him my ticket and I start giving him a spray but he can’t understand a word I’m saying so the Aussie woman translates for me. After about 5 minutes the Aussie woman turns and says to me that he’s kicking us off at the next station because our ticket hadn’t been validated for this journey. At this point Tyler’s crying, Mia thinks it’s all good fun and I am gobsmacked. We’ve paid for our tickets, his stinking train was late and we’re getting kicked off!!?? The Aussie woman goes back in to bat for us and it turns out he wants another 32 Euro ($45) from us to stay on the train. The Aussie woman manages to convince him that we shouldn’t have to pay and in the end he let us stay on. We still didn’t have a seat and we ended up standing for the entire 2hr 45min journey. The other Aussie couple were fantastic. They ended up letting the kids sit in their seats and the husband even set up his laptop and put a movie on for them. About 10 minutes later, we pull up to the next station and this Italian couple jump on and the same conductor, who is out on the platform now, orders them off. This couple, in their twenties, are not getting off. This massive argument breaks out and the conductor calls the cops over and it’s full on. This couple are not getting off and the conductor is doing his block trying to pull their luggage off, it was insane. The train was delayed by at least 15 minutes and in the end the couple were allowed to stay on. So, we finally arrive in Venice and then we had to work out how to catch the N1 water taxi to Santa Maria del Giglio station to meet the lady about our apartment. I had just phoned her and we needed to meet her there in 40mins. We’ve both just about lost the plot at this point and we’ve got no idea where we have to go or what we have to do but we somehow managed to work it out. We get to the Santa Maria del Giglio water taxi station..... no woman. We call her again, twice, and she finally rocks up. At this point its nudging 8 o’clock, none of us have eaten since breakfast, we have been at it for 10 hours and we are not in a happy place. At this point our impression of Italy and all things Italian are not good. We get to the apartment, throw our stuff down and find a restaurant around the corner on a canal. We sit down and thankfully it is a fantastic meal. After that it was a quick look around, back to the apartment and into bed. What a day!
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| "A very foggy morning in St. Moritz" |
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| "I love train travel..........." |
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