This was the biggest travelling day so far! By the end of two days we wanted to get into the heart of Italy. We thought it would save us money on accommodation and save us time if we got an overnight train to Rome. We booked the cheapest tickets and started our journey from Nice. Have a gander at the map below:



This shows our journey, our stops and the distance we covered. Our first change was in Italy at a place just over the boarder called Ventimiglia. Quite a nice place where we grabbed something for lunch. This was my first taste of Italian Coffee and it was amazing. The rumours are true, Italian coffee blows the English rubbish out of the water. We all then realised that non of us knew any Italian, apart from the occasional swear word that would have no use in polite conversation, so we tried to brush up as quickly as we could…I still know no Italian. I tucked into some great tasting Gnocchi (Italian dumplings) and waited for our next train to Genoa (Italian: Genova).

This was another uneventful journey and I’m pretty sure I slept through most of it. Genoa didn’t seem to be a massively tourist orientated place and, like Marseilles, seemed to be more of a working city. It’s a very old city and does have some very good looking buildings. One of these gems was the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata del Vastato. As I’ve said, Genoa is where we’d catch an over night train to Rome from so we were wandering round looking for things to do. I saw the huge façade of the church and talked everyone into going in with me. It was completely gorgeous inside with baroque paintings covering every inch of wall and ceiling. It was very beautiful. A steward of the church came up to us and started talking to us in Italian. As I’ve said our Italian isn’t just rubbish, it’s non existent. We both realised and he walked us over to a wall full of photographs. He showed us pictures of the burning ruins of the church after a world war two air raid…then we realised it must have been an allied bomb..oh dear! The uncomfortable feeling quickly subsided as the bloke was very enthusiastic about the church and the work they had done to repair it. They did an extremely good job. After ‘talking’ to him for a bit, we had a wander into the city. We visited the huge fountain in the centre of the town (Pizza De Ferrari) and then walked back to the train station and got something to eat near by. Again, some very nice pasta.



On quite an eventful walk to the station, a crazy lady started shouting at us for no reason and managed to corner Drew. Being good friends we didn’t stop to help. He didn’t get killed though, it’s fine! Anyway, we spent the rest of the time playing cards in the station until the train.

Genoa to Rome on an overnight train was the worst idea we had. We were cramped in a full cabin, were in the noisiest train in existence and sat with annoying people who got phone calls all night. Unless you reserve a bed, I really recommend you avoid an over night train. Though this was the first time we got our passports checked. We got our passports checked every couple of hours all night and the Italian ticket inspectors are very angry people.

We got into Rome at 6am. Pretty exhausted. Weather was still amazing though! So hot!