Train ride to Rome

We thought it would be a good idea to take the train to Rome. We thought it would be an “adventure” to travel there on the overnight train...in one of those sleeper cars. We just didn’t know it would be such a bad idea. We arrived in our “car” that had 4 beds, two on top, two on the bottom. We were assigned the bottom ones and the two top ones were already occupied by a young French woman and the other by an old Italian man. They had both settled in before we arrived and so I was under the old man and couldn't see him. I could only see the young woman propped in the bed reading.

It wasn’t too bad until it was time to try to go to sleep. The lights were bright and they were needed by the woman who was reading. The shades were all pulled so it could have been dark, but it was so bright ... not much we could do until the woman decided to go to bed... and that was well into the wee hours of the morning.

Finally... the lights were out... time for sleep... Except the young woman had a cough and the old man snored. And the room was unbelievably hot. I think I took a few catnaps along the way.

Morning arrived and my internal alarm clock was still working perfectly. But what do you do when in a really dark room and everyone else is asleep? Believe me, I was very tempted to turn the bright lights on! But all I could do was leave the car and go stand in the hallway and wait. Paul got up and we decided to visit the dining car for breakfast.

After breakfast, we returned to our car and hoped we would arrive in Rome as fast as possible. And we decided that we won’t ever do that again!