Travel day from Hell!

So far most of our travel days have been pretty smooth - stressful but smooth but getting from Amsterdam to Rome yesterday almost made me curl up in a fetal position at the train station. I thought I should share as travel is about more than nice pictures and cute videos. When you travel you need to problem solve in real time and just be resilient. The girls were better at that yesterday than I was!

It all started with this theme I have of trains not planes. Could I have booked a short flight from Paris to Rome? Sure that would have been easy. But nooo why do things the easy way. Instead I decided we'd take the train from Paris to Brussels, Brussels to Amsterdam, overnight train from Amsterdam to Zurich and then Zurich to Milan and Milan to Rome. We spent some time at one of the lovely branches of the Amsterdam Library then picked up some snacks for the train (this ended up being so helpful later in the story) and got in our little compartment for three. It was a triple bunk with a small seat across from the bottom bed. I decided to push the middle bunk (Evi had claimed it) up so we could sit. The train attendant only spoke German so I used my ancient German skills to ask about a few things and he said he would come help us with a light that didn't turn off and put the bed back (it has a locking device on it that needed a special tool). Anna climbed up to bed at the very top bunk and Evi and I lazed around until 945. We decided to look for the train attendant and could not find him anywhere. Then we realized we had locked ourselves out of the compartment and Anna was 8 ft up in the air with no ladder so she could not open the door. After a few attempts of throwing things at the handle she managed to get the door open - very resourceful of her! But we still had no bunk for Evi and a light that wouldn't go out. We decided that Evi and I should share the bed - a very small twin train bunk so you can imagine that. And we used eye masks for the light. I think I slept 4 hours but I could have had a great night of sleep if I hadn't moved that damned bunk out of the way. We got safely to Zurich and we grabbed a couple of pretzels (again these came in handy later). The train from Zurich to Milan was lovely but in Milan the station was chaotic and we had only 13 minutes to get on our new train for a 3.5 hour final leg to Rome. Evi and I both saw the Rome train on track 18 on the board for 110pm departure so we went there, struggled to get on and then some guy was in our seats. I asked a train station guy and he said just stay on and they will sort it out. Well turns out we were on the wrong train! We ended up getting to Rome - but in a regional train that went along the coast that took 6.5 hours. I had to scramble to re-book our tickets (because being on the train with no tickets is a huge problem!) but managed to get us booked with seats in another carriage so we moved all our stuff, thanked our new friends who helped make sure I re-booked on the right train and ate the second pretzel. It cost less than $100 to fix the mistake so it could have been much worse. For the last hour I had to sit apart from the girls and they snarfed down all the rest of the snacks. They did save me some chocolate! I cannot blame them as we were all starving (as we should have been in Rome eating happily hours before). Then we went out a smaller side entrance at the Rome station and could not find any taxis and I almost started to cry. After asking two security guards we figured it out that we needed to walk about 2 minutes up a road. Evi led the march of the tired Canadians and their luggage up to the taxi queue, flagged one down and had her bag in the trunk by the time I caught up to her. Thank god for Evi and her willingness to jump in when things are overwhelming. She is an excellent traveller. Anna spent her travel day happily reading a book. All day. We were met by our AirBNB host who was lovely and had everything set up for us and we fell asleep feeling safe and content. Next time I'm going to remember that train travel isn't always as glamourous as it seems and book a flight!