Early morning train from Paris to Milan at Gare de Lyon...It was a very long train ride stopping in little French and Italian towns along the way.
We had to cross the Alps and it was snowing as we went through these small towns.
We even saw a frozen waterfall!
Wela found some trivia about the train journey and put it in our detailed itinerary thinking I would read it in advance...I didn't of course and he wanted me to input it here...so if you are interested, here it is: The TGV crosses rural France at up to 186 mph then slows right down through the Alpine foothills. The TGV crosses the Alps via Chambéry and Modane, passing through the 13.6 km (8.5 mile) long Fréjus Rail Tunnel, also known less accurately as the Mont Cénis tunnel. The tunnel transit takes just 7 minutes, during which the train enters Italy. Opened in 1871, this the oldest of the large tunnels through the Alps, and was the longest tunnel in the world from 1871 until 1882 when the Gotthard tunnel opened on the Zurich-Milan route.
These polizia hopped on the train on the last French station and checked our passports as we entered Italy and got off at the first Italian station. The officer on the left checked Wela's passport but the officer on the right (the woman) did not believe the man in the picture really was Wela. He then showed her his Iowa drivers license, in which he has a lot of hair and she laughed and said something in Italian and then said "change." We all had a good laugh
It was a 7 hour train ride so we got a drink from the cafe car. There was a man who also went down the train pushing a cart selling things. If we were in England he would have said "anything from the trolley," just like the lady does in Harry Potter on the Hogwarts Express, but because we are in France he said "serrrrrvice barrrrrrrr, cafe" It is imperative that you roll the 'R's'!!!
In Milan we had to get from the Milano-Garibaldi station to the Milano Centrale so we took the Metro and happened upon this cool machine...for Fresh Squeezed Orange Juice!!! In hindsight we should have gotten some but we needed to get to the other station quickly since we weren't familiar with the area
Below is the Milano Centrale station where we boarded our train to Venice, Italy
When we finally made it to Venice it was about 7:30pm and we had to board the water bus to get to our BnB...We passed under the Rialto Bridge when it was lit up!
We got pretty lost trying to find our BnB trying to follow a google map because we didn't have a phone to call our host. We ended up walking right past it down this corridor over the bridge finding ourselves at this hotel asking the concierge where the street was we were looking for. He was very nice and called our host for us and gave us a map to figure out where our host would meet us to get us safely to our BnB
These next pictures are from our BnB...We had the whole place to ourselves even though they have three rooms. We chose the one along the canal and it was beautiful!
A toilet and bidet!
These were lights hung up outside of the BnB in preparation for Carnevale
Next post: Europe or Bust!: Venizia, Italia
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