Malta, Sicily and Italy.

Wednesday 17 March.
Malta – Sicily – Italy- all in one day and very long it was too.

A day to remember it is now 6am in Malta and by 9.30pm we were on mainland Italy - exhausting!

For the first time in several months we are committed to being somewhere on a certain date, and that somewhere is Athens in 5 days time. This focuses the mind somewhat and we had spent many hours studying the Sicilian train timetable, a very complex read, but invaluable to us in the last few weeks. However, realizing that just to get from Pozzallo to Messina was going to require 3 changes we went to a travel agent in our favourite city of Syracuse and there an incredible lady with the patience of Job booked us trains and ferries across to mainland Italy, up the east coast to Brindisi and across to Patras. What really complicated the issue was that the only ferries with cabins available were tomorrow (a real sprint) and next Tuesday (too late to meet Dick). Mind you just getting to Syracuse wasn’t without incident. Pozzallo is one of those stations without ticket office or ticket machine and had it not been for a party of Australians with their Sicilian guide who had also just arrived from Malta there would have been ‘no way’ we would have been allowed onto that train. Two stops up the line we were all thrown off the train and told to buy tickets at a station bar after which we were no longer regarded as ‘illegal immigrants’.
As we had 3 hours to kill in Syracuse we had some lunch in the sunshine and were extremely impressed by a party of German cyclists - fit and as lean as whippets who tucked into salad and water and were back onto their racing bikes and away in no time. From our perspective this didn’t look much like a holiday but as we grow older we are finally realizing that different people do things for different reasons!!

Just one of the party of very fit German cyclists!

The only bad thing to happen was when rather late on in the day we realized our helpful Travel Agent had booked us into a hotel opposite the station in Scilla (10 miles out of San Giovanni) and not right outside the station in San Giovanni which is where the ferry from Sicily docks. But a call to http://www.bookings.com/ (bless them they put an emergency phone number on the booking confirmation) amazingly sorted the problem out. (We hope, otherwise it is 2 hotel bills for one night which would be a bore)

With a couple of hours to wait for our final train to Messina, we cycled south to Giardini Naxos just because could! It was whilst here we realized the mistake with the hotel booking.

Not so cheerful and still waiting for the train to Messini!

And just to re-affirm the generous and helpful nature of Italians, arriving at the hotel at 9.30pm the chap on reception called his mate who owned a restaurant and said mate came to the hotel, collected us, fed us and brought us back. And they had Barcelona v Stuttgart on the 5ft wide TV too!!