One of my favourite travelling moments so far was definitely a midnight train experience from Florence back to Monte-Carlo which took a good 12 hours. While it was easy to arrive in Florence from Monte-Carlo by rail, with just one stop in Milan in 6 hours, the return trip involved multiple stops and I had not factored in the possibility of delays!
I set off at 11pm from Florence to my first interchange station at Pisa. This was 1.30am when I reached Pisa. Obviously, I did not dare to sleep in the bare station, and stayed awake for 2 hours before the next train stipulated to arrive at 3.30am. well, the train continued to delay until 4.30am in the morning. Finally boarded the train, to realise that the train was old and undermaintained. It has 6 seats in one cabin, and of course my cabin was full.
Very distraught, I dozed off along the cabin corridor (thankfully there were foldable seats) to realise that the train decided to stop halfway out of nowhere for almost 1.5 hours.
At this point, nope, I am nowhere near my final destination of Monte-Carlo. I finally reached Genoa at 7am with a beautiful sunrise. By then I had missed my connecting train to Ventimiglia, which would have left at 5.30am.
Departed Genoa at 7.30am with so little sleep, arrived in Ventimiglia safely and in good state, before boarding the train into French territory, and finally arrived in Monte-Carlo at 10:50am. Hurriedly caught the bus to head to Nice Airport where my return flight to Singapore awaits.
It was a crazy journey and thankfully it was a safe one. How about you? Have you had crazy transportation nightmares elsewhere in the world?
supersponts 