Wes + Marlow Travel Blog: Our trip into Sicily by train

Train from Lamezia Terme to Siracusa

Tropea

Although the distance between mainland Italy and the island of Sicily does not appear to be too large to be linked by a bridge, despite many plans to construct some type of link between the two land masses, there is still no bridge. The exports from Sicily travel mainly by boat or airplane. And tourists generally arrive through the airports or on the car/passenger ferry between Reggio Calabria and Messina. Bridges of various forms have been proposed, planned and preliminary funding obtained and then rescinded since Roman times.

I had often read about the train trip from Southern Italy into Sicily where instead of requiring passengers to transfer from a train to a boat to another train to get to the island the entire train is loaded onto a specially designed ferry boat. This allows passengers to remain on the train during the short 25 minute ferry trip and not change trains. This direct train idea is leftover from the post-war period where it was common to travel to and from Sicily via overnight trains and the ability to remain in one's berth was important. Now, overnight trains are becoming more and more distinct due to low cost airlines, but the train/ferry link between Sicily and mainland Italy has survived. I very much wanted to experience this unique travel mode of a train on a boat so the trip into Sicily was planned to accommodate this desire. Fortunately they operate this train/ferry service twice a day, once doing the day and the second service at night. So we didn't have to travel on a night train to experience this unique travel mode.

The train originates in Rome and makes very few stops on its way south. So the first step was determining which stop had a rental car office nearby where we could drop our car off close to the time the train would depart and would be a nice place close by to spend the night before. La Mezia Terme station was chosen due to its proximity (1 hour) to the magical coastal village of Tropea. We spent two nights in Tropea staying in a small albergo located right on the beach. The morning of our train departure we drove from Tropea to Lamezia Terme and dropped the car at the Hertz rental office conveniently located right across from the train station.

The Intercity train arrived in Lamezia Terme on time and we found our window seats easily. The train makes very few stops before reaching the ferry port at Regio Calabria (Villa San Giovanni). Once at the port, there were quite a few starts and stops as the train was shuttled about to get in proper alignment in order to move onto the ferry. The entire loading process took about 45 minutes. In order to fit the entire train onto the ferry it is divided into two parts.

Although this isn't the fastest way to travel into Sicily, I was pleased to experience this unusual travel mode!