- [Noel] Have you ever been on
a train that goes on a boat? Well, this week I'm doing just that. As I spend 20 hours on board
a long distance overnight and over water train across Italy. Hello from Milan Central
Station here in Italy. And tonight I'm taking
a train over 950 miles, the entire length of Italy. And not only that, it's a train
that goes on a ferry as well because tonight I'm taking the intercity, not a service from here
in Milan all the way to Palermo in Sicily. I must say this station
is absolutely incredible. It's like stepping into
a cathedral or something. Look at this massive, massive hall here. It's, yeah, certainly gives Amtrak a run for its money, doesn't it? In terms of station design.
It's beautiful. Wow. Now I'm not an architecture
buff by any stretch of the imagination, but
even I couldn't help but be impressed by how beautiful
Milan Central Station is. Everywhere you look, there's more detail that you haven't seen before. It's just an incredible building. The station was originally
modeled on Washington's union station in Washington DC, but it took 25 years to
build, during which time it has several changes in design
and finally opened in 1931. And despite this train being
over 20 hours long tonight, apparently there's no buffet car anywhere to get food onboard the train. So I'm gonna have to eat here at the station before I go out. I'm not really sure what there is. There's a McDonald's, but you
can't really come to Italy and eat McDonald's, can you? Come on. Aha. Now that's more like it. Don't push that boat out. Now at Milan station here,
Milan Central Station, it's the largest station in Italy. In fact, it's also the largest
station in Europe by volume. And it serves trains all over Italy. Take long distance trains from here, regional trains, all sorts of trains. All from here, Milan Central. There's another couple of stations I think here in Milan as well. But this is the main one
where the long distance served to go, including my train down
to Palermo in Sicily tonight, which is gonna be 20 hours long. 950 miles down to Palermo tonight. All right, we've got a
platformer on platform 14, which is pretty cool. So let's go and get on
the train down to Sicily. Over 300,000 people pass through this station every
single day on over 500 trains. But when I got to platform 14, my train was sitting there waiting to take me on the 950
mile journey across Italy. All right, this is where we need to be. We need carriage number seven. I hope the lady in front
lift her back onto the train. Got on board herself to try
and find my room for the night. But as it would turn out, this was just my first room of the night. All right, this is me. Looks quite nice. There's me view. Nice as it was though, it wasn't long before I was moved into room
number two for the night. Alright, I've just been
moved to a different room 'cause they double booked
some of the rooms apparently. So I was in 32 and I'm now in whichever
one this one is, which is, I don't know, I don't
know what room I'm in. I'm about a three down anyway. Oh it is ridiculously,
ridiculously hot on this train. I dunno what, it must
be at least 40 something degrees on this train. It's sweltering. Everybody's
asking about air conditioning, so I think that it should
be air conditioning but it's obviously not working yet. But we still on the platform. The good news is we do have
an opening window at the top though, that's good. So we're gonna get some breeze
through once we start moving but that's why I left the door open, trying to at least let
a little bit of air in. Hopefully we'll be on the way pretty soon. We sat at the platform in
Milano Central Station for ages, but finally we started to move and left the station
around 20 minutes late for our overnight journey down to Sicily. The intercity note travels
the length of Italy from Milan to Palermo in Sicily. After leaving Milan, it
heads to Genoa on the coast before continuing down to Pisa. From there it heads inland to Florence and down to Rome and Naples. Once it hits a place called Salerno, it follows the coast all the way down to Villa San Giovanni where
the train drives onto a ferry to Messina in Sicily and cruises across the
island of Sicily to Palermo. In total the journey takes around 20 hours including
the boat across to Sicily. Alright, so 20 minutes late we have pulled out of Milan station. Finally only got the air
conditioning working. I think that was where the
cause of the delay was, because they were trying
to get the AC working and now it's on. Starting to get some
fresh air through now, through these vents here on the window and the sun is just starting to set. So we should hopefully get a nice view of the sun setting just outside of Milan before we do the overnight. Slight but down south. Alright then shall we have a
little look around the room and see what we are working with? Let's have a little route or so. Just here we've got a seat and I love this 'cause we've got a seat we can sit on and then we've got a bed we can lay on and you can sort of sit between the two. Some trains that you go on
that are sleeper trains, the sort of bed folds up to
get the seats underneath it. This one doesn't, it's a separate seat, which is quite handy isn't it? So the bed is down here on
this side, which is quite nice. We've got some bedding just
here and all of that there. There's some plug sockets
down here at this bottom end. But then there's also a plug
socket here at the top end where your head goes and you've
got like an intercom system there, reading lights and
all the rest of it there. And you've got the same up here
because at the top we've got a second bed but also folds down if there's more than one of you. You know what, you can actually
have three people sleeping in this room because this is a bed as well, believe it or not. It's a triple deck bed. And then the other side up here, this is where I've got me bag. Have a storage closet just here as well. And you've got some coat hangers as well to hang your stuff up. And right behind this close
door thing, right just here. We have a sink, it's not drinking water. We've got a sink which
gives us some water there. There's a trash canvas just down here, little cubby hole thing there. A nice mirror to look at the amazing guy that's in the room. And then you've got a
shaver socket just here. So if you have a shave with an electric socket then
you can do that as well. So the cabin attendants
have just been around and they brought me a little
pack of snacks as well, which I don't know if
that's sweet or savory. It looks like a little bit
like pretzels or something. And they brought two cans
of water around as well. I did buy some water
before I got on the train, knowing this was gonna
be a long train ride. I bought some bottles from in
the shop in the station there. But they've actually come
around with some as well. So I think there's water available on the train too if we need it. - [Narrator] It's time for
the Noel Philips Loo Review. - [Noel] And time for the Loo review, it's a train loo review that below loo, loo that. Anyway, this is at the end of the carriage and it's so relatively
clean, actually quite nice. I mean we have like literally
left about 20 minutes ago from Milan, so not many people used it yet. So that's why I thought show
you here at the beginning of the journey because
it might not put you off, if I did it that way. So we've got a toilet down here that you're not supposed
to put stuff down. You can call for aid if
you need some help to squeeze your rear or something
while you're on the toilet. And then you've got certain,
some got rolled down here and some kitchen and
towels and stuff there. Nice mirror up there. Again, a sink like
we've got in the bedroom and a trash can underneath it too. A shave sockets, a hair dryer,
hand dryer rather than here, which doesn't do anything. Yeah, that's it. That's
the loo on the inter city, not gate trains. Pleasant actually. It's lovely and cool out
in that corridor as well. It's massive through. So
that's all pretty good. - [Narrator] That was the
Noel Philips Loo Review. - [Noel] Everything was going great until I received a knock on my door and I was told I had to leave my room. - Hi you. Yes, I on six, sorry. Eight. Yeah. Okay. - Alright so being moved again because the air conditioning
is packed up once again. So they're moving everybody
into the next carriage, which is a cheaper one apparently. Let's go and have a look what it's like. All right, this is our new room And it's not nowhere near as
nice as the other one is it? But it's cooled, which
is the important thing. Oh it's actually quite nice. All right, so this is my new room. I think this is called a couchette, and this has got four beds in it. So I'm actually gonna pop
these top two up actually. And then we've got oh these seats as well. Okay, interesting. And there's
six three seats either side. It's like the Harry Potter train isn't it? Three seats either side. So what I'll do is I think I'll
make my bed up on this side and I can sit on this side I think. And then we've also got here
like a little windy the window thing so I can close that. There we go. And that's it. So we've got a little bit of privacy, it's nowhere near as fancy. We haven't got a wash basin in here and we haven't got cupboards and closets and things like we had in
the other one, but it's cool. And she said that we might be
able to apply to get a refund for the difference 'cause
this apparently is quite a lot cheaper than the other one. Unfortunately the refund process
is pretty tricky if you're outside of Italy and as
of yet I haven't managed to get my refund. Alright, so I'm going to make me a bed 'cause I really could do
with getting some sleep, 'cause it's late at night now. It's now it's gone nine
o'clock local time. I've been up for ages today because I flew in from,
ah that's my pillow. I flew in from Almaty this
morning into Milan airport and now I've had like
the day in Milan airport and now I'm on a train heading south. So I'm pretty, pretty exhausted. So let's see if I can make this bed up. I mean it's not quite as fancy
as the other cabin is it? But hey, let's see if I that. All right, there we go. Bed is made. Yay. It's not quite as luxurious
as the one in the other one but actually I dunno, the bed's actually a little bit
firmer, which is quite nice. I like a firm mattress,
me, I do like it firm. And a couple of nice pillows here as well. Oh and there we go. One nice
bed for tonight's sleep anyway. And I don't think I'm gonna
have any issues sleeping at all tonight as we meander our
way south across Italy. And before I go to bed they've just come around with an amenity kit. So I'll quickly show you what's in here. I'll figure out what we've got. We've got some slippers,
some nice slippers, toothbrush, toothpaste. A razor. What's this one
here? A refreshing towel. We've got a pack of tissues, a bar of soap, alcohol. An alcogel. No mini bar. And that. Unfortunately though my
night's sleep didn't go quite as well as I'd planned though, because I woke up at about
three o'clock in the morning as we were pulling into Rome. Well good morning. It is
about 5:00 AM here in Italy. I've got about a six hour
sleep in like two hour chunks overnight. Not brilliant I have to say. But then better than I normally
do when I'm on a train. I did sleep for a few hours in
Milan as well before we left. So that's probably why. And
I've got plenty of time. We've got plenty of time to
sleep before we get to Palermo because we are running about an hour and a half late right now. It's a little bit concerning because I'm not entirely sure this ferry that this boat goes on when we get down to towards the coast, I'm
not entirely sure whether or not the boat will wait
for us if we're delayed. Like how does that work? You know, do they hold the boat and if say, what about all the
other passengers on the boat? Or if we're running late
they just drop us off there and say ta-at? I don't know. We'll figure
that one out I guess in a bit. But we are an hour and a half late now. We just left Rome, we should
be down in Naples by now according to the app. According to the app, we had
an extraordinary stop in Rome and I didn't think it was that brilliant. It was only like a little train station. I don't think anybody got on and off. But it said on the app
it was extraordinary. Didn't seem that extraordinary. Anyway, hopefully the sun will be up soon and we can get to see some of this fantastic Italian
scenery out of the window. And indeed the sun did
start to come up soon after, as we continued on the
stretch towards Naples, where it seemed the scenery was modeled after a window screensaver. Now we've finished the long
overnight section now without any passenger stops and now we hit the first
stop of the second day. Now we're gonna do a few stops
on the way down to Sicily. This place is called Salerno and we are still running about
an hour and a half late now. So yeah, be interesting to see what happens when we get down to the boat. As we left Salerno, we got
our first glimpse of the coast that we'd follow for the rest
of the journey down to Sicily. All right, so breakfast
has just come round. This is what we've got. We have croissants, some pineapple juice, just
bits and pieces there. Toasty stuff with Nutella and an espresso. She asked me, she said, you
need to drink the espresso. Americano just water. So I
forgot to drink the espresso. Proper Italian style eh. Welcome to Italy baby. Scenery on this train ride.
It's just absolutely stunning. It is easily ranked as
one of the most beautiful train journeys that I've ever done. The only problem is
they've fly down this line like a hundred miles an hour. Literally we're doing a
hundred MPH posted the way down and we're getting thrown around
from one side to the other. Things are going flying. The poor lady who served my breakfast, got her arm trucked in the door 'cause the driver decided to
go around and bend a bit quick and the door slammed shut
on her arm, bless her. It's just, and we're going so
fast we don't get time to sit and take in the scenery. And I get it that that's not the reason people are taking this train. They're not taking this
train to see the scenery. They're taking this train
to get from A to B quickly. I'm just like, geez Louise, I'm holding on for dear life on this train. Crazy. But one thing was for sure though, the scenery continued
to get more impressive as we headed further south. I think because of the
delay they've brought around a courtesy kit, which has got, it's basically food and stuff in it. So we've got what we got here. We've got some water,
more water but water. Half of it's over the
floor 'cause it fell off and went over a bump. We've got some wafers and
oh more of these things. Had some of these last
night they were quite nice. That's savory snack
beans and and a wet wipe. Lovely wafers. From Salerno, the train
follows the Calabrian coast all the way down to the tip of Calabria. We were still running
really late at this point, but I was enjoying every minute of this beautiful Italian scenery. I was amazed by the number of
beaches along the coast here. Each one completely unique
compared to the next one. I thought it was a little bit
like taking the east coastline in the UK near Berwick-upon-Tweed. Well apart from the weather and actually probably everything. Nice. Right? So this is
the last station stop before we get to the ports where the train gets on
the boat over to Sicily. This is Gioia Tauro and the
next port, the next station after this one is San Giovanni,
which is where the train drives onto the ferry across to Sicily. We made a bit of time actually,
so maybe we'll make it. We're only an hour late
now, so that's quite nice. So I'm gonna get my stuff together 'cause I think we can get off
the train once we get on the boat, but I'm looking forward
to seeing how they do this. I have no idea, I've never
seen a train get loaded onto a boat before so it'd be really cool and interested to see how that works, really, so we'll find out pretty soon eh? We continue south towards San
Giovanni getting our first glimpse of the island of
Sicily just across the sea. And I have to say it was a lot closer to the mainland than I
expected it might be. Alright here we are, this
is Villa San Giovanni and there is our first glimpse of Sicily off the coast over there and we've gotta get there
on a ferry in a minute this, but this tree is gonna get on a ferry. How cool is that? Alright, so I think here that
San Giovanni, I think this is where they break the train
up into separate pieces, because the train can't fit
onto the boat as one big train because obviously the boat's
not as long as the train is. So what they do is they break
it up into little pieces and then move it on a bit at a time onto the ferry, across to
Sicily to Messina, which is where we're gonna be going across to. So I was waiting at
the minute to see what, where they're gonna break it up and yeah, we should be moving
onto the ferry very soon. On board a train. Are we like supposed to have been moving with this door open? Maybe. Maybe we must be. I dunno. So right down there is where
the train goes onto the boat. And pretty soon we're rolling towards what looked like a massive boat. We slowed right down and
went up a bit of a ramp that took us directly onto the ferry. Look, the train's getting on the boat. You see that? There's a boat Now we're on the boat on a train. We are on a train on a boat. How cool is that? Grazie. Yeah. Alright, thank you. Alright, so I'm on a boat.
The train is also on a boat. Look at that though. Incredible, right? I'm gonna go and explore the boat. I don't even know if we're moving. So we're going head up these
stairs and have a look at. Its a bit weird, we're on an actual boat. Now I always get a little
bit nervous going on big boats like this. I've always had a fear of
them since I was a child and it turned out today
would be no exception. There we go, on a boat
on the Mediterranean, on a train, on a boat. I can't get my head around
this. This is weird. I don't really do boats so
this is gonna be fun isn't it? You know, I might have been up
here actually staying on the train 'cause at least I
wouldn't be able to see that we're sort of like on the sea and stuff, but we're not allowed to
stay on the train apparently, we have to get off and come up here. So, well we're moving. Here we go. It's a bit rattle-y. Should
it be rattle-y like that? I don't know. Gosh, we're moving. Alright. Okay, I'm gonna step back here a bit. So the crossing over to Messina on Sicily, it's about 35 minutes
currently, it looks quite calm and there's quite a few
boats doing it as well. It must be a popular route eh? I'm not sure if the boat's
turning round or not. Yeah, it is. Look, it's
spinning at the front and see that it's moving that way. If we're going back, I
don't know, well look at that look, huh? Oh the water all swooshing up down there. It's pretty cool. This is weird. Standing back here, just holding on some a bit of metal. Pretty soon we were heading out to sea and I stood as far back from
the barrier as I could manage as we started the crossing. As we started heading
out to the open ocean, I figured it would probably
be a wise idea to head indoors where I wasn't able to see the fact that we were actually out at sea. There's quite a few seating areas inside and there's a little cafe
but they do only take cash. So having no euros on me, I
wasn't able to get anything. Now I've come under it because
I was getting a little bit sort of wobbly up on the deck. So I've come under it so I
can't see where I'm going. I'm not on the train so
technically I'm okay. So that's my excuse there. Although there are people
on the train still. So anyway, we split it into
two, that's the bit I'm in. I think this one here goes to Syracuse, and this is the bit of Palermo,
which is the one I'm on. I do believe. My big worry with this is
whether I get on the right train because if I get on the wrong train, not only is all my stuff
that's on the train heading to Syracuse, but equally my train is headed to Syracuse and I'm not on it. So that's the big worry now. But I think this is mine, it's number six is the one
I'm in, which is on here. So I do believe we are all right. Soon after that, a man
came and started unplugging some cables, which I took to mean that we must be approaching the port. And sure enough, a few minutes
later the big door at the front of the boat
started opening to reveal that we were almost on the
dock at the island of Sicily. Once we docked, there was a ramp lifted so that it lined up the
railway tracks and soon after the other train at the side of ours started moving off the boat. A few minutes later though
that train came back and connected with the
train that I was on, meaning that it must be the same
train going across to Palermo. I headed to the back of the train to try and get a bit of a nice view
as we pulled off the boat. Yes, yes, we made it, survived. It is such a weird sensation
being on a train rolling off of a boat, but it's another experience checked off my bucket list now. On the move again out of Messina, we're now on an island we've
just crossed on a train on a boat across the sea to an island. That's pretty cool, isn't it? So this train now continues
on and takes me to Palermo. Hopefully if I got on the right bit, it'll take about three hours. I thought Sicily was
only like a little island and it could take like three
hours to get across Sicily. It seems it's quite big actually. So yeah, quite a few
hours now to kick back. I'm getting a bit hungry because I haven't eaten since I was in, well,
apart from those few snacky bits that I've not really eaten
since I was in Milan last night. So, and it's now two
o'clock in the afternoon the following day. So yeah, the good news is we do only
now have a 20 minute delay. So seemingly the ferry driver
must have stuck his foot down and wanged across that bit of city because we are now only 20 minutes later, we've made up like an hour. So that's pretty cool isn't it? The scenery in Sicily was just as nice as the scenery back on the mainland. The train passes loads
of beautiful beaches and quaint little towns on
the ride across Sicily's north coast towards Palermo. Alright then. Well it's talking
of a turnoff for the books, considering that when I woke
up this morning we were running almost two hours late. We are now more than 30 minutes
early, leaving the last stop before we get to Palermo. Like they're not even
hanging around to make sure that they leave at the right time. It's literally just, we've
pulled in half an hour early, we're gonna leave half an hour early. So, well I hope no one's
waiting to get the train the last couple of stops because I think the driver
just wants to get home now. So yeah, we are one stop
away now from Palermo. We should be arriving
in there very, very soon and getting our first glimpse of what the Palermo region looks like. It's quite nice really. So yeah, nearly there. And with this running about
half an hour ahead of schedule, it wasn't long at all
before we were pulling into Palermo Central Station. Alright and welcome to Palermo. 35 minutes early as well. They pulled that one outta
the bag, didn't they? The train station in Palermo
isn't quite as beautiful as the Grand Milano central
station at the beginning of this journey but it's
still quite nice nonetheless. I'd like to say thank you to my amazing Patreons
for their ongoing support. You can join them at the link
on the screen now for access to my WhatsApp group,
regular Zoom calls with me, and much more. Alright then. Welcome to Palermo in Italy. First time I've really seen
anything of Italy outside of the airport here. I've just generally connected here, so it's actually an
amazingly beautiful country and the great thing about this
train is you see the entire country from right up in
the north near the Alps, the entire length of Italy
and the cross here to Sicily and wow, look at my view, there's me view, boats
out there in the sea and cliffs over there in the sky. It's quite nice. Anyway, I am gonna try and get some sleep, try and get some food 'cause I
have not eaten a proper meal. If you can call my Five Guy
as a proper meal in Milan. I've not eaten a proper
meal in nearly 24 hours now because you don't get fed on the train. So that's one lesson for you. Make sure that you take
plenty of food on the board with you when you go. So yeah, thank you so much for watching. I really hope you've enjoyed this video. Check out my other train
videos that I've done. I've done quite a few of them now, so I'll pop a link on the screen. And in the meantime, thanks for watching. Take care and I'll see you
on the next one. Bye for now.
