All’s well that ends well: a travelogue

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/03/2025 (196 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There’s something about hurtling north on an Italian train hitting 300 kilometres an hour when you thought you were heading south that grabs you by the intestines, twists, and doesn’t let go.

That moment when time seems suspended; the rising panic — your nerves already jangling from the double jolt of caffeine at breakfast in Rome — when a fellow passenger looks at your ticket and tells you: “You are on the wrong train.”

Never mind that your host in Lecce — a beautiful baroque city known as the “Florence of the south” — has a taxi arranged and a colleague waiting to greet you later in the day, you are now en route to the original Florence, the one in Tuscany. And there’s no getting off the train for 90 minutes.

I probably should have foreseen it. The red notification on the Air Canada app two days prior that our flight out of St. John’s was cancelled by high winds was a harbinger of travel fiascos to come.

When our flight was rescheduled and the next day dawned clear and calm, I texted my uncle from the airport: “I’m in my happy place.”

The travel gods must have keeled over with laughter.

And then at Toronto’s Pearson airport, stuck in a mile-long queue for a plane that wasn’t quite ready to take us to Munich, our only diversion a restless toddler who kept embracing the legs of a sporty mannequin in a posh airport boutique while his dad tried to pry him off, the boy like a barnacle clinging to a boat.

Finally, an announcement of what we had already suspected: we wouldn’t be getting on the plane any time soon.

Why the multiple delays? Refuelling. Catering. A missing part.

We were told all those things at different times.

I was seeking solace in an overpriced mimosa when the call finally came. I bolted for the gate, only to realize that our plane would touch down in Rome five minutes after our connecting flight had departed.

In Munich, a sympathetic Lufthansa agent booked us on the next flight to the Eternal City, where we checked into our hotel — a labyrinthine warren of rooms whose charm had long since faded. Ours smelled faintly of damp and boasted a rickety balcony with rusty railings.

Later, we walked down the darkened street past an old man surrounded by bags of garbage who was delivering an animated soliloquy as he examined an old Wilson-branded golf bag that seemed to bring him great joy.

At a hole-in-the-wall pizzeria, my husband and I shared the eating area with three other patrons as a football match blared from two flatscreen TVs.

The pizza was excellent, the white wine crisp and cold.

The next day found us refreshed and waiting for our train at Roma Termini. When the platform number was posted, we boarded the train waiting on the right side of the platform.

Fairly seasoned travellers though we are, in veering right we crossed from platform six to seven, sparking a series of unfortunate events. We were now heading the wrong direction.

I frantically tried to access Wi-Fi to contact our host as silvery olive groves and orderly rows of wizened vines flitted past unseen.

In Florence we bought tickets back to Rome.

It felt good to be headed in the right direction, but our relief was short-lived.

There were no seats to be found on the next fast train to Lecce. However, we could take a train to Naples and then a bus that would get us to our final destination at 10 p.m. — six hours late.

“How will we know which bus to take?” I asked the ticket agent.

“It will be easy — it will be waiting right outside the station,” she said.

Except there were no buses outside the station.

As we lugged our suitcases through the surreal Naples throng — passing a mother hustling two small children in Squid Game costumes — I beseeched passersby for directions in my basic Italian.

We found our bus about two minutes before its departure.

Stressed to the max, I tried to ascertain from other passengers whether we were, in fact, headed for Lecce.

“According to me, yes, but then I am headed for Ostuni,” a young man tells me in Italian, “and I don’t really know.”

For the first two and a half hours we made no stops as the sky slowly faded to black and we barrelled down the Autostrade, signposts rushing by in a blur.

By now I was feeling paranoid and primed for disaster, seeing a potential axe murderer in every silhouetted passenger — amorous young couples, mothers with children, solitary men plugged into their earbuds and iPhones.

When the bus rolled into Lecce at 10:25 p.m., I resisted the urge to kiss the ground and our waiting cabbie.

All dangers now past, intestines unclenched, I opened my eyes to the beauty of the city around me and drank it all in.

Pam Frampton is a writer and editor in St. John’s. Email pamelajframpton@gmail.comX: pam_frampton | Bluesky: @pamframpton.bsky.social