Finally at quarter past twelve my train arrived. It was a regional service, much like the commuter trains I get back home. Once I had found a seat and the train was moving away, I realised that there was a time bomb ticking in the next seat. It was a sleeping baby.I could look at this two ways. Clearly the baby was, at some point, going to wake up and make enough noise to cause a small earth tremor. They always did when I was anywhere near. I could either choose to sulk, and cringe every time the train went over a bump in the track, or appreciate that I would be prevented from sleeping and therefore wouldn’t miss my stop. I chose the former, and spent the next two hours willing the child to continue sleeping.

Journey 12: Florence to London
7 legs, 1800km, 21 hr 30 min. Average speed: 83kph
Origin/Destination	Departs	Arrives	Carrier	My Rating
Firenze S. M. Novella Pisa Centrale	00:30	01:50	TrenItalia Regionale
Pisa Centrale Genoa	02:37	04:36	TrenItalia InterCity
Genoa Nice Ville	05:15	10:30	TrenItalia InterCity
Nice Ville Paris Gare du Lyon	11:20	18:00	TGV
Paris Gare du Lyon Paris Gare du Nord	18:00	18:40	Paris Metro
Paris Gare du Nord London Waterloo	19:19	21:13	Eurostar
London Waterloo Strawberry Hill	21:20	21:55	South West Trains

At ten to two in the morning, the baby woke up, and didn’t waste any time. Definitely a future opera singer in the making. Fortunately it was only half an hour later that the train pulled into Pisa.

I had a connection in Pisa with a train that would take me to Genoa, the second leg of my journey home. But standing on the platform at Pisa station, I had an interesting choice to make. Having read absolutely no books on the city, I knew of only one attraction – the leaning tower – and was trying to decide if I was mad enough to try and visit it. It required quite an exceptional level of madness for a number of reasons:

1. The time was 02:00
2. I had only 40 minutes before my next train was due
3. I had no idea where the tower was

I wandered outside the station and almost immediately found a map. Station and tower were both present, what was not was a scale of any kind, and I didn’t have anything to write directions down with. On the other hand, the map did show every building, and seemed to suggest that the tower was about a ten minute walk. Provided that I didn’t get lost. Plus I didn’t know whether the tower was floodlit, particularly at 2:30am. I imagined the prospect of arriving to find that all I could see was a wonky shadow.I stayed. The train to Genoa showed up, and I off again on leg two. This train had compartments, and I’d booked, which was a good idea, because it was full. Probably the first and only piece of good luck I’d have today. Wordlessly I wormed my way into my compartment and sat down. The other five occupants were mostly asleep.

Lucky them. Genoa was not the last stop on the line, so for the next two hours I made myself stay awake and check each station.

Five am. A station with “Genova” in the name rolled into view. I jumped up and bolted for the exit, but the station name did not entirely match my itinerary sheet. In it’s 5am half-awake state my brain reasoned that an intercity express like this one would only stop once per city, and the station names were similar, so they could be attached. As the train was leaving, I realised that having endured a slow train that stopped at practically every station in northern Italy, I had just disembarked one station too early. Amazingly, there was a TrenItalia guard on the platform, but unsurprisingly he had no interest in helping me, particularly in English.

Calling on mental reserves I consulted timetables and my itinerary, and decided that all was not lost. The train I had wanted to get in Genoa was going to take me to Nice, and that was exactly where the next train from this station was going too. The difference was that this was a slow train, and meant that I would miss my TGV from Nice to Paris. But the first stop for the slow train was the ‘proper’ Genoa station that I should be at right now, and according to the timetable, it got there before the fast train left. There was actually a fifteen minute gap. So, good plan – I’d take the slow train from here, get off at the first stop, get on the fast train, overtake the slow train and get to Nice in time for the early TGV.

My mistake was to apply simple logic to the Italian public transport system. The train was 20 minutes late, and I rode the slow service all the way to Nice. Shortly after 9:30 I went through Monte Carlo, where Chris would be arriving later in the day.

Arriving at my fourth city of the day at 10:00am, I headed for the ticket office, where I enquired whether the TGV service had left on time. A French booking agent looked at me as if I was mad and said “yes, of course”. I explained all about the ticketing problems in Italy and asked if the ticket could be transferred, which naturally it couldn’t, and ended up paying another €19 for a new one. The next service was at eleven-thirty, so I’d be in Paris two hours late. I waited on the platform watching a rainstorm thundering outside.

At eleven thirty, the French delivered a shining example of how to operate a train service. After the slow, rickety, coastal progress of the Italian ‘Express’ train (obviously a use of the word ‘express’ of which I had not previously been aware), the TGV is definitely the business. It’s rather like being loaded into a high-velocity rifle and shot from one end of the country to the other. After a few pickup stops, the train accelerated to a phenomenal speed, turning the near landscape into a virtual blur (though my vision wasn’t exactly crystal clear by this point anyway). Doors between carriages glided open as you approached them, the toilets were spotless, and the wheels on the track were merely a soft, distant hum.

I could go on, and I think I will. There was a restaurant car with a varied menu, masses of luggage space, reading lights, tray tables, baby changing rooms, phones, sockets for laptops and phone chargers, and even meeting areas at the ends of each carriage.

So anyway, the train was good and the views were great as we rocketed through the Rhone-Alpes and Bourgogne regions. The weather was improving too. I was quite startled to find that I could understand signs and announcements – I have studied French in the past, and after a month of at best knowing how to say “Thankyou”, “Yes”, and “No”, it was nice to be able to ask someone the time and understand the reply.

I arrived in Paris at Gare du Lyon at about 5pm, but needed to be at Gare du Nord for the Eurostar service to London. Four legs completed, and home was getting closer. I bought a ticket for the next train to London and another for the Paris metro, and left the station, immediately searching for a metro entrance.

I stopped. I was now so caught up in the journey, I had forgotten the significance of where I was. Paris – hadn’t been here since I was at primary school, not counting a family holiday to Disneyland a few years ago. I briefly considered trying to walk to Gare du Nord, so I could have at least a glimpse of the city before I had to leave. But I spotted the metro entrance and realised that I was still on a tight timetable. Paris would have to wait for another day.

The metro was the fifth train I would take today. Now practically on autopilot, I rapid sought maps, identified signs and worked out the route. My ticket was accepted into the automatic gate and I descended into the Paris underground.

Gare du Nord provided yet another maze of signs and procedures, this time more complicated for the airline-style check in, security check and passport control. Eurostar left on time, bound for the channel tunnel and ultimately London.

I emerged from the Eurostar terminal at Waterloo a tired veteran of my six-leg journey, but I still had one more connection to make. At 9pm, I caught my last train, a suburban service I use all the time to get in and out of central London, a familiar 40-minute trip that I make at least once a month.

It had taken 21½ hours to get from a hotel in Florence to my front door in London. It could have been done in two by plane, but this was a rail adventure from start to finish, and to fly would have been cheating.