Day 1 was only mildly interesting so I'm skipping ahead in this story right to the stream of consience writing i did while trying to keep myself sane. Keep in mind I've not re-read this yet but want to get these up as soon as possible. I'll probably go back later to write these as a more cohesive and descriptive tale. Just know that at this point I've been on a plane for 8 hours and a little punchy :)

So I'm not really sure where exactly I'm writing this from. Let's see...I know that I'm somewhere between the southern mainland of Italy and the island of Sicily; on a sleeper train that's now been transfered to a boat.

I feel like cargo. Or livestock without the smell...oh wait never mind yup our "room" smells like gym shoes (three pair to be exact). You see, we've now been traveling for  over 18 hours straight.  The four of us left Chicago on  Thursday at 3PM. It's now 9:11pm on Friday according to Chicago time and 4:11am Saturday local time. I can only hope that Celeste is fairing better than we. Our group split in Rome as Celeste continued on to visit a Diplomat friend in Bulgaria. She should be sleeping in a cozy bed by now hopefully  drunk off of either good wine or good times catching up with an old friend or both.

For this leg of the trip our final destination is our hotel in Carini. Check-in is at 11am; only 7 more hours to go! From here, where ever that is; we'll dock in Palermo then hop on anther train to Carini.

I wonder if they'll take our train car off this boat and back onto tracks or if we'll de-board right from the boat? This is all so strange but has to be infinitely better than the conditions my ancestors faired on their journey to America from Italy, Ireland, Hungary, and Norway.

But back to our "room"; It's really quite an oxymoron as there is no room at all. It consists of three fold down beds, a ladder and a very narrow space for manuvering, our luggage, oh and a sink!?

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Hey we're back on land, and on tracks! We think we're in Massina. The station sign says "Messina C.le"– will have to look that up later. It's now 4:36am local time. I wonder how many other people are awake for this? As I'm sure you can imagine that there was quite a bit of movement and noise to get the cars back on the tracks.

I really miss having internet access! I want to take a shower. And I can't wait to get a decent nights sleep in a hotel. We really should have picked up a bottle of wine, but who knew? Good times though, once we get to Palermo we'll be able to really get this trip started right. There's a castle we'll be storming soon!