The Long Way Home

The regular passenger boats are still not running between Lipari and Messina, but some old, slow vehicle transport boats are – although not to Messina where we need to depart for mainland Italy from. We’ve got ourselves tickets to depart, when the very late rustbucket finally arrives.

What a long journey this is, destination Militsa. Although Sicily was a neighbouring Greek colony (Lipari’s fortified old town was built by the Greeks in 350 BC), it seems to take longer to get from Messina, Sicily to Messinia, Greece, than it did back in the day. I think it would definitely be faster to row, even if one oarsperson had stitches in their toe:

Tuesday:
11:30 Board the 10:05 boat to Milazzo, Sicily.
14:50 Bus from Milazzo port to the train station.
16:00 Train from Milazzo to Messina Centrale.
17:10 Ferry from Messina to Villa San Giovanni (although the train gets on the same ferry, this time we must enter as pedestrian passengers..?)
23:58 Sleeper train (no beds though) to Bari.

Wednesday:
07:45 Train arrives in Bari.
08:40 Find a bus to take us to the port.
17:00 Board ferry bound for Patras, Greece.

Thursday:
12:30 Ferry arrives in Patra.
16:00 Bus departs for Kalamata.
19:50 Bus arrives Kalamata.
20:00 Bus departs for Pylos.
21:30 Bus arrives Pylos. Scrombolas picks us up!
22:00 We arrive in Militsa!

58.5 hours! Although it really was much easier than it sounds. And there was a shower on the boat that we utilised, in case you were afraid we’d turned out like those blokes on the slot machines we saw in Messina.

Photos: Goodbye Lipari!;
Benedict overlooks the port of Messina as we leave Sicily on a ferry for the mainland;
Train carriages being loaded into the ship for the very brief water crossing;
Waiting for another night train;
Hunting for supplies for the Italy-Greece ferry ride, I stumbled upon what must be Bari’s Duomo. I think I’ll have to create a new page on this blog just for Duomos.