A Train in a Ferry on the Deep Blue Sea

There are a rare few places on earth where you take a train that suddenly needs to cross a body of water where there is no bridge, so it uncouples, gets swallowed into the belly of a ferry, crosses the sea, & rejoins tracks on the other side. Going from Italy to Sicily is one of those places.

It's surprisingly difficult to get from one to the other

Between them is the Strait of Messina (Stretto di Messina in Italian, Strittu di Missina in Sicilian)

What looks like a nice little passageway is actually the convergence of two huge whirlpools that go in opposite directions every 6 hours, plus a propensity for earthquakes. The sea is so restless here that strange & horrible prehistoric fish wash up on the shores...no wait...they don't wash up...the sea spits them onto the shore.

                             This horrible creature is a Sloane's viperfish

This is place where Odysseus ran into trouble with the monsters Scylla & Charybdis. Scylla -- a monster with four eyes and six long necks equipped with grisly heads, each of which contained three rows of sharp teeth, & a body that consisted of 12 tentacle-like legs and a cat's tail, while four to six dog-heads ringed her waist -- was wont to devour six sailors at a bite, with Odysseus looking on in horror, as described so vividly in The Odyssey:

"...they writhed
gasping as Scylla swung them up her cliff and there
at her cavern's mouth she bolted them down raw—
screaming out, flinging their arms toward me,
lost in that mortal struggle."

But humans, undaunted by long necks & dogs' heads, seek to prevail over this troubled water, for now with ferries, some that carry cars, some trains.

           The train from Naples to Palermo plays hide & seek with the coastline...

                       ...where even in winter, pretty beaches are ready for visitors...

                                       ...and the rich inland fields

       When it's time to take the ferry, the train stops at what looks like a regular station 

                But you can see a huge white ferry slowly approaching in the background

The train goes back & forth, back & forth, with an ear-splitting screeching of wheels, until it gets onto a different track. This whole thing takes 2-4 hours, depending on unknown elements.

Then it chug, chug, chugs right up a ramp into the ferry

     Here it is inside, waved in like an airplane in a hanger

You get to go up numerous flights of stairs

                                    Out onto the deck

           And there's the Tyrrhenian Sea to the north & the Ionian Sea to the south & the wind is whipping your hair & clothes like mad & you're up at the front of the boat & it's just like that scene in the Titanic!...without the iceberg. 

This photo has five forms of transportation: a ferry carrying cars, cars, a ferry carrying trains, a train, & an airplane. 

                     Then you are saying goodbye to Calabria & hello to Sicily