Travel Turtle

I was going through some of my pictures, and I realize I like trains. The more I thought about it, the more I realized… I really like trains.

My first train ride was in 5th grade when I joined my class on a trip from Miami to Washington DC. I travelled on several european trains during high school. I tried to get a job with Vodkatrain (a train that goes from Moscow/St. Petersburg to Beijing and beyond, how awesome is that?)

For my honeymoon, my husband and I railed through Scotland and England. In England, I noticed some really cute details at the train station. Here’s an example of one:

If anyone knows where this is exactly, please let me know.

In Scotland, we went cross the highlands to eventually get to the Isle of Skye. One of our stops was in this remote area:

I jumped off the train to take this picture, and some picture of sheep, and all of the sudden had an anxiety attack. If the train left me there, it would take a LONG time for me to find another human. There were no buildings in either direction as far as I could see. It’s definitely a beautiful country, but not a part I wanted to be stranded at during my honeymoon. So, I jumped back onto the train.

Last year I went to China. There were several things I noticed on our train trip to Datong from Beijing. Mainly, there are literally people everywhere. The smallest of Chinese cities are still larger than my closest city. The countryside, however, is also filled with people. It’s not the concrete jungle that the cities are, but every time I looked out the window, I saw people in the fields.

We stopped for a few minutes at this stop:

Here’s where I noticed something I’ve never seen before… people crossing railroad tracks. That is so illegal everywhere I’ve been, so I had to take some pictures. (Please note the third picture, there are people crossing as a train is heading into the station)

Finally, we have the most recent train pictures. This is from the Bologna train station on the way to Florence. I previously blogged about this particular train ride here. I was pretty annoyed by the time we got back to the station and just wanted to get home. To try to take my mind off of it all, I attempted to take pictures. I wasn’t really inspired, so I wrote a few haikus. Here are the pictures, followed by my haikus.

1. Bologna Station/Wondering if the locals/Will take our money
2. In six minutes the/train arrives to take us back/to Firenze CIAO
3. The dog in my view/is a puppy & just peed/& now scratches itself

So, that sums up some of my train experiences to date. I really want to take a trip across the Canadian Rockies, take the trans-siberian/trans-mongolian railway, and go on a trip a la Darjeeling Limited in India. What else am I missing?