Boating

So our last experience of Italy was our train trip from Naples to Bari where we caught a ferry to Croatia, but before leaving Naples we had to have one more crappy experience. When we tried to check out of the hotel (and pay) we were told that it was twice as expensive as when we had booked through laterooms. Anyway after a half hour argument in broken Italian and English he eventually caved in and we got to pay the discounted price.

When we got into Bari we discovered it isn’t really a tourist town at all, which was accentuated by the amount of English that the locals knew (although it still had the throngs of Africans trying to sell fake gucci bags). It was a challenge to figure out the washing machines in the local laundromat, but there’s nothing a little bit more volume and hand gestures can’t work out.

We were pretty tried from the days traveling and although we weren’t supposed to be leaving port until 10pm we went straight to our cabin and to sleep when we were let on at 9pm. It was an 8-9 hour trip and we were supposed to be in Dubrovnik at 7 in the morning. So when we woke up at 6 (after one of the best sleeps on tour so far) we thought it would be nice to go and have breakfast as we pulled into port. But alas we were already stopped. So I asked the receptionist if we had made good time and were there already “no we are still in Bari” she replied with a sly smile. She’s got to be kidding right? Ah no…. we had just slept through the announcement that departure was going to be delayed due to bad weather.

So that was a disappointment, but we were assured that we would be underway just after breakfast (which we were told would be free due to the delay). But of course there’s no such thing as a free breakfast and just after we finished the boat took off and our stomachs started to rebel. It was the roughest boat ride we’d ever been on (and I’ve been on some pretty rocky inter-islander trips) and the first two hours saw the contents of our insides duly return to the surface.

It did eventually calm down after we were out of Italian waters, which was just in time as Rach was ready to throw herself overboard. We ended being little sun gluttons laying out on the deck for the rest of the trip.