-
Day 29
Finally at quarter past twelve my train arrived. It was a regional service, much like the commuter trains I get back home. Once I had found a seat and the train was moving away, I realised that there was a time bomb ticking in the next seat. It was a sleeping baby.I could look at this two ways. Clearly the baby was, at some point, going to wake up and make enough noise to cause a small earth tremor. They always did when I was anywhere near. I could either choose to sulk, and cringe every time the train went over a bump in the track, or appreciate that I would be prevented from sleeping and therefore wouldn’t miss my stop. I chose the former, and spent the next two hours willing the child to continue sleeping.
-
Day 28
When we awoke we discovered that the brooding skies of the previous day had turned to rain. In fact, it was pouring. This gave Chris a long-sought-after opportunity to gloat about some ludicrously overpriced waterproof jacket that he had purchased in Copenhagen. I just donned a T-shirt and pulled out a cheap umbrella that I’d picked up in London before we left. We still, didn’t have tickets for the buses, but this didn’t really matter anyway because we after the night’s misdirected wanderings we were determined to work out the route on foot. We had to take our backpacks with us too, because I was leaving in the evening to go back to London, and Chris would check into a hotel for his final night in Florence.
-
Day 27
The first night of not sleeping on the move for three days was much needed. We picked up some water from a local supermarket before heading into town, but the way the sky looked, lack of water was not going to be a problem.First we headed for the largest attraction on the map, a fortress-like structure north of the station, which took us via a leather-goods market and a lot of police officers frantically diverting traffic. The lonely planet guide had said it may be closed, but in fact it had since been converted into a conference venue. We walked around it anyway, then walked on to Piazza St Marco.
-
Day 26
I got woken up by a waiter in the purple lounge at about 8am, having slept remarkably well for someone who had to make do with a sofa that is stylishly curved in the wrong direction. They hadn’t made it easy – to discourage deck passengers (such as myself) from sleeping in the lounge the air-conditioning was set to ‘arctic’ and the TV was turned up louder. I put on a sweater, donned earplugs and continued to slumber undisturbed.Once I was awake, I went for breakfast in the self-service restaurant, and then decided that the time had come to rescue Chris from the confines of his first class cabin. At 10:30 Italian time we arrived in the port of Ancona, and I was quite sad to leave the luxurious Superfast XI, which was definitely the most well-appointed boat I’d been on.
-
Day 25
I walked off the boat at 5am feeling awful. A combination of diesel fumes, lack of sleep, no food, and over-enthusiastic air conditioning had me worried about my health. The port at Athens was not the place to be, so I corralled the others into the metro as quickly as possible, and got out of the polluted air, picking up a few croissants on the way.We had to wait about an hour at the main train station before getting a train to Patras, which was a reasonably fast transfer considering the frequency of the trains. Three hours later it was midday, we were approaching Patras, and I was desperate for something to eat. Nathalia had come up with a plan though, and it meant delaying lunch – it would have to be good. It was. We would get a boat not to Brindisi but to Ancona – much further north, longer boat trip but the boat left within two hours and was much faster. It would save us over 12 hours in the long run.
-
Day 24
Sadly the time had come for us to leave Santorini. We checked out of Dimitri’s and called him to arrange a lift back to the port, but he refused, despite having promised it when we checked in.Walking to the centre of town we decided that we’d had enough of scooters, and should get a car. There was some debate about which one we should have, but we ended up in a Hyundai Ascent, which had plenty of space for the luggage, automatic gearbox and air conditioning too. Since I was the only one with a driver’s licence with me who was reasonably experienced behind the wheel, I officially hired the car, which was quite a challenge in the travel agency seemed to doubt that I was 21. She pored over my licence carefully.
-
Day 23
Santorini is composed of four islands, the largest of which is the one we had been exploring for the last two days. The others are a smaller inhabited island to the north, and the volcano itself, which comprises two land masses. Today’s tour was to the volcano and surrounding hot springs. We had to get up early to ensure that everyone got to use the bathroom before we left.I was out first and had time to have breakfast in town and check my email before we left. A big, modern coach picked us up and took us to the new port, where a boat was waiting to take us to the volcano. The guide on the boat was very good, multilingual with good pronunciation in both Greek and English, and according to Nathalia she was pretty good at Spanish as well.
-
Day 22
We slept very late, having had such a poor night’s sleep on the boat the previous night. We got two scooters, using Sunil’s driving licence and mine. Ironically, Sunil has a licence but doesn’t drive. In fact I think the last time I saw him drive a car was shortly after he passed his test, so Chris and I did the driving, with Nathalia on the back of mine, and Sunil riding with Chris. This meant that we had at least one licence holder per bike.The first stop was Fira, the capital of Santorini and the location of the old port. Parking the scooters in the main square, we went looking for the cable car. Fira may be right on the coast, but it is actually built on the top of a cliff, so to get to water level you either have to climb down a very long and winding staircase or take the cable car, which we did. The town was very nice – unlike Perissa or Kamari it had more of a working sense about it. Dozens of narrow back alleys wound their way through jewellery shops, ice cream cafes, clothes shops, and restaurants, while the main streets were full of traffic and had businesses of all sorts. All the buildings were painted white, and the town appeared to be spotlessly clean.
-
Day 21
It was about 12:30am when I first woke up, to find that Sunil and Nathalia had disappeared. A note was on the table explaining that my bag had been hidden under my chair. Curious, I picked up my bag and went to look for them.I found them on deck, right at the back of the boat, asleep in their own little windstorm. No-one was sleeping nearby, probably because they had at least half a brain and didn’t want to wake up with frostbite. This must have been Sunil’s idea, I thought, and with that I went back to the Saloon. I moved to the other side of the room, where a sizable area of sofa had been vacated, but a plastic bag clearly marked territory. I decided that the person didn’t need quite that much room, so I used the last few inches of the sofa as a pillow, which at least meant I didn’t have to sleep with my neck bent.
-
Day 20
Having checked out, we took our bags down to the basement, and since the lift was out of action, this involved a long trip down the stairs, which passed uneventfully until the last step, where Chris managed to twist his ankle. Having a fifteen-kilo backpack on did not help matters – he limped into the luggage room moaning about being in pain. Being sensitive and caring friends, we immediately went to his aid.