Tagged with: traveljournal

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.
Day 19

We felt extremely lucky on the morning of unlucky Friday the thirteenth. Until we realised that due to the time difference between Italy and Greece, we had woken up an hour later than planned, and the ship’s crew were already doing housekeeping. A guy who was currently six cabins down the corridor was about to discover a major mismatch between the number of people on his inventory sheet, and the current population of cabin 118.Nathalia and myself were the closest to being ready, so we legged it down the corridor when the crewman was in the next cabin. When he opened the door less than ten seconds later, Chris was still in bed, and Sunil was packing his bag. The other three beds were all made up, and occupied by our luggage. Chris angrily demanded to know why he had been disturbed so early, and countered some suspicious queries by explaining that he was looking after our luggage for us, now would you please go away, we haven’t docked yet.
Day 18

Brindisi turned out to be quite a nice place, contrary to my expectations of a dirty port town where the water would be basically a mixture of oil and diesel. Emerging from the station was like suddenly being transported into the middle of Las Vegas, but during the daytime. Booking agents competed to produce the largest, loudest and flashiest sign advertising low fares on ferries to Greece.We were wary of these offers, as I’d read reports of many of them being scams. Someone else seemed to be concerned too, and was hanging around the station looking at the various signs. We joined forces and went to the first agent we spotted with an HML (Hellenic Mediterranean Lines) logo, but only to ask them where the HML head office was.
Day 17

Unlike previous cities where buying tickets for the public transport had sometimes proved difficult, Rome was a breeze. There was actually a ticket machine in the hostel itself, and there are only three types of ticket – a single journey, a day, and a week. I bought a day ticket, and waited for the bus at the stop outside the hostel.The fact that I had successfully purchased a ticket with which I was allowed to travel on any form of public transport in Rome for one day may appear slightly uninteresting, but this ticket that I had confidently pocketed and thought no more about was not yet legal. Rome, like many other cities, uses a system that I think is unnecessarily complicated. You see, the ticket is not valid for travel until the holder stamps the date and time on it using one of the strategically placed validation machines.