AUGUST 10th

ferry was shite. was only a small ferry so the chairs didn't recline much and was pretty crowded. and on top of everything, the engine noise was loud enough to prevent any possible form of decent sleep. jee got some fitful rest but i got bugger all.

they showed Pirates of the Caribbean (why you would show a pirate movie on a ferry i have no idea!) then Daddy Day Care then Lord of the Rings: Return of the King.
i saw most of the first, must've passed out for Daddy Day Care cos the next thing i knew LOTR was on.

So we arrive in Piraeus at 7am, 3 hours later than expected. we trekked to the station then caught the train towards the Acropolis.
original plan was to take in some of the ancient sites of Athens prior to heading to Patras. however it takes about 4hrs from Athens to reach Patras and there are only a few trains AND we wanted to get there as soon as possible to book tickets for the ferry to italy, so we were in a bit of a pickle.
got off at the acropolis station and looked for lockers but there were none so we had no choice but to lug them. the Acropolis and its associated monuments are up on a hill overlooking Athens and lugging heavy bags uphill ain't the most entertaining practise so about halfway there, Jee said she'd watch the bags and wait for me to go and check them out.

jogged up the hill and through various tour groups that were just arriving to the entry. i could see the top half of what i think was the Acropolis so i took a snap shot and headed back down to meet Jee. marked that down as something to see next time we come to Europe. there's been a few things along the way that we've skipped over and promised to return to someday.

Next 4 hours were spent training it to Patras. were lucky enough to get seats on the longer of the two trains we had to catch, so that was a small mercy.

grabbed our tickets and chilled. had something to eat (Jee had another bloody yiros! i think she's addicted!) at Chick'n Chicken and were undercharged by a rookie waiter. got on the boat bout an hour before departure and secured our seats. also grabbed the two seats behind ours cos no one appeared to be in them. we learnt from previous ferry rides that if people have the "deck" seat tickets, they can jump in the aircraft style seats if no one has them reserved. otherwise a fair amount of them sleep on the floor! it's much better than the deck for sure. the deck does have a roof covering the area, but the sides aren't covered so once the ship is moving the wind whips in and makes things pretty chilly. and to add to it, the evening we were leaving, it started raining pretty heavily and the roof of the deck was really leaky so the place was covered in water!indoor space was at a premium!

tried to get to sleep pretty early on. wasn't the most comfortable, but was the best i've been able to sleep on an overnight ferry so far! stretched out over two seats with my legs dangling off the end wasn't too bad at all! can't remember exactly what time it was - maybe midnight - when suddenly they announced that the self-service restaurant would be open for another 30 mins. they woke me outta quite a deep sleep and i was rather pissed off seeing as it had closed about two hours ago anyway. i could hear a fair amount of movement going on, so i took my bandana off my eyes to see what was going on. we were docked at another port and more people were boarding! and some of those people had seat reservations and were kicking sleepers out of their seats! so i sat up and stayed awake making sure no one disturbed my sleeping beauty (girl sleeps like a bloody log! she never woke up once thru the whole commotion!). once the ship started moving again and i was sure that no one else was coming along, it was off to dreamland again...

SIDENOTE: I've read back over a couple of my past bloggings and feel i must pass on my humblest apologies for the lack of eloquence in these entries, along with the grammatical and spelling mistakes and sometimes missing out entire words! i'm writing all these entries on my mobile phone then sending them to my email address. then when time is willing, i paste them into my blog.
typing on my phone is plenty slower than thinking speed (mind you i can basically touch type at great speed on this keypad thanks to all the practise i've had!) and thus sometimes i'm ahead of myself before i've had a chance to write it and don't realise that i've left something out.
then when copying from my email and pasting into the blog window, it does a wierd double up kinda thing that i try to get rid of if i notice it has happened.
Perfektion is impossible I guess...
;-p

AUGUST 11th

Arrived in Bari, Italy feeling quite refreshed and ready for the next long haul. plan was to catch a train to Rome and then an overnight train to Bern, Switzerland.
(my grandmother generously put me through a very good education, but i always thought that Zurich was the capital of Switzerland! Didn't study Geography! That's my excuse and I'm sticking to it!) (and the dubious Mr Tang also believed that Geneva or Zurich was the capital of Switzerland, so I'm not the only one!! yay!!)
unfortunately the sleeper was fully booked so we had to book an overnight train from Bari to Milan and then catch another to Bern.
Bari's a nice enough town to spend a day in and due to being a main port, it has plenty of boutique shops for those last minute duty free purchases, so Jee was plenty happy!
So we wandered and window shopped until 9pm.
The 1st class sleeping seats on the train were in cabins of six seats and we were sharing ours with just one guy initially. Very nice Swiss guy called Cedric who was from the French speaking part of Switzerland but could speak Italian fluently and English and German very well! He'd spent a month in Australia in January brushing up on his English and having a holiday, so he actually knew Adelaide!
The cabin was very comfortable with only the three of us (especially cos we could stretch our legs out to the opposite seats!), but unfortunately after an hour, we were joined by a rather portly (shall we call him "prosperous" Lucinda?) gentleman who snored rather loudly and then later on a youth, so leg stretching was not to be had.
soon got pretty cold in the cabin making sleep even more difficult.