Three days and nights on the ocean wave

A new route to Crete this year for Greyrocks:- prompted mostly by the time-shift for the Wedding of the Year! It is based on three tightly sequenced ferries.

Ferry 1: Barcelona to Civitavecchia - Grimaldi Lines - 21 hours  - Intermediate stop: Porto Torres, Sardinia
(Ship being kept in service during re-flooring so some irritating no-go policies aboard!)

It was dark by the time we left port and there were now plenty of passengers. We had a few more mini Proseccos and then retired to our comfortable cabin, which all the better for Bob discovering how to adjust the air-conditioning! We didn't bother with breakfast, and the crowd thinned at Porto Torres. We spent much of the afternoon in the A la carte restaurant enjoying some very good Italian fare and a bottle of Chianti as a delayed birthday meal for Ruth. When passengers had to clear the cabins we found that a guy reminiscent of Raw Sex on keyboards was playing in the main lounge and mature Italian ladies were line dancing (occasionally joined by ragazzi in mocking mode). This took us into Civitavecchia and masked the mobile phone bad manners! Disembarkation was easy, but the first roads down to the Ancona standard in terms of condition, We followed signs for Roma which too s on a very long sweep round, but we reached our booked hotel which was perfect - simple, lift, nice bar with Moretti beer, good WiFi and a charming owner, who introduced us to a regular who is Greek.  We considered popping across the road for a pizza but didn't, and we also got away next day without breakfast as we had a serious drive ahead and another ferry to catch!

This would be Greyrocks' longest (planned!) daily drive for the year. It is autostrada all the way to Bari and pretty well signed for interchanges, but getting round Naples in the morning rush hour was hairy, and later the us and downs quite impressive but time-consuming. Comments on Italian driving and service stations have all been made before, and the approach to the port of Bari isn't easy, but we found ourselves in the fenced off area with hours to kill in the sunshine, hoping there was a bar. There was, and we had plenty to watch as a huge German cruise ship was nearby and the punters were returning to it - many on hired bicycles!  We embarked with ease!

    Ferry 2: Bari to Patras - Superfast/ANEK - 17 hours  - Intermediate stop: Igoumenitsa

This is not the largest or newest ship in the fleet and - apart from the cabin - few places to escape from what we encounter every time on the Adriatic route: loud, vain, and numerous US students! But we know they are likely to get off at Igoumenitsa! We ate our decent dinner in the self-service surrounded by them. Ah well! Superfast have a new internet price so we had a few hours with that, and time passed, but we couldn't get a GPS location for determining exactly which lump of land we could see. We were off quickly. In the outskirts of Patras at traffic lights was a group of organised very young Roma children begging aggressively. Welcome to austerity Greece! The well-trodden route to Piraeus is now complete but the toll booths are working so the journey is broken into about six segments at about EUR 2 each. It was also very light on traffic through the afternoon - until after Corinth.

 On the outskirts of Athens we stopped for the cheapest diesel and then went to our "usual" area for a late lunch. There was not much choice this time and we ended up at the first on the shore, where we had our first Amstels and our first Greek salad which came in a strangely deconstructed form with feta separate and doused in olive oil - with no table bottle thereof. Later we realised this was due to the latest self-destructive legislation in Greece. Read all about it! The next post will consider how it is being implemented in distant Crete! Textbook navigation to the Crete quay of the port this time! With - again- ages to kill we parked judiciously and went up to the "usual" bar - which has been tarted up but is still very friendly. We turned away ten different itinerant vendors of watches, chargers and sunglasses. Then we returned and were allowed on board quickly just after 6 pm.

                         Ferry 3: Piraeus to Chania - Blue Star/ANEK - 9 hours
The ship was not the monster one we were expecting but one from the Blue star fleet. This barely mattered except for the absence of an outdoor bar with gyros, which is an ANEK sine qua non! We watched the dockside activity and amongst it was the arrival of two coaches with primary-age children and a few disengaged staff. We discovered our cabin was surrounded by theirs! This was perhaps a vestige of the changed ship and inappropriate cabin number - but it was Hell up there! When challenged as to where any supervising adults might be found we were told they were "eating"! Next morning was more or less problem-free. We watched a very tedious but clever manoeuvre of a juggernaut, and were off before sunrise. We took the coast road to Tavronitis and found a bakery with parking for a restful breakfast. We arrived in Paleo at about 9 am.