Up early and after
breakfast at the hotel, we drove out to the archaeological site,
which we had virtually to ourselves. Our now-very-cat-friendly girls
made friends with some tabby kittens that were wandering around the
ruins. The site is suitably impressive. Although it hasn't been
extensively reconstructed, there's enough there to give you a sense
of what it was once like – and the setting itself is so dramatic
that it lends the whole place an aura of awe.
We then drove down
from the mountains and along the northern coast of the Gulf of
Corinth and across a very impressive bridge to Patras, where we were due to catch the afternoon ferry to
Brindisi in Italy. We got there nice and early, which proved to be a
very good thing. We began following the signs to the 'Italy terminal'
– and then almost gave up and turned back as it proved to be a long
way past the other terminals and the signposting was very
intermittent, so we figured we must have passed it.
Once inside the
terminal area, we followed some more signs that pointed us back out
onto the road, so we headed back for the large terminal building that
we had driven past on the way there... and proceeded to get properly
lost in the back streets of Patras. Sally very kindly extracted us
from the maze of narrow one-way streets and we eventually pulled into
a weighing station and asked the bulletproof-vested guard for
directions. Thankfully, he spoke English and directed us back to the
terminal area that we had just left.
We eventually made
it back there and this time we stopped and asked directions from a
friendly policewoman, who directed us behind some nearby buildings
and there it was, the fabled ticket office! Of course, we still
managed to drive in around in circles (and the wrong way down a
one-way lane) looking for somewhere to park, but we finally made it
in and in no time at all, we had boarding passes. We still had loads
of time to kill, so we drove up the coast and had lunch at a little
taverna right on the water, chilled to the bone by a frigid breeze
blowing in off the sea.
Back at the port, we
did some dinner shopping in a supermarket then drove into the
terminal and parked so we could pack some bags for the crossing. All
the while, a group of boys were running around the lorries playing
hide-and-seek with the police – obviously illegal immigrants trying
to find a way to hitch a ride to Italy. It all seemed quite
good-natured – the boys smiled and laughed as they sprinted from
vehicle to vehicle, motorcycle-mounted police following desultorily
behind. I really don't know how they thought they were going to get
through, though, as the border police were being extremely thorough,
checking every vehicle inside and out as it passed through passport
control. When it was our turn, they asked us endless questions about
where we had come from and where we were headed – they even wanted
to see our tickets from Syros. They were clearly suspicious as our
story didn't make much sense to them, but after they had a bit of a
rummage around in the back of the car it was pretty obvious that we
barely had room to fit ourselves in, let alone a stowaway or two, and
they waved us through. But because this was a Greek ferry terminal,
we had no idea where to go next, so we asked for directions one last
time and then drove onto our ferry.
We were one of only
four cars making the crossing and we were surprised and excited to
pull up behind a car with GB plates. It turned out, however, that it
was being driven by an Australian couple. We started up a
conversation with them and discovered that they were young doctors on
their way back to the UK after having taken part in the Mongol Rally.
Unsurprisingly, they were full of hairy stories of driving through
the 'stans and Kate and I both quietly breathed a sigh of relief that
we had decided not to take that route home.
We bid them farewell
and made our way to our cabin, where we dined on barbecue chicken and
salad, then hit our bunks, listening to the Eastern Europeans in the
neighbouring cabin talking to their friends in their other
neighbouring cabin.
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