Day 57: Return to Riccardo's

We bid farewell to Ashlyn and Josh in the morning and then had a pretty chilled day - a bit of an explore of the area around the apartment, lunch barbecued on the terrace and a few lessons at the School of Mum and Dad. 

 

The girls' fascination with Riccardo's hadn't diminished, so before dinner we wandered down and checked it out properly. It had obviously been some time since Kate had been in a nightclub because she was properly shocked by how much the drinks cost, but she took a deep breath and ordered a couple of glasses of prosecco (pretty much blowing the daily budget in one fell swoop) and we sat and drank them while the girls danced around in the fancy lights in the foyer.

 

 

Day 56: Lost in Ostuni

After breakfast in the cabin, we packed up and walked down to the car, where we had another chat to Ashlyn and Josh, the Australian rally drivers. After a while, we noticed that the ferry had stopped, so we bid them farewell, climbed into the car and drove ashore, watching as Italian passport control wrote on their car (almost certainly a clever ploy they'd made good use of throughout their journey to make border crossings go a bit more smoothly). It was an easy half-hour drive to our next destination – the hill town of Ostuni in Puglia, right in the heel of Italy. Again, we were very early, so we parked the car and wandered up into town for a quick look around. We soon found a nice bakery and introduced the girls to the wonders of proper focaccia, which we ate in a very pleasant park, and then re-discovered the joys of Italian coffee in the town square.

After a bit more aimless wandering, we went back to the car to meet Will, the Englishman who was renting us our apartment. He led us up and into the old town – a proper maze of narrow alleys and steep stairs. We were all reminded of Greece in general and Ano Syros in particular – the buildings were whitewashed and the whole place was surrounded by olive trees (Puglia produces about 40 per cent of Italy's olive oil; some of the trees are several thousand years old). We eventually reached the apartment, all puffing slightly at the effort of getting there. Kate had given me two options for apartments in Ostuni and I had naturally gone for the nicer, more expensive one – and when Will let us in, I was glad I had. It was gorgeous, with spectacularly high ceilings, a little terrace with an amazing view over the olive groves to the sea, another larger roof terrace higher up, and a funny little turret bedroom reached by a super-tight spiral staircase. Once we had settled in we had some awesome pizza for lunch at a little trattoria less than 50 metres from our front door.

After lunch we headed out in search of a supermarket, but we realised we had left the map Will provided us behind when we reached the bottom of the stairs, so ended up driving around in circles for far too long. Eventually, we stumbled across a Eurospin in the neighbouring town. This is an Italian chain we first came across in Sardinia when Zoe was still a baby – and it hasn't improved a great deal since then. It's very much in the Aldi/Lidl mould – cheap, but not all that cheerful. So we grabbed what we needed (including a couple of bottles of Best Brau beer) and then drove home.

I cooked dinner in the apartment and afterwards we went for a walk around the old town, stopping to have a little peek into Riccardo's – a bar/night club that's apparently popular with the Milan crowd, darling. The girls were fascinated by it and wanted to go back for another look and as we stood outside, who should come down some adjacent stairs but Ashlyn and Josh. They were on their way back to their car – the plan was to find a quiet spot somewhere and camp – and happily took us up on the offer to stay in our little turret room. After the girls went to bed, the four of us sat up and traded travel stories until after midnight. 

Day 55: Finding the ferry

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.

Day 54: Driving to Delphi

We awoke to discover that our room's little balcony had a wonderful view over the Saronic Gulf. After a pretty basic hotel-provided breakfast downstairs we drove back up and over the Corinth Canal and then over some hills and into a much flatter, drier region – the cue for a quick School of Mum and Dad geography lesson on rain shadows. 

We eventually reached the town of Delphi – right next door to the famous archaeological site – and wandered around looking for somewhere to have lunch. Unfortunately, the whole place appeared to be shut, so after doing a near-complete circuit (and walking up and down an awfully large number of stairs), we bought some basic provisions and headed back to the site... where we discovered that you couldn't take food in. So we sat outside and wolfed down some bread and olive oil... only to discover that the site was going to close soon and we didn't really have time to see it that afternoon. The museum, however, was still open, so we had a look around that and then drove down the road to the Temple of Athena, a smaller 'satellite' site with a few standing columns and a lot of rubble that was free to visit.

Back in town we checked into our hotel, which had apparently had some sort of water-related disaster on the top floor, putting the family room that we had booked out of action. The owners were most apologetic, and offered us two rooms that faced each other across a corridor, so the girls got so sleep on their own for the night. Kate and my room had an incredible, vertiginous view down to the Gulf of Corinth. 

It was now dusk, so we went out for a bit of a look around the town. We found a cute little bar, run by a cute little Greek man and sat for a while on a couch in the window drinking beer, eating crisps and watching the Asian tourists go by. Then it was souvlaki for dinner again, accompanied by a very dramatic Turkish soap opera playing on a tv in the corner.

Day 53: A small fall at the falls

Up early and back out to the bird hide. On the way there, we saw a huge murmuration of starlings – hundreds and hundreds of birds flying alongside and over us in one long, undulating stream. When we got to the hide, it was already a bit too light and what birds there were in the water nearby quickly took to the sky, but we took a little walk along the lagoon's edge and got quite close to a couple of flamingoes.

Back at the resort, we dived back into the breakfast buffet, armed this time with a bit of local knowledge so our foraging was more efficient. After packing up, we met Valia, the lovely PR from the company that owns the resort and she took us on a bit of tour. And while Kate and the girls played in the park and went ten-pin bowling, I interviewed one of the company engineers, who was involved in the incredible olive-tree-transplanting programme that was undertaken as part of the resort's construction (6,500 trees transplanted and counting).

After another lovely lunch at the golf club restaurant, we hit the road, driving to Polylimnio waterfalls, a series of small cascades and falls in a steep-sided ravine. The walk up the creek to the falls was very slippery, and at one point Sarah lost her footing and gave her knee a bit of a whack. The setting was very dramatic and as we got the higher, the path was fringed with some very elaborate snowdrops. 

It was after dark when we finally arrived at our hotel. Hotel Kakanakos was something of a step down from the previous night's accommodation – set right on the main road through town – but despite its less than salubrious frontage, it was very clean and quite nicely decorated. It was run by a very sweet Italian granny with virtually no English who sat in the foyer chain smoking and watching Greek variety shows at earsplitting volume. After getting all of our stuff into the room, we crossed the road and had dinner in a little roadside souvlaki place.