Ferry Boring - 9th August

It was up early today as we had been told we had to be at the port at 8.30 (despite our ferry not leaving until 11.30). Breakfast was a very strange affair. They multi-tasking guy had obviously nipped to the shop for a couple of fresh figs and yogurt and added a load of individually packed biscuits to the mix. Not what we were expecting, and not a great success.

The port was absolutely heaving when we arrived. They don't understand the concept of an orderly queue here and it was bedlam. There were hundreds of people and only two check in desks open. People were just barging in and pushing. I eventually reached the front of the queue having been pushed, had my toes stepped on and inhaled the equivalent of 20 fags to find that I had to pay and extra 25 Euros on top of the already expensive tickets as port tax.
I was in no mood to argue so I took the tickets and we drove through to the boarding area to look forward to 2 hours of queuing. Lucky for us we had the deck chairs to hand so we all sat in the shade of the car to read, to the bemused looks from fellow passengers. Within 5 minutes all the cars had started to moved so we jumped up, packed the chairs and got swiftly into the car. Unsurprisingly, the three lines of cars didn't move onto the ferry in an orderly fashion, they all made a run for the front of the line so some guy with a whistle was blowing his heart out and trying to direct the mess of traffic.

As soon as we got on board we bagged ourselves a table in the shade and settled in for a long and boring day. By this time my legs were quite painful and, on inspection, I discovered that the friendly Italian mosquitoes had taken advantage of me last night while eating pizza outside the hotel. I was covered in blistering bites which were already swelling up nicely.

I had anticipated that Alex might find the day hard so had packed some games, comics and playing cards in order to try and keep him occupied – it didn't work! If I had a pound for every time he said he was bored I could have booked myself into first class for a bit of peace and quiet.


We docked at 7.30 local time and followed the excellent directions from the agent to our accommodation. We were very pleasantly surprised but were also hungry and tired so we parked up and walked the 200m to the nearest taverna for our tea. Sadly Chris and I were less than impressed with the food and the price but it was late, we were tired so we ate up and went home for bed.