Before I carry on with the discription of today's events, let me first say that the Stargate Hotel, is terrible. The toilets were the bane of our stay there. There were 4 toilets serving almost fifty people. What made it worse was that on the 2nd day we were there, 2 of the toilets were faulty, and were locked, so we had to ration the toilets. Man...the queue just to pee...
And the toilet at the end of the corridor, didn't have shower curtains, so the water from the shower would leak out from under the door and flood the corridor. And that is not all, one could only get warm water when one turned the lever to the right...yes right, not left, and to the extreme as well...only then, and only then, could one hope of getting water that had even the slightest hint of warmth. One does not bathe in the cold water in hot Italy cause they get the water from aquifers(underground springs), and believe me, the cold water is cold. Well, enough lamentations...SO...

Today we left for the port city of Bari, where we were to take the ferry to Patras. We were told that we could only book the tickets at the port. The train to Bari was late by an hour.

On the train, we squeezed 6 of us into four seats as we decided to book only 4. We wanted to save money. We thought that if we got enough seats, and if the train was not too packed, people wouldn't want to sit with us and so we could have the entire cabin to ourselves.

We were deeply mistaken. The train was really packed, more than we could imagine. The toilets were inaccessible because passengers standing near them had placed their luggage in there. That's just an idea of how packed the train was. People who were bound for the next train boarded this one as it was late, but not as late as the next one. So the train had twice the number of people it should take. It was like everyone in the station was going to Bari.

When we got to the port we understood why.

The ferry company that services Interail, had sold out its tickets. Adu and Raimund had Interail tickets so our decision to get tickets from another company did not go down very well with them. But they understood the situation. If they wanted to take Super Fast Ferries, they would have to wait till the morrow. It didn't help that we couldn't book on the net cause the service was down, which we would have if we could, right? Anyway, after much waiting, we got the 50euro deck tickets(the cheapest) for the 2200hr ferry to Igoumenitsa which was 8 hours compared to 15 on Super Fast. Well not too bad, but the price was the same for both companies. Travel less but pay more. Sigh. Having settled the tickets, Adu, Raimund and I went to the nearest supermarket to get groceries to last the trip: water, biscuits and tidbits.

Around 2000hrs, we decided to look for the boarding gate of the ferry Ventouris, as we were told by an American acquaintance in Florence to 'grab the best seats'. There were no signs. The reception counters were so swamped with people that we didn't dare ask. The security guards who only understood a smattering of English told us to go in a general direction. We went to search for it in the general direction, but found not a single soul anywhere in sight, much less a ferry terminal. As the boarding time approached, we got more anxious, and I decided to ask the reception lady even if it meant having to wait amongst the crowd which was surrounding the counter as if they were giving out free money. I waited for an hour. I also managed to ask a friendly local to help me ask how we could get to the terminal. The golden answer was: it's 50 metres from here. What??!! We didn't see any gate of any sort in our searches. Anyway we had to go find it since it was approaching 2200hrs. Thank goodness we met some helpful tourists along the way who led us through some really unsuspecting truck parking areas to the terminal...goodness...how could this be??!! There were people there waiting too, so we were almost sure that was the place. Never take anything other than Super Fast Ferries from Bari to Greece.

To add to the torture, we only set off from the port at 0200hrs, it was late by 4 hrs.

We were blessed to find space in the lounge area and colonized it. Others who were not so lucky had to sleep on the deck, which was really cold. And yet, sleeping in the lounge area was no bed of roses neither, being on seats that were too short, in an area that was too bright and noisy, surrounded by smokers in a supposedly non-smoking area.

When morning came, we thought we would reach Igoumenitsa latest by 1000hrs since it was late by 4 hrs last night, but it wasn't until 1600hrs the next day that we berthed at Igoumenitsa. The ferry was late by a total of 10 hours. Wow... now we knew why Super Fast Ferries was called that. They were punctual.

At the port, we were told that the only way to the bus terminus was via taxi, so we took 2 taxis and were on our way. A minute later, we arrived at the bus terminus. No joke, one minute. No the taxi was not fast, the distance was short. We had been had. Again.

Anyway, we grudgingly trudged into the bus waiting area and bought tickets to Athens. It was to be another 16 hours of bus ride through the night for 16euros. Oh no...no sleep again...

Adu and I headed to find the public phone to contact the hostel at Athens that we were going to be late in arriving. No problem, we were told that they had 24hrs check-in. Good. We also discovered cheap kebap! 1.4euros...we couldn't believe our eyes, having been conditioned to the high cost of living in western europe, we were overjoyed to see more humane prices. When we returned to the waiting area, we saw the rest eating instant noodles( we had brought with us a kettle...yes, a kettle)

At 2000hrs, we set off in the brilliant sunset down the winding roads of Greece to Athens, with a breath of hope. The sunset was afterall really beautiful...