Day 325, from San Lazzaro, Italy to Patras, Greece
We were sad to leave quaint Agerola, and the Amalfi Superhosts. There is often an intangible something that makes a place feel like home, while others do not. In this case it was a collection of many tangible somethings. A welcome bag of pasta on the counter, fresh cookies, invitations to hikes or a glass of wine in the evening, calling ahead to their favorite restaurant to open early for us, taking us to their friend’s wine cellar and meal, driving us into town for a tour and to sample the local specialities—one of those perfect travel experiences.
We drove east from the Amalfi coast, eastward across the boot, to catch our overnight ferry to Greece. Always wanted to do an overnight ferry. There were many port towns along the coast that looked like this.
We’ve never done a ferry for 16 hours before. We leave at 9pm and arrive in Patras at 2pm the next day. We drove up to the ship, which was much larger than expected. It wasn’t a typical ferry you would picture, more the size of a cruise ship. Before we boarded, we had to do immigration.
We rolled up to a border patrol group that looked more like a SWAT team with two token border guys. If they wanted to look intimidating, one enormous army dude would have been adequate. But they must travel as a set. Passing from Italy into Greece was the border where we were questioned and laughed at the most. We do what we always do at the borders, say nothing unless asked, simple answers, slight pleasant smile, but not enough to look too happy. Border guards eat happy people like they are gummy bears. They asked where we lived. I answered, Miami. Then they all laughed as if I’d made a hilarious dirty army joke (which maybe I had). They made funny faces, and repeated, “Mee-a-mee. Hot”. Yup, dirty army joke. Each of them would take turns saying this, and guffawing. We patiently waited for them to complete their squad’s inside joke process. After all, they’re the ones with the rocket launchers, laugh as long as you like at our unarmed expense.
We never slip through, are always directed to the pull over lane. We have a red license plate which indicates we are tourists, so all the paper-seeking officials readily find us. When we travel in Europe we participate in a program where we rent a car for a great price. Technically we are buying it and they buy it back from us at the end of the rental period. That way they avoid the VAT tax because a foreigner is buying it, increasing their profit. One has to rent for a minimum number of weeks, which is never a problem for us. That is why, when the very official man asked who owns the car Paul instinctively answered it’s a rental. Then official dude wanted all our passports, the car papers, everything. When he saw the car title and compared it to the passport he asked, “You own?” Legally we do, so now we answered yes. Our turn to play that language barrier card that comes with the red license plate. Next they searched for the serial number, rocket launchers pointing every which way close to the car. Hope those safeties are reliable. They took our passports into some car for a long a long time, probably had some lunch, a little Greek Netflix, more dirty army jokes, and eventually gave them back and let us go. Thanks fellas.
Here the girls and I are boarding the ship.
By now it was 6pm and the ferry was leaving at 9pm. The next guy told Paul to park his car and stay in it and the three of us could go inside. We didn’t know he would be waiting in the car for the next three hours. We checked in at reception and got our key to our cabin. This is a 16 hour passage, so we thought a cabin was good idea, otherwise you end up sleeping in a chair or a random floor on the ship, apparently. Here was our cabin, which was actually quite spacious.
Paul was still waiting in line with the car. Since our port stop is last, our car is one of the last ones to board. Meanwhile I thought I’d check out the restaurant. I went in and it was full of Greek and Italian truck drivers, no exceptions. I had no idea. A couple of families came on eventually, but only a hand full of them. Mostly you see these big men. One had his exotic bird with him that was in a custom cage, filed under “things you don’t see everyday.”
Eventually Paul got the car on board and the ferry left port. The cabins are the largest I’ve ever seen on a boat. The meal was good enough, we were all hungry. The boat is incredibly steady, much more so than a cruise ship. Open bathroom doors don’t knock and curtains don’t sway. We were pretty tired from the day’s journey, so fell asleep at a good hour.
We sleep soundly until the 4:30 wake up call for the first port. A purser opened our door to confirm that we were going to the only other stop, since few people stay on until then. He opened the door and yelled in, “Patras? Patras?” Took me a minute to realize what was going on.
This morning we got up to find the boat almost deserted. All the trucks are gone and there are maybe 15 of us still on board for Patras. We ate breakfast in an empty restaurant. With no wifi, the girls decided to go back to sleep, and easily slept until the afternoon. If teens have no wifi to wake up for and have a dark room, I think they could sleep for days.
The boat docks at 2pm in Patras. From there we don’t know where we are going since we haven’t booked a place to stay in Greece. It’s not that Paul hasn’t been working on it, it’s just that some options we were looking at became unavailable, more options also become available last minute, and we are waiting to have wifi to continue booking conversations about the wifi. Everything is wifi driven, the actual booking and where we book. This is the closest we’ve ever cut it, not having a place booked for the same evening. And yet, none of us are worried about it. We know we’ll figure it out once we get connected again.