Delphi was, sadly, my last stop in Greece this trip. I was moving on to Italy next, and would take a night ferry from Patras, Greece to Bari, Italy. From Delphi, I took the 1000 bus to Nafpaktos. If I wanted to take the bus directly to Patras, I wouldn’t be able to leave until 1400 and I wanted to leave that night on the ferry to Italy. When I got to Nafpaktos, I walked across the street to the square where I boarded a bus that was waiting to take passengers directly to Patras. The trip isn’t that long from Nafpaktos to Patras, and I ended up arriving at 1400. I was really glad I opted for the earlier bus to Nafpaktos at the recommendation of the Sybilla Hotel. Really great information. I took the bus all the way to the port and final stop. This is the old location where ferries departed to Italy, but now there is a new port that you must go to. I got off the bus and took a left uphill to the Superfast Ferries office. There I managed to buy a deck seat for the student price at 44 Euros. I decided to purchase the deck seat based on the excellent recommendation given to me by my friends, Carly and Jessica, who had taken the ferry from Italy to Greece recently. If you purchase an actual seat for 25 Euro more you end up with one of the uncomfortable airplane seats. Whereas, the deck seat means your choice of any of the open large comfy couches in the reception area. I would have been really pissed had I bought the ticket and found out all these other people paid less for a much more comfortable spot. You need to get there early to stake out your couch space as it fills up quickly. Backpackers who have the insider information will get on the ship as early as possible and spread their things all over the couches to stake out their territory. Luckily I was given this same information. I had bought my own food, got to the ferry early, and spread out to claim my space on a couch. A really great Canadian girl, Alex, sat next to me on the couch and we joined forces in order to keep our space and things secure. We pulled chairs around the two tables in front of our couch and spread our things all over them. If you aren’t lucky enough to get a spot on the couch, no worries, there’s space on the floor to lay out on. So if you have a sleeping bag and mat this might be a great option for you. This ferry was probably one of the nicest ferries I had ever been on with a restaurant, casino, and a bathroom with a shower in it. So keep that in mind incase you would like a shower. Alex and I took turns watching our space and things while walking around the ship or using the restrooms because there were vultures out there waiting for us to leave our spot at the opportune moment before swooping in to take our spot. The food didn’t end up being priced too terribly like I had thought. Alex bought a decently sized Greek Salad for 4 Euros. The drinks are where it will hurt you the most in price. I ordered two coffee drinks to keep me awake and motivated to continue writing my blog… : ) … and those cost me about 4 to 5 Euros each. About the same price as Alex’s salad.
My lovely slice of sofa
Pay 25 Euro more and this is where you get to sit… and no the chairs do not recline…
The seating area where all the sofas are
The outdoor seating area
The ferry was supposed to only take 12 hours, arriving in Italy around 0830, but we didn’t get there until around noon the next day. I didn’t have a place booked, like usual, leaving me free to decide if I wanted to stay in Bari for the night or head to Naples (Napoli) instead. I walked around with Alex until she could get her ferry sorted for Croatia, then we headed to the train station to check times to Naples for me. We stopped at the McDonalds (I know… very American), which was the only place that seemed to provide WiFi in all of Bari. I find that my biggest issue with getting free WiFi ever since Turkey is that most McDonalds and Starbucks require you to have a cellphone number in order to use the free WiFi. This location was definitely not an exception. Both Alex and I didn’t have cellphones, and after schlepping so far in the heat we decided to take a break in the AC and relax with some fries and drinks. While we sat around, we searched for someone who might help us out, possibly letting us use their cellphone or at least tell us of another place that had free WiFi. I looked over to the guy behind us on his iPad and decided to ask him. He was extremely kind in giving me the password that he was using, so that Alex and I could get on the internet. Then him and his friend came over to sit with us for a chat. Tim and Andrea have pretty amazing stories. Both of them have Early Onset Parkinson’s Disease. They met when Tim’s cruise ship stopped in Bari and through a mutual friend found Andrea, another person who shared his same disease. Tim had one of the cruise ship employees help him to send a text message to Andrea, since at that time Tim didn’t know Italian and Andrea didn’t know English. Andrea agreed to meet with Tim and came down to the port so that they could spend the rest of Tim’s time in Bari together. From then a new lifelong friendship was made. They kept in touch and Andrea began learning English so that they could communicate. Now, years later, they are like brothers. Their hope is to be able to start a campaign, filming a documentary along the way and meeting with governments all over the world in order to help spread the word that Early Onset Parkinson’s Disease is very real and needs a cure. Tim is also extremely talented with a great artistic eye. I was so impressed by his pictures and typography. You can check out some of Tim’s travel videos and typography on YouTube and Vimeo. Just Google Tim Oneschkow. I definitely recommend it, very cool stuff. After chatting with Tim and Andrea, they left to continue filming a portion of their documentary.
My growing stacks…
After an hour on the internet, the login page prompted us to login again. Since we didn’t write down the password Tim had given us, we left the McDonalds and headed to the train station across the street. When I got to the window to buy my ticket, a woman in line behind me overheard where I was trying to go and stopped me before I bought my ticket. She let me know that it would be cheaper and much more direct to take the bus to Naples. That way I could just hop on the train there to get to wherever I needed. Extremely nice of her. She gave me directions to the bus station which wasn’t far at all. You just have to take the stairs under the train station to the other side, take a right and the ATS bus station will be on your left. I bought a ticket going to Naples at 1730 that evening, giving me 2 hours of time to kill. We went in search of another place with WiFi and ended up finding the VERONERO Caffe. Such an amazing and chic cafe that served the best smoothies and extravagant drinks for such great prices. When we walked in there were people in business suits standing at the counter looking posh while drinking their espressos. I bought a huge Mango Berry smoothie for 4 Euros. The WiFi didn’t work very well in the seating area, so we had to stand up front near the register in order to get internet. Alex and I wrote down a couple of places to stay and once we were done it was time for me to head to the bus station. I had a great time schlepping it with Alex and hopefully will see her next summer.
The bus station in Bari, Italy
Travel In My Footsteps 