Day 0 – The Epic Journey Continued

After a fairly restless night (the beds weren’t too bad, although the “sheets” the train company provided were somewhat unusual!) we arrived in Milan Central just before 6am.

Another error became evident – we had expected to get breakfast at Milan Central station – the only problem was there was 1 small kiosk open which had an incredibly long queue – so we ended up with more fruit pastilles for breakfast!

We found our seats and settled down to read more Harry Potter - The Deathly Hallows (or Elaine and Claire did – Richard had to settle for “Tescopoly” as the others are making him wait for one of them to finish before he can read their copy)! We did try to get a slightly healthier breakfast from the buffet car, unfortunately it was closed for the whole journey! But, a trolley did eventually reach us and so we had some slightly dodgy cheese & ham rolls which worryingly had a shelf life of at least 10 days…

The journey to Brindisi (near the bottom of the heel of Italy) took 9 hours and entailed Elaine losing 3 games of Yahtzee (2 to Claire and 1 to Richard) and all of us consuming 1 bag of fruit pastilles, 1 bag of strawberry sours, a dodgy roll each and a bag of maltesers! We decided that as the fruit sweets contained ‘real fruit juices’ they would count as one of our ‘5-a-day’!!! Claire who is a doctor confirmed this, so it must be true… It rained heavily most of the way down Italy so it was really quite like being at home!

Eventually we arrived at Brindisi and successfully got off the train – this was a little stressful as the announcements which had begun in English as well as Italian had become Italian only, so we weren’t really sure when Brindisi was nearby! Point to note for anyone doing this journey – take a list of stations or a map with you so you know exactly where you are!

So the one part of the journey we all seemed to forget to research and plan was how to get from Brindisi train station to the ferry port! So we simply walked in the direction of the sea (basically, directly opposite the exit from the train station, then keep walking in a straight line) – this seemed to work, and we found some occasional (but not very large) signposts to Greece!

With 7 hours to kill in Brindisi we thought we would treat our bodies to a decent meal – although given our recent culinary delights we agreed we’d settle for any kind of meal! You would think this would be a simple thing to do in Italy – but unfortunately not! We found lots of bars – all of just seemed to sell beer and ice-cream... We thought ice cream by itself might be pushing the sugar levels a little high, so we managed to find a bar which sold bits of greasy pizza as well, and so our evening meal consisted of a small piece of pizza – but we caved in and had an ice-cream as well!

Fortunately we were accosted by some Australians who were looking for the shuttle to the ferry – which we didn’t know existed. After working out that we were getting a later ferry than them, we found out that there is a shuttle to the ferry which runs ‘every now and then’.

We found the shuttle stop (cunningly marked by a green clock and an advert for a sex shop – although the shop we asked for directions only referred to the clock, which was far less obvious!) and were told by a local that the next bus would arrive in 10 minutes – about 45 minutes later it turned up and we travelled the 5 miles to the ferry port. Considering we were going to try and walk this – we were glad we didn’t!

After a brief wait in the waiting area (again, not very much in the way of proper food…) we were allowed to board the ferry and quickly managed to find our room – much more luxurious than the train! We went for the slightly more expensive option of a 4-berth cabin to ourselves – very comfortable and with on-suite toilet and shower (albeit a slightly leaky shower). We thought about getting some proper food, but since the restaurant was closed we couldn’t! (Apparently it opens some time after departure, but since we were asleep before we left port we had no chance of getting a meal!) So, after a couple of drinks in the bar and a quick cheese pasty we retired to our cabin and quickly managed to fall asleep – in fact, none of us noticed the boat leaving port!