Typing this on a ferry... The water is super choppy and I'm not feeling too hot. But I have 5 more hours to kill until we reach santorini. Backtracking a few days... Naples? Did I already write about naples? Might have. We stayed in a hostel that was supposed to have air conditioning. Liars. We mostly just wandered around Naples and looks at stuff. I had been warned that Naples is dirty, but I guess I just expected a Cincinnati level of nastiness. Nope. Giant would be gorgeous buildings covered in graffiti and garbage is a little sadder looking than regular buildings covered in garbage and graffiti.
Naples had excellent pizza. You can buy the pizza from vendors on the street. One euro for a twelve ish inch pizza folded up. When I get home I am definitely going to call up dominos and request that they fold my pizza before they give it to me. So great. Also got some delicious gelato. We would wander around for a little bit then come back to the hostel to get out of the sun. They had an impressive DVD collection, and the first season of prison break. Success! People probably thought we were freaks sitting inside watching prison break for hours. After so many hours outside in the 100 degree heat, you can't really stand it anymore.
Sme nice Italian people helped us figure out the bus so that we could get to the hostel. It is interesting to see in each city how strict the bus ticket rules are. You get a ticket and have to validate it in a little box. In Naples we never bought bus tickets. Didn't see anyone validating theirs so we just went with the crowd. In sorrento everyone validates their tickets. Sme buses have a bonus guy checking tickets. In the states it seems you cant even get on the bus without putting in coins or your ticket, you could never just hop on and not pay.
Sorrento was a great town. Cute little shops and gelato places to the max. We stayed in a campground. We had one of the "green cabins" which was a mini house on wheels I think. Two beds, queen and twin. Communal bathrooms and showers. There was a restaurant, shop, bar, pool and beach. The beach was a hike though and not very big so we hung out at the pool. I love pools. I get really excited when there are pools at the places we go to because any pools at home or school, I guard at which makes it weird to go swim at them later.
Sorrento was pretty buggy, so we bought some mosquito coils, you light them like incense, we had one on the windowsill in the room. Woke up feeling like we smoked 10 packs of cigarettes, not that I have done this, just guessing. So we reevaluated and bought citronella candela for the windows and put the coil on a table outside. That worked out better. Not quite so lung cancery.
We took a bus to amalfi from sorrento. The drive was really pretty. We were planning on visiting positano as well as amalfi, but the bus on the way back didn't stop there. The bus back to sorrento was horrible. You pack as many people as possible on to the bus, sitting and standing, we were standing for the two hour journey. Really shaky journey, tight winding turns, terrified that the bus is going over the edge of the cliff. Joy.
The next day we went to Pompeii. I dont know why I didn't realize they excavated the whole thing. I expected more things covered in lava rock and that we would have to guess what they were. Nope. You could see rooms and counters and things. Bit of a let down for me. The giant stadium ring thing was cool. The rock covered bodies were sad though. Not my favorite place, but now I can check it off my list of important things I have seen/ old buildings I have touched.
We took the train to Naples and got on another train to Bari. From there we took a bus to the port and got our ferry tickets. Waited around for a couple hours, then boarded the ferry at 5. Ferry took off around 8 and we arrived in patras, Greece around 12:30 or 1:00 pm. Such a long ferry. We were deck passengers, which essentially means you sleep outside on the floor. It was okay though. I slept in my tiger suit. So warm and comfortable. Got some weird looks from people when walked to use the bathroom... Oh well. Bet they weren't as comfortable as me. From patras we took a 3 or 4 hour bus to Athens. Walked to our hostel. It was alright for one night, but we are going to book a different place for the last few days before our flight out. The showers had those handheld sprayer things and no wall mount. So tricky to wash your hair.
Got up today and took a bus to the ferry port. We set our backpacks down in the luggage section of the bus. About 15 minutes in to the trip some guy got off at a different stop and took Amy's bag with him. She got off and started yelling the it was her bag and he just dropped it and walked quickly away. Probably didn't realize how heavy it would be, or that someone would notice he took it. Joke would have been on him though if he got somewhere and opened it to find piles of dirty clothes and literally nothing valuable.
Now we are on an 8 hour ferry to santorini, one of the islands. We are staying there for a week. Plan on doing plenty of beaching. Might rent four wheelers and drive around the island. We have to take two more ferries, one between santorini and Mykonos, hopefully that ferry exists, and another to get back to Athens. Then I think that may be enough ferries to last the rest of my life. Not sure why Derrick on Greys anatomy likes ferry boats so much. This ferry didn't have any more room in economy class so we had to buy first class tickets. Not really that swank for first class. Just fewer people so it feels like there is more room. The price ended up being a few euro cheaper than the other ferries because this is not a high speed ferry.
I'll post this once we have Internet. Might need to buy a little wifi on the ferry to check and see if the people from the santorini hostel are going to meet us at the port. They have a free shuttle. Just not sure if it is going today.
Also...... Forgot how difficult the Greek language is. Different letters! The other languages we have dealt with all used the same letters so at least something was familiar. No so here. But everyone has been really nice, so it's okay.
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