Freakishly Happy

The next day we packed up our things and left the hotel at a relatively decent hour (meaning escaping JUST before check out time ;-) ) and headed to the train station. We boarded a train to a tiny coastal Greek town called Patras We met up with a young Canadian couple who were also touring in first class. We all decided to move to the dining car together. The train ride was absolutely spectacular with the snow capped mountains, the vineyards that we in bloom, and not to mention the surf crashing up practically over the side of the train once we neared to ocean. We swapped travel tips with the couple and had an enjoyable lunch of leftovers from the night before.

We arrived in Patras and had a few hours to kill before our boat to Italy. We walked around the town, sat in a park for a long while and watched two strange older men inspect the park benches, and then went to find some food for the train. This is quite a feat, because in Greece everything pretty much closes down at 2 o’clock, and it stays closed for the rest of the day. We were able to find an open bakery and an open convenience store (how convenient) and bought ourselves some provisions for the night. Then we headed to the boating docks. We got our tickets which were an AMAZING deal. With our Eurail tickets, a bed in a male or female dorm was only 13 Euro apiece for a 20 hour journey! The tickets would have been completely free, but due to the higher price of gas, a 13 E tax was imposed, but still not too shabby.
We had to wait for a while to board, so we sat in the embarking area and played Sudoku for about an hour (earlier we picked up a Greek version. I think so far we have Sudoku from 3 or 4 different countries).

After we’d completely numbed our brains we decided to try to board. We went to the docks, found our ship and boarded with no problem. We got our room keys, and dropped our stuff in storage lockers outside of our room and then went out on deck to watch the scenery and the sunset with a huge bowl of fresh strawberries that we bought from the cafeteria. I was really silly though and completely missed the sunset, because I went back in for my jacket, and then I locked my keys in the locker and had to get a spare from the front desk yada yadda yadda, so when I got back outside everything was grey and darkish.

This shipping experience was completely different than our first one. It seemed as though there were more people working on the ship than actual passengers. It was just us and a handful of Asian tourists, which was really nice. I ordered dinner, and John and I ate that along with the rest of the leftovers from the Greek restaurant. Then we went and spoke to the front desk people and told them that there were no other people in either of our dorm rooms, and asked if it’d be ok if we bunked together. They said that as we were in the middle of the sea, and the likelihood of other guests boarding was pretty slim, that it’d be okay if John came and stayed with me.

We got all of our stuff moved, and grabbed the laptop and found a big cozy couch and watched a couple of movies, went to the video arcade room and played some ____________ and ate tiramisu and chocolate cake from the deli. All before bedtime ;-)

The next morning John worked on his dissertation and I took a nap and played Sudoku before we arrived in the port town of Ancona. When we arrived we hopped on a crowded bus that took us to the train station and boarded a train for Bologna. We met a nice Professor on board who told us all about the Italian university system, and gave us some tips on where to stay and eat in Bologna. Once arriving in Bologna, we decided that we’d call our hostel in Florence and see if they could squeeze us in for the night, and they thankfully they could. We hopped on a train south.

While on board I got my finger wedged between a sliding glass door an the wall which hurt like nothin’ else, we played Sudoku and had a broken discussion in English/Italian/German/Hungarian with a Hungarian man who had just moved to Prague a few months before

We got to the train station and set out to find our hotel. It was dark, and an hour after the hostel owner expected us. I told her what time we were leaving and she assumed the time that we’d get there. We had a general idea of where the hostel was but it still took us a while to find it. Florence was bustling even at night time. Students and bar crawlers all out wandering the town. We found the hostel and were let in to the immense wooden door by some students from Minnesota who were also staying there. We hoofed up the 6+ flights of stairs with all of our gear on, only to find the owner wasn’t there. We waited for a few minutes before dragging our exhausted bodies and all of our gear back down the stairs to search for a pay phone.

We found the pay phone right in front of the building. It was smashed to bits. I began to get panicky and cranky, as we set off further from our destination. About a block down we were approached by a nice guy from New Jersey (they do exist!) who offered us the use of his mobile phone for no charge. He said he’d been in many similar situations, and knew the look of desperation when he saw it. We called the hostel owner and within 10 minutes we were cozy and in our bedroom, eating a stale baguette and goat cheese left over from our trip from Greece.