Portici to Bari Italy

           The hostel Fabric was so nice we almost decided to stay another day. But Carolyn and I were both itching to see Greece so we decided to say goodbye to Naples and head toward the opposite coast of Bari to catch a ferry to Patras the Grecian port. The only glitch in our schedule was the train arrived about an hour before the ferry was scheduled to leave. Prices in Bari were really expensive when we looked for them online and it would be hard to check availability once we arrived due to the lack of wifi spots in Italy. Unfortunately, Italy hasn’t quite caught up to their Spanish neighbors.

            After arriving on the train we headed to the bus station just across the piazza and bought a ticket to take the #20 barred train to the port where we were hoping to catch a ferry to Patras, Greece. We noticed some other backpackers board the bus as well that seemed to heading in the same direction. After a brief trip we arrived at the port and went into a large building to see about where we could buy tickets. We talked to several people on the bus and many of them were going to Patras as well. We made friends with a young married couple from Australia, both pierced and tattooed. Their names were David and Deanne. David was an Australian BMX rider and Deanne (called “D”) was raised in France and Los Angeles so she had dual citizenship. We decided to travel with them for a while and we all bought our tickets to Patras. Deanne had already booked a hostel in the center of Athens that had great reviews, so we just booked a stay along with them.

            We thought the ferry was leaving at 3:30 p.m. (like we read on the site) but instead it was leaving at 8 p.m. It was a great moment to finally be early for something because we didn’t want to stay in Bari for the night. We sat around and visited and waited for a couple of hours until the ferry docked and we could board. The ferry line, called SuperFast, was an enormous ferry that looked more like a giant cruise ship than anything else. We were greeted by polite Greek stewards as we boarded the bus and went inside, put our luggage on racks and climbed to the top of the deck so we could watch Italy disappear on the horizon.