marksabout

I’m now in Dubrovnik after an exhausting two days travelling on ferries packed to capacity. I made the most of touristy Corfu by hiring a car and doing a beach crawl – I managed to see a lot of the Island in a day before embarking on my first ferry for an overnight trip to Brindisi. I was greeted in Brindisi by a torrential thunderstorm followed by some extremely humid weather.

Caution: Don't drive into the water, or you'll have driven into the water.

After gathering my bearings, I found the train station and caught a Eurostar to Bari, an equally bland city. Had I not been to nicer parts of Italy previously, I’d be unable to recommend travelling there based on my brief impressions of these two Southern port towns. Having said that, I stumbled across a pretty amazing restaurant in Bari that killed about 3 hours and gave me time to sample a cross section of Italian fare – delicious!

After less than 12 hours in Italy, it was time to leave, a process made extremely difficult by an apparent lack of organisational skills at the Bari port. 8 boats left that evening, queueing was unorganised and drew a lot of shouting from security guards. It looked like a one-off disaster that had occured due to an unforseen number of boats departing. I was to find out later from other users of the Bari port that this goes on every evening. The Italians have a lot to learn from the Greeks when it comes to ferry transport.

I arrived in Dubrovnik and was greeted by one of many women offerning their spare bedrooms as accommodation. I was travelling with an Irish girl, Helen at the time and we decided to accept the room offered as it was a “5 minute walk to the old town.” The room turned out to be the woman’s loungeroom and the two beds had miraculously become one sofa bed. We stayed anyway, and had a pretty good night’s sleep. As it was a house, we were sharing with the owner, and another guest. Helen took the liberty to use the washing machine. When the woman came home from work, she heard the washing machine and had a bit of a spat at Helen, and told her it would be 50kuna (7 euro) for the washing. Helen agreed to pay.

That night, the other guest came home while we were in bed, and left the front door unlocked and the veranda light on. When I woke up this morning, the woman said “no more my house. I refund you 20 euro (we’d already paid 30 for the second night) because I take 10 for washing.” I looked dumbly at the woman, and she said “I wake up, doors open, light on veranda, washing machine, no more my house. You can leave by 8 (it was 7:30).” After the initial shock, I woke Helen, and we decided there was no reasoning with the woman, and we we demanded the full 30 euro back from her and left before 8.