Rome to Athens
Flynn and I were left to get the car fixed and onto Athens to meet the girls in 3 days.
The guys at the garage were super friendly with lots of cheek pinching for Flynn and coffee and cake for dad before driving us to the station so we could kill time in town.
Suddenly everything got twice as hard to work out with just me to do it. Trying to get a train ticket was difficult enough! But we managed to make our way into Rome and back. Flynn was patient enough to suffer the long line to get into St Peters but apart from that we just walked about and ate pizza and gelato.
We got back to the VW garage at 5pm to find a bright and shining Dotty all fixed up and ready to go. Too late to hit the road we went back to our campsite and packed up the annex ready for an early start.
The morning traffic on Rome's ring road was like a F1 race without rules. But once we we'd found our exit it settled into just crazy overtaking at stupid speeds. We had a 6pm ferry to catch in Brindisi so we took advantage on Dotty's new turbo and the autostrada and drove like the locals, making just one stop for lunch. Charlene (our satnav) as usual threw in a curve ball by taking us via so B roads just to make sure we got a little roadside sight seeing in.
The south of Italy is so different from the north. It just feels more.....relaxed? Brindisi was closed for lunch when we got there. I needed an internet cafe to transfer some funds so we cooled out heels at the train station carpark waiting for somewhere to open. Then at 4pm like magic the whole town came to life.
The ferry terminal was packed with trucks and the odd car here and there. After driving around the docks feeling a bit lost we found what looked like our ferry. A very haphazard loading compared to the efficient Scandinavian ferries. The local fuzz took and interest in Dotty and we had our first shakedown with paperwork and passports thoroughly inspected by what I think was a very bored policeman.
After finally getting the nod, we drove into the belly of our home for the next 18 hours. There was nothing glamorous about this boat. It was like a floating truck stop with a 10ft by 10ft casino, a canteen and a bar. Just me and Flynn and 100 hairy Greek truck drivers,
Next day we disembarked just after lunch at Patras, 3 hours drive from Athens. I thought the Italian roads were a challenge. In Greece there seems to be a 3 lane rule on the 2 lane roads. You drive with 2 wheels in the emergency lane. This allows other drivers driving in your direction to pass you at will and at speed as required. The drivers going the other way do the same. Thus you have one way in each direction and one lane in the middle going both directions, making for some hair raising driving. But it seems to work. We arrive in Athens in one piece with new driving skills and somehow I remember my way enough to find the girls and our digs for the next 2 days.
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