Gli Archi Acqui Terme

As it turns out, filling that day wasn't so much of a problem.... we tootled out of town, found a beach, wandered about & looked at the boats; tootled back, found somewhere to eat, had a chat with a few Brits and - hey presto! - before you knew it, time for bed! But the one on board was a bit more of a challenge... all 13 hours of it! BIG ...

So I'm on a 4 hour train ride to Bari, followed by a 6 hour wait for the ferry, which goes overnight to Dubrovnik. Bari being devoid of anything to do, let alone write about, I'll instead make this post a book review (I'll backfill Rome when I get to Danilo's brother's place in Belgrade).

I'm not as much of a bookworm as my eldest sister Diana is (or was, at any rate - with 2 sons I reckon she doesn't get ...

... and they paid up to the tune of 30 Euro ($60).

The rest of the trip was pretty un eventful, oh but we did manage to hit another jackpot on the boat. You may recall we made a purchase of some 16 cases of beer, which we are having big issues finding ice to cool down, well while at the bar last night we may have noticed a motherload of an ice stash. So before disembarking, we made sure we kindly asked the bar staff if they could give us some ice. Now we ...

After a short amount of time in Pompei we hopped on a train to Bari. We took an overnight ferry to Croatia. We just about missed the boat because our train was late. So we did what you should never do, we accepted a cab ride from a random at the station claiming to be a taxi. Generally it's safe, but I still never think its good to get ...

... around 3.30pm, carried our bags accross and up the elevators to the reception. We got our swipe card and not escorted but told to go a floor up to our cabin. The cabin was small and SMELLED SO BAD it was disgusting. As Dave would say, it smelled like ass. Horrid and stinky were were not happy, as you opened the bathroom the smell got worse. There was an inch or 2 of water on the floor and the bin had remenants of being used (ie ...

The most surprising thing I found before leaving England was that no one even know where Basilicata was! Even friends who thought they knew Italy well weren't aware of Basilicata as its not very well known. On the plane from Stansted, most of the English people we spoke were going on holiday to visit family or friends and most were staying in Puglia, not Basilicata.


If you're planning to visit Basilicata, you will defintely ...

... cafe, we couldn't get any service. We kept getting cut in line and the register people would help us. Apparently they don't like tourists here...so, no coffee.

Took a train from Napoli to Caserta. In caserta I finally got a coffee, and all it was was this tiny little shot glass with the most potent coffee I've ever had...pretty tasty though. We met some people here who ...

My friends and I stayed at this bed and breakfast in Mola just south of Bari. It was the best yet. Large old English style accomodations, we stayed in an apartment with 2 bedrooms and 1 bath, large veranda overlooking the main street. It even had a full kitchen. The breakfast was the best we have experienced. It is worth the trip just for the accomodations. A nice beach area with breath taking views is just 10 minutes south in Polignano.

A must see for those off the tourist path.

This is where Pietro, an old Italian guy, jumped into Bruce and navigated us to the trulli. He saved us from a traffic jam in the narrow streets of Puglia.

Pete was also called Pietro while in Italy. :-)

Trullo comes from the Greek word, "tholos" – meaning “dome”. See the pictures of the wee houses.

We found the Belvedere pub here too - also the name of our local in Aus – meaning “beautiful view”. It was beautiful.

... a stolen camera for 50 Euros and ended up with a nice case filled with cardboard and weights. I dont really want to get into it but we felt like idiots and Ill leave it at that. We took the train from Naples to Bari and ended up getting to Bari one hour too late to get on our boat to Greece. Of course, it took us 2 hours to figure out that no boats left that night due to the inefficiencies inherent to any transportation system in ...