La Rosa Blu Bari

... shouldn't have taken the first agent's word for it. Seemed to be ships sailing at all hours - must surely have been one with space on it overnight? Definitely the only way to do this route.However, we get by: but I wouldn't recommend Ventourist line: cheap, for sure; but tacky -very, very tacky!Another night in an anonymous port.

... be equally funny, but you get the feeling he's a bit of a nutter. Danny feels a bit more like a put-opon sap, the kind of character Steve Carrell would play.

Friends Like These is the non-fictional account of how Danny, upon coming across an old address book of his 12 best friends growing up, searches across the UK and eventually around the world to find and meet up with them face to face before his 30th ...

... Dan got a map of Pompeii and we saw like 1/16 of the ruin! I was dissapointed we couldn't see more but Enzo did say that it would take 2 days to see all of the ruin. The bus ride from Pompeii to Bari was a few hours, we stop for a snack/lunch/toilet break after a few hours. Dan and I had a calzone and a drink, we bought some onion pretzels, pepsi and paprika italian pringles for munchies on the ferry.
We made the ferry on time ...

... typically Italian, it was little surprise to find that this was once part of ancient Magna Graecia; in fact you are more likely to stumble upon Greek temples than you are Roman ruins. Known in Italy as a land of myth and fable, this little region was clearly full of surprises.

Whenever I think back to the first day in Basilicata, images of mountains, beautiful scenery and sunny skies fill my thoughts - a lovely start to the holiday!

... are only a small number of sleeping cabins that have to be booked way in advance and cost a lot of money. So like a lot of other people our ticket was "deck space". Meaning we could find a piece of floor somewhere and sleep. It turned out to be a pretty uncomfortable nights rest tossing and turning with about 200 other people all crammed into every nook and cranny of the boat.

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.

... Italian wedding in a very impressive cathedral. Had pizza in a lovely restaurant and walked along the seafront. We then ate pizza again for dinner and this time it was a much more authentic experience. We headed away from the tourist ridden old town into some side streets and ate in a little restaurant where no one spoke English. We got by with Dave's little European phrase book, Dave even figured out how to ask if he could see the pizza oven which ...

... gave us free deck passage but we had to pay extra for a cabin. Considering it was a 15.5 hour trip that was high on our priority list. We upgraded once onboard and asked to pay with a credit card. The chief purser said that he could not take the card because the machine was not connected and did not work on board. We knew this was a lie because the ticket agent had said we could use credit card. I told him to write down the number and put it in ...

... Ciro Marina Ciro Marina is a small town on the southern coast that looks out to the Ionian Sea. The town itself is nothing too spectacular, but its main attraction - the beach - is beautiful, so I spent a very peaceful and relaxing afternoon there snoozing in the sun. Thursday 17th May - Amalfi Coast (Sorrento) The weather cooled down a bit on Thursday so the 5&1/2 hour drive north to Sorrento wasn't too bad other than some road works to ...

... height of the storm (which lasted about 20 minutes) it dropped to 15° and just as quickly climbed back to 33°. We sustained a little damage to the turbo intercooler grill but nothing major. We arrived at the dock at 7:30pm to see the ferry was almost completely loaded. Lou, Lynn and I rushed to the office to try to get tickets for this ferry while Des stayed with the cars. The chick at the desk was most helpful and even offered to mail my 6 post cards for me. She also asked ...