Leon D'Oro Hotel 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 ...

... to hire a car! We had decided to travel around the region rather than staying in one place, so we could really get a feel for what it was like. The further we drove from Bari and the Puglia border, the higher we rose, the wilder and more beautiful the scenery became. Basilicata is the most mountainous as well as the least known region of southern Italy. We found out before we came that tourism is not big in Basilicata, although Italians ...

... 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.

... was great lying in bed watching them, they were in such good condition - better than most of the horses in captivity we've seen! We saw a few eagles one of which showed us a gorgeous meadow park up. Which was perfect except for the amount of flies. There were apparently wolves, snakes, wild cats, boars and ginormous mosquito's. The weather is definitely hotting up. I made the most of the space to do a few repairs..hopefully no more leaks now. We accidentally fell out of the park and into ...

Just passing through. I'd met some girls in a bar in Athens from Bari the year before. After getting along like a house on fire, it took 20 minutes to realise they were 16 and 17, on a school trip and the balding guy at the end of the table was the teacher. I kept a low profile in Bari.

... out in the park, and were almost run down by numerous men on tiny scooters. I have heard bad things about Bari, but we had a great time, and never felt unsafe. That afternoon, we boarded our second ferry on Aguodimos Lines. Holy ****! We couldn't believe how nice it was in comparison. It was like being on a cruise ship. We had airplane seats on this one, but as the lounge was pretty empty we were able to stretch out on several seats and get some solid sleep. The ...

... as the pizzas here as the supposedly the best. A minute after leaving the train station I decided I didn't like the look or feel of this city. It is feral. So ten minutes after walking around, I returned to the station and ate some pizza at a bar there. It was okay and much safer than being in Naples!! Caught the train to Caserta, waited for a bit and then another train to Bari. Once I got to ...