Farewell Greece, we will see you soon ! 

Paloma is all at sea, literally! – our sleepyspot for tonight is the opendeck on the SuperfastI, as we travel from Patras to Bari.

Our journey to the port, was a simple affair, as we had left ourselves a short 45 minute drive, so off we set, with a quick stop to brim the gas tanks just in case the rumours of difficulties buying LPG in Italy are ture.

The port at Patras is a new modern affair, poping in to check in was simple and quick, as was the shopping experience in the terminal building ( it’s not got any) 

So we are waiting in Paloma, watching the illegals trying to climb the fences, breaking into the lorries and generally staying clear of the gun toting police man.

A slight unnerving experience when they try to enter the tralier 5 feet  from us, only to have a police scooter rider come hurtling up…..

Needless to say we moved out of the lorry parking and joined the cue to go portside…..

The ferry journey from Greece last night was as close to perfect as it gets. 

We only ventured from our balcony on the open car deck to have a look around the ship, checking out the bar,shop and Casino and all the passenger decks above us, 

Ok I say balcony, really we just got the deck chairs out and squeezed up against the rails with our Lidls €2 red…..

Encountering the only slight tiny problem , our magnetic cards weren’t encoded to allow us back in to our section.

Company-issued red-tunic man at reception to the rescue, rather like it’s an everyday occurrence he hands me more cards out of the pile !

Camping on Board worked perfectly for us. It meant we could sleep in our own bed, didn’t have to put Bently in kennels or pay a small fortune for him to go in a cabin, we could eat our own food, as long as we didn’t use gas, thanks MrD thermal cooker and once the morning came we could look out of the window at an incredible sea-scape. 

Despite being woken at some ungodly hour by the ship docking at Igoumenitsa and almost all the spare space being filled by lorries piling on, come 7am when are alarm was set for (ah we forgot that mobiles change time on their own, so our 7am was really 8am Italian time ) we were both well rested. 

Come 11am  (over an hour late)  the ferry docked, we unhooked ourselves from the power and waited and waited eventually we were allowed off. 

Thankfully no formalities, straight out from the port and into a lorry heaven, not a sign in sight, but  fortunately we had fellow travellers to follow out the dock.

And give us a tiny taste of Italy !

Obviously, we’d recommend Camping on Board to anyone from the experience we had. It’s fair to say that we both fell head over heals for Greece and can’t believe that we spent six weeks here and saw next to nothing, it has gone straight to the top of must return places……

Paul.