This is about Monday- Halloween. Don’t what day I said yesterday was about, but it was probably wrong. Yesterday was Sunday 30/10.
Last night was a nightmare of shivers and chattering teeth and some sort of brain fog which kept me glued to the bed and prevented me from thinking. Sensibly, logically , or at all. T found me an additional duvet from an upper bunk.
It felt as though I was up every half hour. And then, by the middle of the night, I was quite hot.
The shivers returned and so it went on.
I staggered with little H up the 3 flights of stairs, on to deck around 07.30, Greek time, and for once, she did everything I hoped for, quite quickly. On a boat too! Bonus ! Did not need to worry about her!
I did not / could not move for most of the rest of the day, until we were tipped out to deck 10 around 18.00 greek time. The car was on Lower G 1. Nice difference that!
We scrambled into a lift to get us down there and got held up in very stuffy closed conditions beside the most inconsiderate German couple ever. They had a huge dog and were trying to tell me to keep H out of their dog’s way. ‘where would you like me to put her?’ I enquired. (There was not anywhere for H apart from where she was, and she takes up very little space.) There came no answer from this very unpleasant couple. I asked very politely if they could move their bags nearer the door to free up some space. But the woman just ignored me. There was space for about 3 people in front of her bags by the door to the car deck. Some nice Greeks behind me just winked. In the meantime, I exchanged eyeball looks with the very unpleasant bloke. I was not going to look away.
He was a bully.
Dripping with sweat, from heat or the Lurgy, we finally exited that congested area. And eventually found the car. And the paracetamol. Second time lucky.
If their dog is unreliable, perhaps it should not be in a confined space with small children and other dogs. I refrained from pointing this out.
It took a while for them to release us from the hell hole that was G1. Very slowly, we managed to escape the dreadful roads that Ancona has put together to help vehicles exit the port. They are dangerous, they make you queue, by a silly and dangerous traffic light and surfaces are terrible. At the traffic light, vehicles cut across you from several (3) directions and these other directions are not under any traffic light control. The authorities should be embarrassed.
Once Ancona was behind us, the journey was finally fast except the tolls… and thereby hangs another tale.
I asked T if he wanted to hand over toll paying to me before we had a row about it… ’What are you talking about?’ He asked. Well, had his memory withstood the test of 5 minutes, he would have known. His best expletives came out, mostly directed at me.
For the tolls, the Greek motorways always have a couple of booths manned by real people who want real money. This works well for us.
The Italians have no such thing. Their tolls only really work when someone, with good eyesight, and who can read and understand Italian, and understand the lights that flash at you, can manage to get the ticket and the money (notes) into the correct slots. For T this is an impossibility. And the bank cards are going to remain hidden and particularly out of use, after the incident of ’the great credit card debacle’ on the way out to Greece.
As for French motorways … well I may have recently found our automatic reader.
It was of great relief to arrive at Baia Flaminia. Comfy room, places to walk H tomorrow. Just a gentle stroll this evening. Restaurants round the corner. I still was not hungry but I thought T deserved a meal after 24 hours without one.
T had a dish of prawns and squid, whilst sphaghetti vongole was just the job for me.
And that was that. Long and tricky day.
Thought for the Day
Leave a Reply