This ferry ride was a little different from the one we took from Venice to Patras. It did not have a deck like we had to sleep on before. Instead there was a room where you could sit or lie down on the floor. Once again, the boat was filled with a bunch of Greek people dancing around and having a good ol’ time. There was a pool as well, and also a few bars which served some delicious stale pizzas and over priced beer. I jumped on it right away, but not for the pizza, I was still craving the gyros. I can’t get enough of those things. How can you go wrong, lamb, tomato, lettuce, and tzatzikii! It is the best combination in the world! Ramsey is very good at conserving his cash but Lindsey was ready to dive in with me, and it is a good thing she did. While the other guys were of running around during or meal, we decided to bring our dishes up to the bar after our meal to do the bartender a favor. He thought that this was such a nice gesture on our part that he decided to throw in a free dessert for us!! This is was amazing! It was a chocolate pastry covered in a chocolate shell and filed with some sort of raspberry jam. So so good. We went to rub it in the faces of our travel mates that we got hooked up fat with some yummy treats. We were so excited! We felt that we had to test our luck some more and decided to hit up the casino on board playing the roulette slots. We were making a killing! We started with five euro and after about an hour we were up to fifty! I couldn’t believe it. I am not much for gambling but we were in the zone. To quote Janwillem van de Wetering: “Greed is a fat demon with a small mouth and whatever you feed it is never enough.” We basically ended up losing it all and then lost ten more Euros. I am never gambling again.
We woke up underneath the chairs in the 'I do not have enough money to stay in a cabin' room and headed ourselves towards the rear of the boat. We got off in the port of Bari on thought we would be able to get on the train we had originally plane don, no problem. Luck, once again, was not on our side. We had to wait for the next train because ours was booked. This gave us a few hours of quality time in Bari. Mainly, we sent our time in an internet café catching up on emails and Skyping our loved ones. I went to a book store just down the street from the internet café to find something new and mind-cleansing. I stumbled upon a David Sedaris book titled “When You Are Engulfed in Flames”. I read one passage was convinced that this was the right book for me. We also hit up the McD’s for some more cheap fuel and then did a quick walk around of Bari and then waited to board our train. We didn’t leave Bari until about 10 p.m. that evening.
The night train took us to the city of Villa San Giovanni where we boarded another ferry to get to the island of Sicily. The ferry disembarked in the city of Messina where we were in another predicament as to where exactly in Sicily we wanted to go. We seemed to have this problem quite a bit. We would never make an agenda until we actually showed up at our destination. We decided to go to Siracusa. Yet another train ride but, whatever. We were still in our travel pants at this point. Might as well keep on cruising.
We arrived in Siracusa that evening and once again had no agenda. The hostel we wanted to stay at was clearly out of commission. The windows were boarded up and the door was not n too good of condition. The hotel front desk lady across the street confirmed the condemnation of the premises and said we could find a B&B nearby. We did. It was called Tony’s B&B and was run by a woman who did not speak hardly any English but luckily she had a daughter who could interpret for us. It was €17. Not too bad, but she gave us a discount which meant we did not get any breakfast. Oh well. We took a walk to a grocery store and then strolled along the coastline until we found a good place to sit and have our dinner. It was next to a really cool looking park with a bunch of luscious tees and other shrubbery and flora. We watched the sunset and had a liter of real cheap Sicilian vino and discussed the things that annoyed us most about each other. This was a first but it was a great way to get all of the cards out on the table without killing each other. Controlled emotional ventilation. By the time we had blown off all of our steam and consume our vino, it was well past dusk. We decided to head back to the hostel to get some well deserved rest. We were a little tipsy and had a little trouble but we made it just fine and were off to bed.
The next day, we decided to split up again since it cost money to get into the Neapolis and nobody wanted to pay to get in except for me. We decided to meet back up at Tony’s B&B later since we left our things there and then the gang went off to find a proper beach. I am extremely happy I stayed behind. The Neapolis was amazing. My favorite part was the massive caves that were tucked away in the hillsides. The Ear of Dionysius was huge! The amphitheater was neat as well. There were not many tourists around and I was able to go right to ground floor, but not on ground floor. They were setting up a backdrop for an upcoming event which I would haven able to see.
After the Neapolis, I was off to find something else that would catch my eye just right. The most obvious thing did which as the Sanctuary Madonna della Lacrime. This place was a pleasant surprise. The giant conical structured church had the ruins of the older church in the base and the main chapel was a few floors above. The legend says that one morning, on 29 August 1953, a small plaster image of the Virgin Mary in the house of Angelo Iannuso and Antonina Giusto suddenly began to shed tears. The following days, on 30 and 31 August and on 1 September, tears were seen again on the Virgin’s face. Believe it or not, it is a good story. Plus, the church itself was very impressive. I was able to catch half of a Sicilian mass that was going on. I felt much more cleansed afterwards than I had felt in a while.
The next stop was a park where I was accompanied by a random golden retriever. She just came and sat by me on a bench without hesitation. She never looked at me though. She just sat in silence while I had an orange and filtered through thoughts for a while. I went and got some groceries afterwards and then waited for the gang back at the B&B. We got our stuff and headed back to the train station to catch our train to Pisa. We met an extremely nice Sicilian girl who I can’t remember the name of and an obnoxiously hilarious little boy named Isaac. He kept stealing the seats in our cabin and counting out the train cars in Italian. The girl was nice enough to buy me a granita on our ferry back to Italy. It was so delicious and lemony. It was a nice treat before a terrible night’s sleep on another train through the middle of the night. Messina to Roma. Our stay in Pisa wasn’t going to be long but I couldn’t wait to get there.
I was still pretty groggy upon our arrival to Pisa. I can never sleep on those darn trains for a few reasons: Even at night I want to stare out the window and enjoy the scenery, I’m usually too excited for our next destination, and the seats are about as comfortable as a back message from a spastic 550 pound temperamental gorilla named crush. Anyways, we found some more lockers to put our stuff in, grabbed a map from the info box at the train station and then started walking around the city. The fact that it was raining didn’t really help out in the morale department. Being wet and tired makes it a little difficult to get yourself all jacked up for an 836 year old disfigured pile of marble, I’m not gonna lie. Though once we had the tower in our sites, it was hard not to be impressed. This thing that I have seen so many pictures of was finally a victim of my own viewing pleasure. In the rain, I stood on that ground before the tower turned to the camera, smiled, and performed a pose that has been done by so many others before my time.
