Month: September 2018

I really should proof read what I write before I post it but then it wouldn’t be so spontaneous!

We are actually staying in a clean and large apartment in the middle of farmland where we are woken up by the cockerels at a reasonable time!  The sun is shining and the hot water is working but not the cooker, luckily we have all the equipment we need in the van. This is still a very small island and as such quite claustrophobic, we can’t stay here all winter, we’d kill each other, so we are looking at changing our plans in a slightly more organised manner.

Yesterday we went into the old town which is still beautiful and the day before we went to Old Perithia up on the mountain, there are a few more things we haven’t done but not many!  We have to stay here until R has finished his accounts which takes a couple of weeks by which time we should have decided what to do.  Meanwhile a visitor is to arrive to see us in 10 days and I am beside myself with excitement.

There is a hurricane predicted for the next few days and Greece has closed all the schools and battened down its hatches but I don’t think it will come this far up, we have decided to go and sit in Vanley and watch the storm from the hills if it does get here.

I am going to a coffee morning in the afternoon with the local English people today and then a charity quiz this evening.  R won’t come, he’s not a fan of coffee mornings.  Feel a bit like an extra in the Greek equivalent of Benidorm.

 

We have finally got somewhere to live, new tyres and Sunny has had a haircut.

I have to confess that after travelling to so many wonderful places this is not what we were expecting.  I think that we must have been wearing rose tinted spectacles when we planned to stay here for a year.

The idea of something is often not the reality and although this is a beautiful island and the people are lovely it is a bit of a cultural wasteland.  Had we come here for a month in May as originally planned we would have known what we were in for.  However, had we done so we wouldn’t have bought the van and would not have experienced Europe the way we have.

I can communicate and understand when people speak to me, the food is lush and the beaches are wonderful, even the weather is holding out.  But it is so very very boring.  I miss my work far more than I ever though I would, it is seven weeks since we left and clients are contacting me on a daily basis, the family at home are having difficulties and I am not there to help which is really hard.  R found it easier than he thought to wind down after working so hard for so long and is also missing having a purpose.

All this and we’ve not yet been here two weeks, what were we thinking?

I assumed we would find a nice villa with a pool but nothing is available until the end of October, at least nothing that doesn’t use up our entire year’s budget in a week and who needs six bedrooms!  So we will sit here, R will do his month end accounts in a little apartment with no hot water and no cooker.   The last ferry to Italy leaves on the 29th September.  I am very aware that this is a first world problem.

On a positive note there is sunshine and a slight breeze so the washing only took half an hour to dry having been washed in a genuine antique machine.

We have been here for a few days and it appears that there is nowhere for us to live!  We have seen a few places but they are either infested with mosquitos or thousands of pounds a month.  We really should have come in June and found somewhere!

Our lovely Vanley has been waiting for a new tyre since Saturday, it has been ordered from the mainland and should have been here by now.  With the spare tyre as an emergency we actually went out yesterday evening for a dinner with our lovely dancer friend and on the way back we hit a massive pothole.   Another flat tyre!  It was super fun trying to explain to the man in the garage in the middle of the night that we are so very pleased that the new tyre has arrived but that we need to order another one.  This is getting silly.

Sunny had a blood test on Tuesday for a disease caused by sand flies, it was negative so he had a jab this morning, I am waiting for an adverse reaction and trying to keep him calm he is feeling very sorry for himself.

All in all not a very auspicious start to our sojourn in Corfu and if it were not for our wonderful hosts I would be on the first ferry back to Italy.

We arrived and went to meet our friends who had offered to let us camp on their drive, the dogs met and approved of each other and we had a moment to drink coffee and catch up.  We followed them in the van, parked on their drive and spent the next few hours chatting and eating in the sun.  We decided to go to Corfu town and check out the money that the ferry company owe us and look at estate agents.  We started the van and low and behold the broken tyre was completely and utterly flat.  We were going nowhere.  Now in this amazing van is a button that you press in an emergency and they will send a helicopter to fix the problem, except in Greece.  Here they may come today, or maybe tomorrow or someone’s brother can come next week.  We can’t move the van and we can’t sleep in it so we’ve moved in with Tracy, Nigel and Bella.

We’re sleeping in a bed!  Sunny is very very happy being back in a house and more than happy to follow the packet of treats Nigel has in his pocket.  We slept so well, woke up late and went for a long walk on the beach with the dogs (R stayed in bed).  The beach is beautiful, not built up at all and the sea was gin clear.

We can’t get the van fixed today because it is Sunday, we are hoping for tomorrow.  We won’t bother making any plans until then, we shall relax and soak up sun.

We boarded the ferry in typical Italian chaotic fashion, having been moved from deck to deck and squashed next to an artic lorry, they put our baby in the corner.

We followed the signs to the reception and were escorted by a uniformed butler to our very very ‘spensive cabin.  It was big, well by the standard set by our van which is 2m by 5m, there were two beds, a toilet and shower, a curtain hanging off the rail and a fabulous view of the car deck.  But it was clean and we could sleep in it and so could Sunny.  I fixed the curtain with one of the annoying little clips I always have stuck in my hair, which stopped people looking in and we went to explore.

Sunny is not a sea dog.  He hates the water and he hated being on a boat. as we walked along the deck he got further and further away from the edge and crouched lower and lower on the floor.  He made friends with a cute little Yorkie who’s Mummies were lovely and who made us feel justified in our endeavours as they too have sold a house and buggered off in a van!

We left Sunny in the cabin and went to supper where R saw fit to throw a bottle of wine down himself, ate, drank and went to sleep.  We were woken at 4.45 by the butler and Sunny having utter hysterics that some strange man should open our door.  We showered, dressed and went to watch the dawn.  The sea was inky black and the lights of the harbour were barely visible but slowly and surely the sea changed colour, first to a sluggish English green, much to my dismay, then to dark blue, lighter and lighter until a bright but deep turquoise with a white lace petticoat trailing behind.

We disembarked, drove out of the international port, into the local port and onto the first ferry to Corfu all within 20 minutes.  The sun came up over the island and suddenly we were here.

It is with a twinge of sadness that we leave Kellermans.  Last night I went to the restaurant where the inmates were all dressed up in their best suits and party dresses for dinner in a dining room exactly as you would imagine, the image only slightly marred by Sophia Loren’s elderly grandma nipping outside for a crafty fag.

I ordered take away pizzas from the window (while everybody stared at me still in my shorts and clearly not dressed for dinner) and they were cooked before my eyes in a wood oven.  They were delicious, in fact all the food looked fab, when I’m old I’m going to buy a swimming hat and a shawl with a fringe and stay for the summer.

Before we left the UK I was reliably informed that the Italians don’t like dogs.  It was an absolute lie!  They love them, Sunny nearly moved in with Grazia, the lady next door to Gina Lollobrigida, he loved her so much.  They even have trollies with baskets on for the dog, in the supermarket, I wondered why I was getting funny looks standing outside with Sunny.

We have checked in for our ferry which, fingers crossed, looks like it might actually take us out of Italy and into Greece, we have a couple of hours to wait before we can get on and examine our very very ‘spensive cabin so here’s what I have learned about Italy:  The driving is spectacular, R has compared it to playing F1 on the playstation, he’s absolutely loved it, there are no actual rules, the road belongs to whoever is the bravest.  It’s a bit like Turkish driving but at high speed! The food is amazing, everywhere, I’ve eaten so much cheese, cheese and jam, cheese and honey (a thing in France too), cheese and salami and so on.   The Italians are even less able to communicate in anything other than their own language than the French and the further south you go the less the possibility there is of them even trying.  As I didn’t have an Italian dictionary I’m so grateful for my phone, because they don’t even try to help you and I try so hard to learn a bit of the language where ever I go.  They are very very friendly though and obviously think I’m mentally incapacitated because I can’t communicate in their language.  They all think I’m German.

I can see the ferry from the van now, it’s the red one.

I will be back.

Well here we are in our beautifully regimented ‘holiday village’ with manicured hedges,  spotless paths and geriatric customers.  We are within spitting distance of the sea and falling asleep to the wind and waves has to be my favourite thing.  I managed to evade the musical ‘aerobics’ on the beach this morning, where octogenarians were moving with tortured slowness trying not to fracture anything, by looking the other way all the way to the sea.  I swear that Gina Lollobrigida is staying in the caravan two doors down.

There is a beautiful swimming pool with several lifeguards and you have to wear a swimming hat, possibly to prevent toupees being sucked into the filter system.  There are enthusiastic announcements every morning and so many rules!  There are helpful signs indicating what you should and shouldn’t do, may favourite is “We invite our guests to uses these sinks for cleaning fish.”  I haven’t brought a fish, I wonder if it’s ok to wash my dog in it?

Another sign, language indicated by a British flag is: Es is verboten, Schnüre sowie planenan den Bäumen zu befestigen.  Which I’m almost certain is not English.  However by far the most helpful instruction is as follows:  You may not make the bathroom in the hall “launch” defined by the boe yellow use only for the exit and return to the vessel.   I have absolutely no idea what that means.

The toilets are amazing here there is one for every nationality, with seats, without seats, holes in the ground and those special ones for men so they don’t bang their balls on the loo when they sit down! We saw something similar in Ephesus in the Roman toilets, clearly an Italian thing.

We discovered that Sunny is terrified of crabs when the ageing Don Giovanni next door, who has been force feeding us cactus fruit, presented us with a pair of them!

Apart from being dive bombed by an army helicopter this morning it has been a peaceful and uneventful couple of days.

I awoke this morning with the sudden feeling that we had no ferry to catch, I checked online and found that there was a ferry leaving for Corfu today and, on my premonition we decided to go to Brindisi, find the ticket and see what happened.

We packed our bags, gathered up the dog and followed the superb signage to Brindisi Port.  There were huge signs every 200 metres so it was impossible to get lost and the views were, again, fabulous.  We arrived at Brindisi Port, a tiny portacabin of a port with tired and bored policemen sunbathing, a day trip boat in the harbour and a few picnickers.  I went in and asked about our tickets only to be stared at in complete incomprehension.  There are no boats.  No boats?  No boats.  Using my very rudimentary Italian I managed to establish that there were no longer any ferries to Greece from Brindisi available this week but there were some from Bari.  Bari is where we came from.

Returning to Bari, which was easy because we knew the way, we started to look for signposts to the port, there were none.  On the maps app I found a road with a port so we followed that, still no signs.  Suddenly there it was, a sign the size of a postage stamp and a gate, having driven past it and the road being quite wide R decided to do a U turn.  Slowly and carefully he started his manoeuvre, as he reached the point of no return a motorbike came screaming past missing us by millimetres.  Very wobbly the motorcyclist came to a stop up ahead and we realised it was a police bike.  We both swore our best swearwords and waited for the bike to come back.  It was a very shocked looking policewoman, she must have been going really fast to have come up like that and she was clearly shocked and started shouting at us in Italian.  We apologised profusely, R even removing his sunglasses to prove how genuinely sorry he was, we explained as best we could that we couldn’t find the port and we had got lost and we were trying to get to Greece.  With some relief that we would be leaving her country she accepted our apology and explained that U turns were forbidden.  She told us that the main entrance to the port was in the opposite direction, after three traffic lights, turn right.  Dear god we were still going the wrong way.  We went to pull out and look for somewhere to turn around when she told us to make a U turn and follow her!  R convinced that we would be booked because she made us do something illegal looked a little rattled (and it takes a lot to rattle him!).  We followed her through the first two sets of traffic lights until she decided to chat to someone through a car window and luckily seemed to lose interest in us.  After the fourth set of traffic lights there was a massive sign for a car park on the right which was the only right turn on the road.  Above the entrance for the car park was an enormous sign saying BARI PORTO, the only sign we’d seen.  The port is massive with ferry boats and cruise ships and three kilometres of docks all hidden behind the buildings on the main road.

We entered the port and followed the signs to Greece, ignoring those to Macedonia, Croatia and Albania, past huge ships and queues of lorries and found the check in for Greece.  I went in to be told there was a ferry this evening but there was no space on board, I had to wait until 4 o’clock to see if there would be a cancellation.  Another delightful day was spent in a car park.  At 3.30 I went back into the ticket office and waited, lots more people came to try and get to Greece and were being sent to Ancona, four hours drive back up the coast.  At 4 o’clock the lady called me to the desk to say there was no space today and none this week.  I explained that our ferry was cancelled from Brindisi and she looked a little more sympathetic, we have a cabin on Friday on a ferry to Igoumensita but it is very very ‘spensive, she told me.  It was, but we had no choice, we needed a ticket.  I booked it and hoped that it was gold plated taps and a butler, at least Sunny could come in the cabin with us, he would have screamed the place down if he’d been left in a kennel.  Hopefully finding a ferry to Corfu from the mainland will be easy!

Armed with our tickets we found another site about 45 minutes from the Port back in the same direction we came from and decided to relax for a few days by the seaside and rejoice in the fact that we hadn’t murdered an Italian policewoman.

We are at Kellermans and we are the youngest people here.  They didn’t have any watermelons, I had to make do with a cantaloupe.

 

 

 

The journey to Alberobello, which is situated just above the heel of Italy, was through an agricultural smorgasbord of produce.  It is clearly a wine making region and we’ve driven through French, Spanish and Portuguese wine regions.  None of them seemed to have such rich, fat, heavy grapes.  I appreciate that it was a few weeks earlier and that we are here at harvest time but it really looked like the grapes were too heavy for the vines.  They are growing under shades, from the top all you can see are miles and miles of white fields but underneath the grapes hang rich and corpulent waiting to be pressed, we passed tractors with skips piled high on their way to the shiny factories along the road, we shall buy some wine before we leave.

Alberobello itself is a wonder, in the fields for a few miles outside the city there are, dotted about, these tiny buildings with pointy domed roofs, like little fairy houses hiding in the trees.  I love tiny things and these houses were gorgeous!

They are Trulli and only found in this area of Italy.  We found our campsite and settled down for the evening.  There was a ‘shuttle bus’, someone drove us in an old car with a bottle of something on the floor by my feet, could have been petrol or piss, I wasn’t too sure, anyway we arrived armed with a map and found a whole town of fairy houses.

To get to the trulli we walked through the new part of town which had the most unnecessarily ostentatious church with pillars and statues galore. (There are saints and some of them very grumpy looking on every corner in Italy, there was even a massive Jesus blessing a petrol station on the motorway.) We walked up a very steep hill along tiny roads not wide enough for a car, even a fiat.  People live in the houses and some of the roads were tastefully blocked off and marked private.  One of the houses was open, decorated as it had been left in the 1950’s, I went in, it was more like a cave inside, very cool and without any windows, only a tiny arrow slit size gap with gauze across.  The furniture was more like the victorian open air museum houses in Birmingham than 1950’s, they are so small, this one had three rooms, a kitchen/living and two bedrooms but they were tiny, even by the standards of someone living in a van.   R decided that we could build one as a pizza oven  in the garden, I did point out that we don’t have a garden.

We had an enormous pizza each for lunch and then hand made ice-cream, amaretto for me strawberry for R, I think he was disappointed that it was just mushed up strawberries, no artificial anything and no alcohol.

A brilliant place and only thanks to our hitchhiker that we visited!

Pompeii seems like a very interesting place to have ignored, we were going there but we now have no confirmed ferry to Corfu so we decided to drive down towards Brindisi in case a ferry becomes available.  We found a little site by the seaside and thought a bit of rest and sunbathing would be in order.  The seaside was rocky and I fell over three times on the rocks because the seaweed was invisible and they were slippery, this happened in slow motion and the people in the sea were most amused, the whole of my back was covered in brown sludge, I got some disgusted looks on my walk back but I couldn’t tell anyone it was seaweed.

The village was gorgeous, azure sea and little boats, it was a walled town that looked like every architect from 1600 to 1950 had had a go at designing a house, the whole effect worked and it was really pretty.

We moved on after two nights owing to the crappy seaside and are now in Alberobello a little further down the coast.