Inter Rail 1987 Day 17

We woke up at about 7.30am when the sun started coming around to our side of the superstructure, having had a very pleasant nights sleep. Made a trip to the loo and found that:-

a) Although the loo was an "English" one you had to practically squat to use it
b) The loo would have made a great sauna as it was practically inside one of the two ships funnels
c) The ship's tiny swimming pool was being filled

The last point seemed to be a complete and utter waste of time. The netting covering the pool to prevent usage wasn't moved for the length of the journey and the pool was eventually drained due to "lack of use"!

The rest of our sea journey was spent lounging around on the deck in the sun. Calais type boat evacuation ensued. It seems we swapped Italian organisation for Greek organisation. There seemed to be lots of Americans about looking forward to "finally getting a Bourbon on the rocks". We enjoyed taking the michael out of them.

We were sniffed at by the Italian sniffer dogs as we went through Customs and then started out on the long hike up from the dock to the railway station. Decided that after a bit we needed a beer and haggled a bit between two bars. We ended up in the Golden Egg bar with 2 big 66cl Heinekens. Eventually we decided to have another and also to have a Golden Egg special pizza.

The next bit of the walk took us through a square in the shade so we had a bit of a siesta there. When the shops opened we bought some food and then made our way to the next bar where we had an iced drink plus a cappuchino.

We checked the train times and waited for our train in the waiting room with a tribe of obnoxious Italian children. Typical Italian behaviour then ensued - when it got dark, they initially turned off the waiting room lights.

A lot of confusion abounded due to the fact that a lot of the trains were running late including ours. A lot of Americans and thick British types tried to get on the sleeper only to Milan thinking it was the Naples train!

Our train eventually arrived 30 minutes late and extremely full. At first we managed to keep the numbers down in our compartment but sleep wasn't very forthcoming.

At some time in the early hours of the morning the train split and an obnoxious man thrust himself into our compartment, lying down beside me. He then started whispering, pressing and groping without really touching so I eventually had to move, swapping places with Jon.

Sleep was still not forthcoming due to the people sitting in the corridor outside playing radios! We eventually arrived in Naples at 5.15am.