05.03.10:
And so I found myself lashed to the mast on the grim grimness that is the Grimaldi ferry. And you thought going to the Aldi Supermarket on a wet Wednesday afternoon was pretty grim… my word, you ain’t seen nothing. On board the ‘Sorrento’ for the forth AND UTTERLY FINAL time, I found myself without a bench seat to lay on and therefore had to make do with two cafeteria chairs pushed together.
I woke up with the worst backpain I’ve ever had. They still hadn’t cleaned the toilets (I don’t think they every do) and the three flushing toilets (no urinals, that would be extravagant) were covered, utterly covered in poorly-aimed Arab piss. I had to hitch up my jeans and kick the seat up with my foot. Nice.
At £2.50 for a can of Coke, you can probably guess that I elected to eat and drink as little as possible on this infernal ferry. There was no shop on board, only a terrible joke of a duty-free thing that only sold massive bottles of whiskey and cigarettes at extortionate process (negating the whole point of duty-free, but doesn’t it always?). What’s more, they wouldn’t except (or change) Tunisian Dinars. Quite why is anyone’s guess – surely they could turn a buck or two trading Euros for Dinars and visa-versa? Obstinately not. Idiots. We stopped off in Sicily along the way and I was actually rather tempted to make a break for it, but considering I had spent over eighty quid on the damn ticket (that’s ONE WAY folks!) I thought it best to stick with it through to the end. Incidentally, the price for a ticket on the overnight ferry from Italy to Greece? FIFTEEN EURO. Sorry GRIMaldi Lines, but I hate being ripped off. You’ve made it onto my list of things that SUCK!
Transport that SUCKS:
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Greyhound Buses
Grimaldi Ferries
Virgin Trains
Small Dirty Cargo Boats
Transport that ROCKS:
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Container Ships
Latin American Buses
Turkish Buses
Tunisian Trains
I wrote up my blog and read The Odessa File by Fredrick Forsyth (donated by Dja, thanks!) and prayed that we arrived early in Salerno, the port for Naples. Ha! No chance – we were four hours late! Arriving at midnight to find there were no taxis whatsoever waiting, I hung around in the FREEZING COLD for about an hour after one of the guys who worked in the port rang a taxi, or something, I don’t know what it was, but it didn’t seem to be ringing a taxi. Then another guy from the port who spoke a bit of English actually rang a taxi and within five minutes it had arrived.
My gratitude for the warmth of the taxi soon evaporated into fury at the cost of the damn thing. At €17 for a ten-minute ride I felt more than a little ripped off. What a rotten day. What a rotten world. May a plague of locusts bite off their rotten faces.
