if only Bari was as beautiful as this lovely italian coast... ahh... NOPE!

so!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! we had to train from rome to bari on the coast of italy so that we could take the ferry from italy to greece. but, this wasn't any normal ferry. let me tell you! it was 20 HOURS! 20!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! first of all, when we got to bari we were super confused on the bus because we had to take the bus to the ferry port. the bus driver laughed at us because we took the bus around 2 times before we realized where our stop was... duh... so anyway, we had to wait at this boring port (literally nothing to do) for 6 hours until we could board the ferry. and that was just until we could board! so we waited, ate some apples, made some phone calls, then boarded the ferry. we just got deck passes (because they were cheapest), but we had no idea what to expect or where we were going to sleep or anything. so we sat up on the deck with all our stuff for like the whole entire night. we didn't know that we were aloud to go inside except to use the bathroom! hahaha... so we had some drinks... well quite a few delicious ones, made friends with the 'lion dog' --- (sidenote: there was this old italian couple sitting at a table near us and they had this dog right? right. but this wasn't your average dog. this dog was shaved like a lion. seriously. the tail was a little poof at the end like a lion, the hair was only a bit longer on the legs like a lion, and i swear they were talking about getting some sort of wig/mane contraption. why didn't they just buy a lion??? anyway...) --- and talked with some random people in the same situation as us. at the end of the night, after getting free pineapple and peanuts from the bartenders, we followed the people we met down into the ferry and we all kind of huddled in this one little nonsmoking rug/chair/table section. everyone snagged two chairs and attempted to sleep... amie and jo each took one chair each and curled up in tiny balls and slept like that... or didn't sleep in amie's case... and i grabbed some floor space and used my backpack as a pillow... mmm pointy... it was a rough night. the worst part about it was that this one guy who was sleeping in 2 chairs kept stretching out his legs and smushing me on the floor! JERK! amie kept shoving the chair back at him... we nicknamed him striper and decided that we hate him. hahahaha... so the next morning around like 5 or 6, the 'blue coats' (ferry crew members) woke us up and told us we had to move and we weren't aloud to sleep! have you ever been told that you're not aloud to fall asleep!?!?!? let me tell you, it's TERRIBLE! it's extremely difficult. but we moved to these little couches, and then back out onto the deck to get warm in the sun. soon enough the ride was over and we got off as fast as possible! thank goondess we won't be on a ferry that long until next week! ... UGH! haha... but now on to GREECE!

-Megan-