Bari, Italy - 19 June to 25 June 2009

Bari, Italy
Pizza, Gelati, Street Soccer

I’ll try not to bore you too much, but still get all the details as to why we were in Bari out the way first. Weirdly, this blog has turned out to be bigger than Athens & Olympia just because of the funny stories along the way!

We were only really in Bari because I needed to get a ferry to Split for our Croatian sailing, and Suzie needed to catch a plane to London to get her Visa stamped and then fly and meet me in Split. So as it turned out, we didn’t have enough time in-between Athens and our ferry and flights departure in Bari to really see as much as we wanted to. Our original plan was to see some of the south of Italy, but that wasn’t quite possible, so we ended up seeing Olympia instead, which was really nice (check out the previous blog post and Picasa photo album).

Anyways, we ended up with around 3 nights and 3 days in Bari, which turned out to be way to long haha.

We rocked up on the first day without booking any accommodation and made the mistake of heading from the port to around the train station to look for accommodation. To cut a long story short, its fuckin expensive to sleep in Bari, so we walked around for 4 HOURS with 20 kilos on our backs to end up BACK AT THE PORT at a decently priced hostel. Needless to say Suzie wanted to kill me and I wanted to kill her by the time we got there. haha

Ok, so get this. The lazy basterds in Italy apparently only work from 8:30 til 12pm then have a break for 5 hours for a nap and lunch with the family and then work from 5 til 8pm. WHAT THE SHIT! hahaha So, there really wasn’t much to do in Bari as it was just a port city and with the shops closing for the main part of the day, we just lazed about, eating BULK food and drinking. Ill be brief, but the food in Bari was amazing, we only ate from snack bars, but they had the best Pizza ever, Aranchini balls, these little baked Sausage pastry things and all sorts of other delights! I think i ate between 4-5 times a day, with 1-2 Gelati's on top of that haha

In our Hostel we met some awesome people. 2 Swedish guys, Phillip and Adam. A guy from Melbourne, Rowan. 2 girls from New Zealand, Sam (who got nicknamed Lizzy, because she hated it) and Hayley. After a group of Irish backpackers left the hostel, we started drinking on the roof of the Hostel (even tho we had been told not to), which was awsome, the views up there were so nice and it was so surreal sitting up there.

The Hostel had some bizare rules and didnt really have any staff that stayed in the hostel all day and night, just this one India guy who couldnt speak a word of english. He was really nice, but i felt sorry for him, because he just sat down stairs for like 7 hours on a stool, not really doing anything :(. Anyways, the rules were wack, like, we werent alowd in the hostel between 10am and 4pm hahahah but we did it anyways. Apparantly, that was "cleaning time" or some shit. But we never saw a cleaner ever. We also werent alowd on the roof at any point. But the rule of being not allowed on the roof alerted me to the fact that there was a roof area hahahah idiotsss!

Suzie set off to get her flight a day before I was due to get my over night ferry to Dubrovnik and then on to Split. So me, Rowan, Phillip and Adam hung out for the day as Phillip and Adam were off to Montenegro and me and Rowan coincidentally were on the same ferry to Dubrovnik and all the ferries left at 11pm. Once again though, there wasn’t much to do, we just went to an internet cafe in the morning, after getting something to eat, but when we left the net cafe, the lazy fuckin Italians had closed up all the shops so they could go home for a pre-day quickie, or whatever they do. So we all thought it was the wisest decision to head to a pub. hahahaha

We went to the old town square and went from pub to pub looking for the cheapest beer so we could settle in for the rest of the day. Everyone was charging 4 euro (8 aussie bucks) for a pint... apart from one place we found, this dope little pub, still in the old town square that was charging 1.50 euro for a pint of Peroni. Boner! We ended up having around 3 rounds of beers, then Phillip (one of the Swedish guys) spotted the Absinth on the top shelf. We all had bets as to how much it was, I had said 5 euro, and Rowan was around 10 euro .... it ended up being...2 euro. 2 freakin euro for a shot of Absinth!!!!!!! So, 4 rounds of beer and 5 rounds of Absinth later the Swedish lads were feeling the G's, Rowan was half cut and I was feeling pretty fuzzy myself haha.

We had been drinking with some Italian girls for an hour or so (2 of the 3 girls couldn’t speak any English) and around 7pm the Swedish lads and decided to go and get some food and Rowan went off with one of the girls to go "read a book" .. I sensed some scissoring though.

But as soon as we left the pub, some kids were playing soccer in the town square and kicked us the ball... and from the next 2 hours we ended up playing no rules street soccer with some 9-10 year old kids hahaha it was the best fuckin fun and the kids were hell funny.

I met back up with Rowan and we got some food and headed for our ferry. We eventually got through the slowest ferry customs ever and went and looked for some seats on the boat to sleep in. Once again, to cut a long story short, we ended up in a swearing match with a Croatian dude that could only say "fuck you" over some seats and decided to just bust out our sleeping bags and sleep on the roof of the boat hahahahaha

Once we get to Dubrovnik, the stupid people on the ferry told me that I needed to get off the ferry to get a connecting ferry to Split later on, I double checked this with the people in the information desk in the ferry terminal and they said the same thing. Turns out that was the only ferry of the day and I was supposed to stay on. So I ended up having to get a 4 1/2 bus to Split ahhahahah fuckin wankers!


Ill post the Croatian Sailing blog in a few days!


Click through to see the; Bari Photo Gallery