After Budpest, we moved onto Italy since neither of us had been there and be both wanted to see it. It was one of the original places on our plan. We wanted to visit Rome and then take a ferry from Bari over to Greece, since we learned that the ferry was included in our InterRail tickets.

Originally, we intended to visit Venice. In the end, settled on Trieste instead. This was for various reasons, not least of which was that the train went through Trieste on the way to Venice anyway. But mainly it was go that we would have more time in Rome and still not miss the ferry to Greece.

In the end, Trieste was brilliant. Venice has a reputation of a bit of tourist trap. Trieste in contrast was nice and relaxed, clean and good fun. A very beautiful port city, we had a nice night there.

When we made a rough plan of our trip around Europe before we left, we figured out that the ferry from Italy to Greece was actually included in the price of the InterRail ticket. Which was nice. So we planned to take that route.

So after we’d done with Rome we got a sleeper train to Bari port. Unfortunately, the next ferry we were allowed to take on our ticket was not until the late afternoon. This meant we had little option but t hang around Bari all day — not a very exciting place really. We just napped and read a bit. Yet more reading. We really did get stuff read on that trip!

The running joke was that Bari sounded a bit like Barry Island, back home in Wales. Haha — not very funny I know, but hilarious when you’re knackered fro long train journeys.