So we have made our way from Crete to Ravello on the Amafi Coast in Italy. Crete to Patreaus (the port in Athens) by overnight ferry, bus to Patra, and an overnight ferry to Bari, a night in Bari, train to Salerno, a night in Salerno, then car to Ravello. (Actually we have already left Ravello, but I’m backdating the post!)
This very little kitten was travelling on one of the ferries – very cute! The young woman seemed very pleased; she said she had found it and was feeding it every 3 hours. I was surprised because there were so many cats on Crete, that finding a stray to keep wouldn’t have seemed a coup!
I enjoyed watching all the prime-movers doing their thing at each end. In Piraeus they were all lined up waiting to zip onto the ferry to pick up their containers.
In Patra the ferry was delayed by six hours until midnight because there were May day strikes, so it was a really long day. Because there were no lockers we could use for our bags, we couldn’t really move around much, and holed up at a cafe in one of the squares. It had free wifi, and they didn’t seem to mind us just hanging there for the price of an occasional drink. In fact they brought us iced water. And a lot of people were just hanging – playing cards, playing backgammon, talking. Everyone seemed to be smoking heavily too, I ended up with a foggy head. There was this nice piece of street art though.
We enjoyed Bari, an unexpected stop because the delay with the ferry meant we arrived there too late to catch a train to Salerno that day. There didn’t seem to be very many people on the ferry, and when we disembarked it was just a trickle of us straight onto the dock amid all the semi-trailers roaring off the ferry. We walked in the direction we guessed was right and the passport control consisted of a few of us being waved in one door and out another of a little building on the dock perimeter!
The show advertised here is presumably a satire…
A young woman watching some bare-chested soccer players in a park below the old town wall.
Preparations for the festival of St Nicolas were in progress.
San Nicola la Strada celebrates patron saint, San Nicola di Bari, in April. The statue from the Church of St Maria of the Angels is carried in procession and comes to rest in front of the church… Beautiful lighted screens light the way.
This one was set up behind a statue of St Nicolas outside the church dedicated to him.
The largest screens formed this huge airy cathedral structure in one of the plazas. I thought I might like it best as it was, white and unlit, rather than mulit-coloured.
The unlit structure at night.
A shop in one of the old town lane-ways. The old town was a busy place, with lots going on behind open but curtained doorways.
