Ancona -> Igoumenitsa

Breakfast in the hotel is quite expensive, so we decide to go to a café instead. Eileen had spotted a nice looking place next to the restaurant where we ate last night. We have coffee and Italian pastries, followed by a gelato and a stroll back to the hotel! Ancona seems like a really nice place, and it would have been lovely to spend more time here. But we have to keep going.

We check out of the hotel and head for the ferry terminal which is right near the centre of town. We're on the Superfast XI ferry from Ancona to Igoumenitsa in Greece. After a confusing bus ride to the ferry office to get our tickets (why isn't the ferry office in the ferry terminal?!) we are back at the ferry terminal ready to board.

We walk up the boarding ramp at the back of the ferry, and are greeted by the crew with "Yassas". Greece, here we come! Good thing we've been listening to the One Minute Greek podcast. On board at last. It's quite a relief to have gotten this far without any scheduling problems. We send Linda an sms to say that we are on board, and please book our taxi for the morning! 

We leave Ancona, and it is so nice to sit and know that for the next 15 hours there will be absolutely nothing to do but watch from our 7th floor perch as the ferry pushes aside the waves effortlessly. The only thing that spoils our peace of mind are the chunks of styrofoam and plastic floating on the surface of the water. Really shocking. I can't get a GPS fix on the iPhone, so I can't impress everybody by showing our exact position on the Navionics chart.

We have a four-person cabin between the three of us, and Laura happily claims the top bunk! With Laura in the bathroom we quickly check out the life jackets under the bunks. With no windows it is absolutely pitch black when the lights go out. For some reason they didn't think to equip the inside cabins with night-lights, so we try to rig something that will give a bit of light but not too much. 

There is quite a bit of vibration from the engines and it causes some of the light fittings to rattle, which keeps us awake. I keep stuffing bits of toilet paper into cracks, which works for about 5 minutes and then the rattling starts again. Eventually the tiredness takes over and we fall asleep. We have a big day ahead of us.