Panic in Bari

I realised, with a jolt, that I should have checked into the Montenegrin Lines ferry whilst looking at a partial print out of the booking confirmation in the terminal. You didn’t have to check in for trains; why would you for ferries? Well, there it was, in black and white, accusing and suggesting I was in for some sweaty diplomacy.

There followed a dramatic half hour in which I anticipated the cost of saving my holiday without taking the ferry. (My plan, which I ended up not needing, was a train north, then flying back to the UK from Pescara or somewhere equally as cheap and provincial, or getting as far as I could on non-discount train tickets, then hoping for the best).

Pescara - Bari

So, yes, two hours. Time enough to scout Centrale’s car park and forecourt, have a few more coffees and a gander round the station’s discount bookshop, and its tiny English section of inevitable dog eared copies of budget print classics. Two hours wasn’t enough to take in the Adriatic or Apennines, although it was plenty of time for me to think about the rest of the journey - which I hadn’t even properly started - would soon be over. I wrote postcards and pondered the proliferation of tiny shopping malls and car showrooms I’d seen on my walk down Via Amendola, before getting ready for the train.

My Bari train was InterCity; and, as such, a notch down from whatever long nose Pendolino does the same trip minutes faster. I shared a comfortable apartment as far as somewhere near Foggia with a bloke who intermittently dozed as we dived in and emerged out of tunnels after leaving Pescara and running along the Adriatic shoreline. This fellow woke up a little later and enhanced his ‘very good travelling companion’ credentials by chatting to a mother carrying a baby with a huge surgical scar running lengthways from its forehead to crown and round the back of its head to the nape of its neck. The mother was chatty, the scarred baby perfectly happy, and my travelling companion convivial.

Other link:

Piaggio P.166 DL3, Italian Coast Guard