While in Barcelona, I got out my map and with the help and advice of Niki, I decided against going north to France, opting instead to stay in southern Europe, chasing the sun!
Enter Grimaldi Ferry.
Having overstayed my time in Spain (about a week!) I opted against Ibiza and Mallorca, and instead I took a huge ferry across the Mediterranean to Italy.
The entire ship was comprised of exactly three groups of people- 1. Staff, 2. Italian truckdrivers, and 3. The entire class of some 14 year old Italian kids on a trip home from Spain. Other than these types, there were exactly three people, myself included, who were EITHER in my age bracket, and who were also foreign travellers (who didn't speak Italian) and bless me, they were Irish! I made friends with Louise and Joe immediately and if I didn't I would have had the worst trip EVER.
See, the whole ship was actually amazing, with cozy downstairs bars, great music in the upperdeck bar, a decent but expensive restaurant (no worries, I knew this would be so and packed lots of food), HOWEVER, the one area of the ship that was terrible was where I would sleep. I did not book a cabin, just a seat. Train seats are hit or miss; this ferry seat was a big, big, big miss. The room for us "seater's" was huge, with no individual lighting, just huge neon lights. It boasted a huge flat screen TV, giving the whole thing a movie-theater like feel. And it was cold. No lockers for my stuff. So far OK, right? Wrong. As time went on I realized it smelled TERRIBLY like piss. (Excuse my Froonch.) I only spent five minutes in their and got some real interest from these Italian geeks who were asking allll the wrong questions (like, where are you from, how old are you, are you travelling alone, etc.) without offering up any of their own information... just terrible.
Anyway, Louise and Joe rescued me and just as I was going to throw myself overboard they offered me a bed in their cabin. So sweet of them!
When I woke up, it was 10 AM and I really did feel rested. On deck, the kids weren't up yet and only the least hungover of the truck drivers, so it was relatively calm and peaceful. Better yet, it was exactly the hour of ferrying between French Corsica, to the north, and Italian Sardinia, to the south. (Louise, who shares my ability to get excited about these things, and I had been wondering whether we would be able to see the islands, and if so what time, etc.)
We landed in Italy, in a ridiculously information-less zone of an industrial port, which to it's credit offered a free shuttle bus to the train station, where we all three boarded for Roma, just an hour train ride away...
