Chapter 6; Trains, buses, planes and other forms of transport

You would think that aeroplane designers could make a seat as comfortable as a car seat, so that even budget passengers had a modicum of comfort on long haul flights, but apparently this is not possible. I’ve spent hours at a time seated in a car without any discomfort, but even the most comfortable (budget) airplane seat is not nearly as comfortable. They look good; they have all sorts of electronic gadgets, light & airflow controls…tilt-able seats… but invariable become hideously cramped and uncomfortable long before one arrives at ones destination (in most cases, within the first few minutes!). The first couple of hours of a long haul flight is quite fun; after that it is just a matter of endurance. After 2 flights of 12 hrs each, even standing in an airport queue that extends for miles seems an improvement.

Tour buses are not a lot better; the spaces between seats are not consistent, so one may find oneself squeezed into a seat a midget would find cramped. I spent 4 hrs sitting with one leg in the aisle and the other as wide apart as possible, and my foot up on a bag, in order to squeeze into it. After that I refused to sit in that seat (the one in front of the toilet). Fortunately there were a couple of spare seats. Some of the other seats were close-ish too but that one was ridiculous.

The tour-bus toilet was another story. On both tours we were told not to use the onboard toilet (what was the point of having one?); in the TC tour it was supposedly broken, but magically became repaired after I took the tour guide aside and pointed out that many passengers had suffered considerable pain & discomfort holding on… We all knew public toilets can be few and far between in parts of Europe, and the on-board toilet had helped decide us that a tour was a good idea. The Cosmos tour guide was more honest; she said it was a problem emptying it (and cleaning it) in Greece, where such facilities are scarce. We were asked to inform the driver if we required an extra toilet stop. Regardless of this request, once or twice the onboard toilet was a very necessary safeguard. It was quite amusing to see the passengers of every tour bus (including ours) stream immediately towards the toilets the minute the bus stopped. Our trips became a series of episodes of intense activity interspersed with long bus rides broken up by toilet and food stops. I spent about E100 on toilet entry throughout the tour…

It seemed odd to find a toilet manager in each public toilet, collecting entry fees, and sometimes spraying perfume on the used toilet paper in the bins (toilet paper was not allowed to be flushed…). The perfume did not eliminate the terrible smell, it merely transformed it into something indescribable… French toilets were the foulest smelling that we found anywhere. We tended to wait outside in the (huge) queue, then snatch a deep breath before entering; and dread running out of breath before we finished. Some facilities had no water, others no paper, some no ventilation. All were an experience…

No-one actually burst a bladder, or disgraced themselves by not making it in time, but it was touch and go a few times; one day in France Roly leaped off the bus before it had fully stopped and ran into a nearby restaurant restroom, just in the nick of time…

Public transport in Italy is really good (thankfully, since we’d be too timid to tackle driving in the manic Italian traffic). The only trouble is it can be complicated… When we took a day trip from Roccassecca to Sorento, we caught two trains to get to Naples, then another to Pompei where we explored the ruins, then another to Sorrento. There we took a bus to the shore, and a ferry to the Island of Capri; a funicular up to the top of the town there, then a local bus down again, ferry back to Sorrento, and bus back up to the town. We stayed overnight before catching 3 trains back to Roccassecca, where Kay picked us up and drove us to Caprile’… 90 percent of the time on our trip had been spent on public transport of one sort or another.

We never got lost though, and I now have a clear mental picture of the region we went through. We took buses and travelled the Metro in Rome, and found our way back each time; also in Athens, where the city is more spread out than Rome.

In light of our previous successes, when we docked in Kusadassi in Turkey we decided to take local transport to the ruins of Ephesus. A bus took us to the regional bus depot, from there another bus took us to the turn-off to the ruins. From there we took a taxi to the high end of the ruined city. We wandered the stunningly beautiful streets of what remained of Ephesus, (my personal favourite and the greatest archaeological highlight of the entire trip), before wending our way down to the low end of the city. There we found taxi’s waiting, but my companions were sure it was only a few yards to the main road, and insisted they wanted to go back by bus. I asked one of the taxi drivers, who explained the road was over a kilometre away. Also, time was running short, as our ship was disembarking in less than 2 hours. Since it had taken us about an hour to get there, and we had no idea of the bus timetables I was certain we should accept the taxi driver’s very good offer of a budget fare. I certainly had no desire to walk another kilometre in the hot sun, even if we had had time. I managed (with some difficulty) to convince my companions of this, and we returned by taxi. He got us to the ship in plenty of time, and when we worked it out, our share of the fare had cost less than the various other modes of transport we’d have had to take.

On the Island of Sorrento we had the choice of climbing the huge sheer cliff-face on the backs of donkeys (a time honoured method of transport) or by funicular (no-one seriously considered walking…). We chose the funicular, since even from a distance we could smell the donkeys… Once we had explored the charming town perched on the edge of the most massive cliff I have ever seen, we took a local bus along the winding roads to the town of Oia. This town is the most often photographed in the Greek islands since every square inch is picture postcard perfection. Our short visit was well worth while, in spite of the enormous queue we had to wait in for our return trip down the cliff-face. Every one of 7 cruise ships were all departing that evening, so over 7,000 passengers needed to get down to their ships. Some teenagers were so worried about their ship departing without them, they begged me to let them push in. I pointed out to them that all the passengers of all the ships were in the same position; all needing to board before their ships departed. I suggested they walk down the donkey trail, since they looked quite fit enough to handle the winding pathway. This they did, along with many other passengers; freeing up some spaces in the queue. The tender boats all smelled of donkey doo-doo on our way back to the ships.

To my knowledge, no-one was left behind; but it seems crazy to me that all the cruise ships arrive and depart at once…it would be less pressure for shopkeepers if the arrivals and departures of visitors was more spread out. As it is they have an absolutely enormous influx of people all at once, and the huge crowds deter visitors from actually shopping. We saw lots of wonderful artefacts and shopping would have been a delight, had we been able to squeeze past the crowds to enter the shops… Oia was slightly better, but we had little spare time by the time we got there. The cruise timetable gave us an average 4 hrs at each stop.

Since we were blessed with stunningly good weather (apart from being much too hot) for the duration of the cruise, it was our favourite mode of transport. There was no down time just waiting to get somewhere; we went to bed at night, and woke up at some new destination. There was always plenty to do, and the food was great. The shows were very good, the pools refreshing, and even our tiny cabin was an improvement on some Italian hotels we’d stayed in. The only problem I had was a feeling of claustrophobia, since our cabin was in the middle of the ship, meaning absolute pitch-blackness when lights were out. The good thing about the middle cabins though, is there is less roll than external ones, should the weather turn rough. A few people suffered sea sickness on our last night, as we crossed the open sea back to Piraeus.

Next time I cruise I’ll take a night-light to plug in…