21 February 2025 – We’re In Greece!

Miles driven today = 7 

Total Miles to date = 1,205

Yeah Baby!  We’ve made it to the land of crumbling temples, huge olives and stodgy yoghurt.  And it’s only taken us a mere 9 days to get here from the UK.  Go us!

We slept really well in our cabin on the Superfast XI.  The only thing that disturbed me was some teenage chatter in the corridor at some point but otherwise we were soundo until nearly 8am Greek time.  We looked out of our rather grubby window and could see Bari in the distance so we were already well on our way down to Italy’s stiletto heel by that stage.

After breakfast and coffee we took the air for a while.  There’s a sun deck at the rear of the ship but it’s rather spoilt by the exhaust fumes from the ship’s funnel so we sought out a few less smelly vantage points.  Surprisingly it was mild enough not to need coats.

We read and entertained ourselves until lunchtime swung around.  We thought we would give the self service restaurant a try and save ourselves a few cents but my eyes were obviously bigger than my stomach and we ended up spending more on food than we did in the fine dining restaurant last night.  I had a huge steak chop while Lisa had an equally oversized slab of salmon.  Once again we won’t need to worry about cooking tea tonight.

We passed snow capped Mount Cika as we reached the point where the Adriatic and Ionian Seas meet. It’s one of the mountains we could see on the Albanian side when looking across from Otranto last year.

Shortly after this we spotted a couple of small dolphins as they sped towards the ship to play in the bow wave.  We also got messages from Vodafone welcoming us to Albania!

Approaching the narrow strait between Albania on the left and Corfu on the right.

A closer look at the northern end of Corfu.

We were due to dock at Igoumenitsa at 6pm but we were already on Greek soil and heading away from the ferry terminal a good 30 minutes before that, which pleased me immensely as I really wasn’t looking forward to the prospect of potentially driving on Greek roads in the dark.

The Rough Guide wasn’t very complimentary about Igoumenitsa and actually recommends not staying there.  So we’ve driven 11km around the first headland to the South to the small seaside settlement of Plataria.

We are in the local Camper Stop, right by the beach.  It’s just €10 a night to stay here off season plus €4 for hook up which we have taken as it’s 13 Amp and therefore chunky enough to run the heating.  We’ve met the owner, who seems like a really nice guy and have been introduced to the “security” which is a feral dog who guards the area and barks at anybody who comes close.  The local cat population are all accepted though and have already tried to jump into the van on several occasions.  There are laundry facilities and a hot shower so, although we originally only planned to stay here for one night, we may just put roots down for another 24 hours to have a proper look around the place.

Our host told us that this group of gentlemen are all high brow professionals like doctors and lawyers from Bulgaria who come here every year to go fishing.  I wish I had brought a rod along with me now although I’d probably be too distracted by that weird flying saucer shaped island to do any serious fishing.

 22 February 2025- Time Out In Plataria