Traveling on budget is not always meant to be comfortable. You tend to get slightly dingy rooms, weird smells, uncomfortable beds… This is not to say we travel like backpackers: Hitchhiking from place to place without not a care in the world — I’ve seen the horror movie “The Hitcher” and I’m not being tied to no trucks. Actually, I would probably be the one doing the tying 🤔 #nospoileralert.
Just like Goldilocks herself we expect a semi comfortable middle. This usually involves sleeping with all the other plebs in chairs when we travel overnight by boat. This is usually fine, give or take the odd loud nutcase, but this boat was something else. The chair themselves were designed to make sleeping impossible, forcing us to sleep on the hard, cold floor.
One girl we got speaking to had the same issue but managed to cram herself into a chair, with the rest of the passengers abandoning their seats to sleep on the floor leaving a sea of empty chairs.
There are a few theories of why they designed them like this:
Further credence is given to the first theory when I remembered how lots of places make you pay in Italy: Pay here, collect over there.
This is a trivial complaint I know, but after the 1000th time of doing this you do begin to wonder if you could increase Italian GDP by 100% if you voiced your concern.
The boat itself was filthy with only a few open toilets filled with unflushable shits. All of this was made even worse by the crystal maze floor plan of the boat: Having to go up and down staircases to go the full length of the boat, and mirrors on the stairs which make you think there is more floor on either side.
After the night’s terrible sleep you wake up to traveling in-between Sardinia and Corsica which I thought was great. It might seem trivial but I loved moving between these large islands in the middle of the mediterranean, which you usually would have no reason to go to.
Just before leaving the girl we had met the night before indirectly asked for a lift by inquiring if we were driving to Rome. I considered this for second: The romance of hitchhiking, the places you see, the people you meet, the trust you are putting in other human beings; it is something I would like to aspire too. Then I remember I don’t have any faith in humanity, don’t want to be tied to two trucks and the car was full with shit anyway so…. no. Especially given the night before she refused to say where she was from after asking us. #Redflag
We finally arrived at a rainy Civitavecchia, which is a major port just north of Rome, looking forward to our next Grimaldi Lines pleasure cruise.
