Sleepy seaside town of Bari

Trips this long aren’t sustainable (for us) without having towns that we consider our downtime where we do bugger all.  Bari is one of those places, just like Menton was earlier in the trip.  School work, life admin (blogs, washing etc) all need to have space to be completed.  Also having decent wifi is not guaranteed in all the places you stay so while the air con in our apartment is shite, the wifi is giving the kids some downtime watching their Zoo shows on Disney+. This also gives Gareth and I downtime of not always having to be “on” and entertaining our kids who are so quick to now declare “we are bored” or try to revolt when school work is mentioned. I think the last time we watched TV was in Marseille so the giant TV in our studio apartment (yeah we all are having to sleep in the same room) is a much needed babysitter.

We arrive in Bari having crossed from one side of the country to the other in approx 3 hours via flix bus.  Eva, our Au pair had recommended the company and we used them a couple of times so far, and have not been disappointed.

Craving anything other than pizza we find a dumpling restaurant and have lunch.  This is followed by Gareth doing one of his walks to get away from us, he finds a seafood restaurant on the waterfront for dinner.  Missing fish and chips, Kaia jumps on the chance to have it for dinner, but I guess NZ does it way better. The port sea front is gorgeous, it has this long stretch of promenade its just a pity there is really no where to swim.

Bari is a cool, less crowded seaside town that I think people pass through to catch the ferry to Albania, but it definitely has appeal when you are over crowds of people.  Something we have noted as we have come further south in Italy, lunch is a sacred time.  This is between approx 2 and 4pm each day, and all the shops close.  So we have to be mindful of this, as we seem to have fallen more into the European timings for eating, and going to get food when everything is closed and you are hot and hungry is not a pleasant experience.

As we check out of Bari, and make our way to the train station for a 4 hour trip to Ancona to then board an overnight ferry to Split, I should feel bad that we pretty much saw the inside of our apartments and the various restaurants that we ate in, however we all needed that downtime.

Downtime is important on a trip this long, as when things go wrong, the stress level goes through the roof.  Just like it did when we hit the Bari train station.  Our mantra of get the earlier train?   Well we had 3 hours to burn in Ancona before we could check in at 7pm and head to the ferry once we arrived - but that was only if our train was on time.  We watched the “retardo” time go from 35 mins to a crazy 120 mins.  With no reception at the terminal, Gareth took my phone and laptop to book the next train, only to see everyone else had done the same thing just before him and all the seats sold out.  So we tried to remain positive, until the retardo showed 140 mins, and at that point and waiting as long as we had, Gareth again did a power walk with the laptop, paid a small fortune for Frecciarossa tickets, the train leaving the same time as our delayed train, but getting to Ancona 30 mins earlier in time for check in.  Big ups to Frecciarossa, those trains never let us down in Italy.