Part of the reason for our eventful Adriatic Sea crossing was that we had booked a few days in a kids-friendly hotel in Apulia, which we didn’t want to miss. The transition from camper life to all-inclusive hotel is a tough one and we had a few moments of frustration because of it but we also got to indulge in adult-only meal times, pool fun and watching Liam in various kids activities – the highlight being his performance in the weekly kids show. (The frustration mostly comes from trying to rein Liam in, who goes a bit nuts with all the choices presented to him: TV in the room, unlimited food, “organised fun” everywhere, etc). Given it was the very last week of the season the enthusiasm of the hotel staff seemed a little low, but there was still a ton of things on offer, drinks were free, the food was excellent and after a so-so first day the weather recovered to our usual 21 degrees as well – so we had a good time overall.
After Apulia we had a few days to get to our next scheduled stop in Catania, where we would pick up a friend of Yeya from the airport. It is about 600km between the two points, so we didn’t have much time to waste. We managed to find a couple of nice stops along the way, starting with the hilariously named Punta Prosciutto. This one had a beach so nice that we changed our planned route to hang out a little longer there. After this we mainly legged it through Calabria, interupted only by a visit to a massive shopping center for food restocking, an extensive car washing session and various visits to the local beaches. That – and of course the birthday of a very special person which we celebrated in style with a pancake-cake!
Overall, Calabria as a location didn’t have a very good vibe for us – it seemed dirty, neglected and fairly run down in most of the places we saw. And so we weren’t too sad when we arrived at the ferry to Messina to continue our path to our last mayor destination: Sicily.
Bintu on the Road 