Day 40 (Travel to Bari, Italy)

Weather is 60 and overcast. Probably because we are leaving today. Our flight leaves at 11:50am on Ryan Air. $15 + baggage comes to about $100 each. Not too bad. We got up early so that we had time for one more spectacular breakfast. I don’t know how they afford to include this size of breakfast with your room. Doesn’t matter because they had cake! Finally! We headed to the room and got packed in time to checkout at 9am. It is a 40 min drive to the airport plus we have to stop and fill up the tank before we drop it off. Now we just have to make it without any accidents.

People are impatient this morning and tailgating. We came into a construction zone with alternating one way traffic which was stop and go. The guy is front of me kept tailgating the guy in front of him. Finally there was a quick stop in front of him and I saw him brake but I also saw the car in front of him raise into the air. Next thing you know they are out of their cars examining damage. The front car was not happy to say the least. Perfect, now I have cars behind me honking which I absolutely hate! This is a cliff side road so there was no where for them to go. They must have accepted the damage because they got in their cars and continued. Every car has damage over here probably from events like this.

We made it to the Rental Car drop off, video taped our car and checked it in. This way we have a record of how it looked when we dropped it off. 3 buses pulled up to the departure door and unloaded tons of people in front of us. Luckily we were checked in already and just needed to check our carry on luggage. They have smaller baggage requirements over here so our carry on’s were a little too big. We skipped the line and went to the self serve kiosk which was fast and really easy.

TSA is not as stressful as it is in the US. I feel like they are actually willing to help you and not talk down to you. We placed everything on the belt and walked through the metal detector to wait for our luggage. Lori’s came through but mine did not. I was directed to the side where they were waiting with my backpack. I signaled to the agent to go ahead and check the bag as I had nothing to hide. He dug deep as if he knew what he was looking for. He pulled out a full flask of alcohol that I bought back in Rovinj over 2 weeks ago. Crap, I forgot that I had that. I’m busted without even trying to be sneaky. He was pretty cool and offered to let me drink the whole thing. I did take a couple hits off it and had forgotten of delicious it was which is the reason why I bought it. It was an apple cinnamon flavored liquor. I’m bummed that I forgot about that all this time. I could have been enjoying it rather than swigging it.

The plane ride was uneventful. It was about a 1 hour flight. We had purchased seats in the exit row for more leg room. None of the seats reclined on the whole plane. One of the interesting things about sitting in the exit row with Ryan Air is that they do not allow you to have anything under the seat or even a purse or jacket on your lap. They do have dedicated bins for the people who sit in the exit rows. There always seems to be a lot of jockeying for overhead bin space so having our own worked out well.

We arrived in Bari and had a rental car waiting through Eurocar. The lady at the desk offered me an Alfa Romeo which I initially jumped on until the voice of reason (Lori) spoke up and squashed the idea. Apparently our insurance does not cover that car. Crap! We ended up with a car that I didn’t know existed. I initially got in and nearly broke my neck on the roof. My head was against the headliner and I could not see out of the windshield. There was no electric button lowering the seat but I finally figured out that if you pump the recline lever it will lower. Kind of odd.

The airport grounds were littered with garbage and I already wanted to go back to Croatia where litter is nearly nonexistent. Lori wanted to tour Bari which is the 4th largest city in Italy. We drove to their old town and we were not impressed. It resembled some walled cities that we had toured over the last several weeks but there was graffiti everywhere and more litter. What happened to our favorite country from 2 years ago? We found parking in a ramp and walked to Old Town. We stopped at a local food joint for a chicken wrap and fries. It was just ok. It was not the delicious fries that we were used to. We walked around for over an hour and decided that we had seen enough. I think there are better views to come.

Our hotel (Marriott) was about 20 minutes South in a town called Polignano a Mare. We are right off the highway so we have not seen anything of the town yet. That will be tomorrow. We decided to just hang out at the hotel because it was around 5pm. The bell hop took us to our room. We opened the door and could immediately see across it. No conference table, no living room, no robes and slippers! We were back to reality. The place is nice and fairly new but it was no executive suite.

We tried to lift our spirits and headed to the hotel bar. We had a couple drinks and cheered Italy. This is a great country and we are excited to see the parts that we missed last trip. We plan on a tuck tuck (rickshaw) ride tomorrow in town. We called it a night around 7pm.