Day 8 - Total and Utter Port Chaos

The alarm went off at 7am, but only I jumped out of bed and set about dismantling camp. 30 minutes later, Jackie reluctantly surfaced from the tent, just seconds before I was about to deflate her airbed with her on it or not. I was like a whirling dervish and by 8.30am, everything was packed up bar the tent.

We were well ahead of schedule, so we stopped for breakfast. I bought a couple of croissants from the shop which we had with a couple of coffees. I then took a final photo of our lake view. After breakfast we showered, then collapsed and rolled up the tent and packed up the car

After paying up at reception for our pitch rental, a bargain at €216 for 6 nights, we rolled out of camp. We stopped at the local Carrefour, where we purchased our evening meal, 4 ciabatta rolls, a large tub of Philadelphia cheese and 10 litres of white wine. We then set off on our non-toll road journey to the ferry port address on our tickets in Genoa.

Our route took us south down the western shore of Lake Lugano, driving back into Switzerland and through the apparently posh lake side town of Lugano. We headed back towards Como and had to queue for 10 minutes to pass through the Border Control back in to Italy.

The route took us south through the some of Italy’s northern industrial towns that were fairly run down or just plain derelict. We circumnavigated Milan and continued south on roads that were dead straight and bisected more boring towns. One of our biggest achievements was filling up with fuel for €1.76 a litre, which we didn’t find cheaper all day.

We stopped for a comfort break at a service station, for a homemade ciabatta roll. We hunted high and low for the Philadelphia, which should have been in the fridge but it was nowhere to be found. Instead we had to make do with just Bovril, which Jackie managed to get absolutely everywhere, but in the roll. We had a mini domestic over this, which meant that what followed was a blissful hour of silence!

The journey continued with the last hour climbing up and over mountains to Genoa. We were due to arrive at the port at 4.20pm, which seemed like perfect timing, as last check-in was at 5.00pm for the 7.00pm sailing. As we drove into Genoa, I started to get nervous because we encountered lots of roadworks, which diverted us from our scheduled route.

Eventually we arrived at our destination according to the SatNav, but we hadn’t, in fact there wasn’t a harbour or boat in sight. We were in the middle of a one way street, surrounded by tall office like buildings. Strangely other foreign vehicles were also here apparently lost. We redirected the SatNav to the port on the map and tried again. After lots of traffic lights, lane swapping and jostling for position with the impatient Italian drivers and riders, we arrived at our new destination, only to be stopped at the port entrance by police officers who told us we were in the wrong location. Again we weren’t the only ones being turned away.

Luckily, Jackie had the foresight to get a policewoman to put the correct address on my phone, whilst I was turning round. 6 minutes later we ended up at another port entrance, where there were lots vehicles, but no-one seemed to know where to go. We switched between several different queues and had our tickets and passports read at least 4 times.

In the queues it was utter chaos. Some vehicles were being told to turn round, presumably because they were in the wrong place or didn’t have the correct documentation. At the passport control area we witnessed a security guard and passenger almost coming to blows. They were yelling and trying to hit each other, whilst another man was holding them apart.

Eventually we had our tickets checked for a fifth time at a kiosk, where it was confirmed we were in the right place and we were told that we had to follow the arrows to dock 3. For some reason, we ushered onto the ferry almost immediately and given a ticket to confirm that we were parked near Door D3. We weren’t, we were ushered to park near Door A3. These 2 ferry staff then had an argument.

As we were just starting getting our bags out of car (and look for the missing cheese), some bright spark allowed all the motorcycles to drive down and park in the narrow corridor beside our car. It was a miracle we didn’t get hit!

We located our cabin on Level 8 and cracked open the white wine and necked a couple of glasses to repair our frayed nerves. At 6.45pm, now de-stressed, we walked up to the top deck and we waved goodbye to mainland Italy with a glass of wine. The only disappointment was I had lost all wi-fi connection on the ferry and wasn’t able to listen to the cricket.

Once land was out of site, we returned to our cabin, had a roll (without cheese) and went to bed.

Song of the Day - Sailing by Christopher Cross.Read more