It's All Greek to Me! Bed wetters, thieves, and con artist scoundrels...

This chapter begins in the Rome Train Station. What was to be a relaxing train ride turned Into an episode of "The Amazing Race." we had plans to catch a ferry in Bari to head across to Patras, "Greece" but as luck would have it our intended train sold out as we stood in line to get tickets. The next train available would leave us with under an our to get to the ferries. (which we learned from online forums were well over an hours journey by foot. Not to mention standing in line for tickets, passing security, not getting lost and rolling the dice on a delay free departure from Rome. There was hope, but we needed the stars to align. Sarah figured we could save some time by buying advance ferry tickets, this proved to be a good plan but our tickets didn't actually say which port we left from (there were two.) Upon arriving in Bari we quickly made friends with the first man to say Taxi and found our way to the correct port as he recognized our ferry line from our tickets and knew it was pier 7(yeah, a little lucky we know.) We made it safely and on time onto our correct ferry to begin the first 16 hour leg of our 24 hour journey. As I write this we are on a bus toward Athens, where we will try and connect with another ferry to take us to Any of the Greek Islands. We will let the schedules for the ferris choose where we go as they all look beautiful and choosing can be so hard:)  10 hours ago we thought we might not make it this far in a single day. We sailed the high seas in a cramped deck with what appeared to be a motley crew of homeless pirates, riding in the stench of their urine soaked clothes and rumbles of their never ending snores. Sleep was hard to come by as our bags never seemed safe within the reach of three scruffy men who "accidentally mishandled" baggage that was not theirs, and left with bags from time to time to return empty-handed. We finally made it ashore in Patras, belongings in tow, where we were welcomed (or not so welcomed) by four different men with cars soliciting themselves as cabs. They all offered to drive us to Athens for 250 euros, and indicated that since it was a Sunday, and an election day, No busses were running and a cab was our only hope. Quickly recognizing this as a high pressure used car sales tactic, we told them we would consider it over lunch and began walking toward the heart of downtown which to our pleasure was only 1 km away, not the 7km the "cabbies" had warned us of. We managed to find some helpful english speaking shopkeepers downtown that gave us train times as well as directions to the station. We have successfully avoided our first really deep tourist trap. Even a girl working for the ferris warned us of the "cancelled" busses and directed us to the mob of "cabbies." Now we're on a bus and we think we're going to Athens! Next post, some small Greek island... Update:  It's now 10:52 pm, local Greek time. We're on yet another ferry. We haven't seen a bed or a shower in well over 30 hours. We won't be arriving in Crete for another ten, but once we arrive,  a 3 hour bus should have us in the oasis of Chania. (but nothing is booked and Sarah is grouchy.) I have been reminding her this is a considerable improvement over the cardboard box that nearly became a reality in florence! On ferries, cabins are 10 times the price of a chair, so needless to say our broke asses are in deck chairs our way to Crete. Not a small island, but our last cabbie dropped us off in front of this ship. Our only common words were "super fast ferries." This is the ferry company that we get a deal with because of our  Eurail pass we purchased! New plan, enjoy crete for 2 or 3 days, hit up a Greek island or two, maybe Santorini and then return to Athens on the 14th for our flight to  Update: Monday, 11:00 am. This is heaven. 46 hours later and we are here. We made our way through Chania and found an immaculate top floor, two level apartment room overlooking the bustling harbor with a.c. and a private patio. I think we have the nicest place in town and it's under budget! Although we both made it from Rome to Crete for under 150 euro, our recommendation is FLY!  Pat and Sarah