Assisi to Ancona to Split – 24 hours in transit

 

Tuesday 30^th July

Assisi is a beautiful city, peaceful and spiritual. We were sorry to be leaving, however, the rest of Europe beckons.

The bus stop for the trip to the station is a one minute walk from the hotel, through a city gate. It’s like another world – a crazy, chaotic world. You leave the calm of Assisi for the maelstrom of “outside the walls”. We waited for the bus, scrambling with the cases to the shade. Eventually a bus arrived and we got on and nothing happened. The driver got off, speaking on his phone, and walked around the bus several times, looking very concerned, then got back on the bus. We waited and waited. After about 20 minutes he told us “un’altra autobus” – you’ll have to get another bus. So all the passengers got off, some getting rather anxious as they had connections to make (not us). Back to a shady spot. More people continued to get on the broken down bus without the driver saying anything to them. They sat there until another passenger told them it wasn’t going anywhere. When the new bus arrived we got on and got to the train station, buying our tickets for Ancona. We waited for ages, but as it was cool in the shade with a slight breeze blowing up the tracks we didn’t mind.

The train trip to Ancona involved a change at Foligno and before too long we caught our first glimpse of the Adriatic Sea. After all the mountains, it was great to see the shiny sea and miles and miles of colored umbrellas on the beach, each covering a rented space. How good it is in Australia, where we have the whole coastline to share for free.

We had to collect our ferry tickets from the agency, which was one bus trip from the railway station and then get another bus to the ferry terminal.

More waiting. Ancona is a port town and we didn’t see much to get us interested. We waited until we could board the ferry.

The ferry, Dalmatia, was late getting away, but that meant we could watch the cars and trucks, and tour buses wait to be allowed on board. Thrilling.

The sun set slowly and we watched as it made its way to the horizon, casting a golden glow over the sea. Very romantic.

The ship sailed an hour late. We were rather tired after all the waiting around bus terminals, train stations, and ferry terminals. We went to sleep in the bunks in our cabin. We both slept well. The crossing was smooth and we woke at 6 to see the sun rise over the islands of the Dalmatian coast as we sailed towards Split.