Today we are getting a ferry from Civitavecchia to Sardinia which we are very much looking forward to. To get to Civitavecchia we have to take 3 trains, this will make the day more stressful, the first train is at 11:13 and are check out is 10:00 so we already have to try and kill time at a train station. One train goes to Rome...needless to say we are not excited to be going back there.
2 trains down, 1 to go, this was it, our last train with Trenitalia, although we disagreed with having to walk through an entire train station to get from platform 1 to platform 29 it was worth it as it was our last train, but oh no, Trenitalia had one more surprise for us, the train broke down and was subsequently cancelled leaving us to get a replacement train.
On the way to the ferry port I made the mistake of reading the small print of the ferry ticket, it turns out that if we want to carry bags with us then have to pay for this. This stressed me out and Paul's laid back attitude of we'll deal with it when it comes up is not helping. The ferry was a night ferry from 22:15 to 5:30 in the morning and after spending 4 hours in McDonald's using their free wifi we finally boarded the ferry. The ferry port took at least 20 minutes to navigate and after all that stressing we were just allowed to take out bags straight on board without them even being brought up.
The ferry was very clean and modern with numerous facilities on board, there was a bar on the top so we treated ourselves to a drink after our long day. The ferry was going straight to Barcelona but stopping Porto Torres first.
Our seats were in a dark room of 150 and some people were already lying across 3 seats to get to sleep, the room didn't get busy at all but we knew that we were in for a long night, I got about 30 minutes sleep overall whilst Paul got less than 5.
We passed the time playing on our decides even though there was no wifi and wandering around the ship. We arrived in Sardinia at about 6:00 and have still had no sleep, there was a free bus that took us out of the port and dropped us off somewhere in the centre of town next to a bus stop.
I turned on my data roaming to get directions to our hotel. It was over 3 miles away and we had had no sleep at all, so we were like zombies. A woman at the bus stop came to us and talked in Italian asking where we were going, I said the hotel name and she told us which bus to get. She spoke no English and we don't speak Italian at 6 in the morning so it was very difficult. She was very friendly and tried to help as much as she could. She got on her bus and the bus stayed for about 10 minutes. She came rushing off with google translate saying 'my husband comes here' and I nodded not really grasping the situation. Then a car pulled up and her husband had come to take us to our hotel. We were overwhelmed and I nearly cried. We didn't think twice about our personal safety. He was very friendly and spoke to us in Italian and took us to the hotel. We had no cash to give him so we offered our Bacardi breezers which he politely declined.
When we got in the hotel it was about 7 o'clock and the receptionist told us our room would not be ready until 11, so we would have to wait in a sofa area. We were absolutely shattered and this time is a bit a fuzzy. We both nearly had a cry as we sat and waited. Then at about 8:30 a woman came up to us and said it would be 10 minutes for our room. Our faces lit up and it was the longest 10 minutes of our lives. We got to the room and just fell asleep straight away. More tomorrow!