French Finale

My final train ride in France went without error. After leaving Alpe d’Huez at 7:30am, I arrived in Paris at around 1pm.

I was again CouchSurfing, but as it was a Friday my hosts had to work so we had arranged to meet at the Hoche metro station at 6:30. This gave me five and a half hours to kill and after wandering lost around the complex Gare du Lyon for about half an hour, I finally found the luggage check which turned out to be incredibly expensive. Welcome to Paris.

I checked my bags, checked the tourist information centre, then checked my new map. After ripping the map in half by mistake, I grabbed another which showed the routes which the tour busses take. I figured that I’d leave the main sites ’till the next day and so set off to find the French National Library. This, I gathered, is supposed to be a modern architectural centrepiece, and it was very cool. Four seperate buildings in L shapes donned the corners of the structure (in the middle was great public space and a large cluster of treess), the passage between them underground.

French National Library

After the library, I ventured back over the river via a bridge which I guess was specifically added when the library was built. On the otherside, opposite the library, was some kind of sports centre – a crazy geometric building covered in grass, skylights, and bright blue metal framing.

Sports Centre

This also appeared to be a popular youth hangout as it was crawling with teenagers who I thought should have been in school. I passed these kids and began to walk back towards the train station. I was walking along thhe river, under a bridge, when I spotted a very nice homeless set-up complete with tents, tables, chars, appliances (I’m not sure how they got power for them) and even a christmas tree!

Homeless setup

When I got back to the station I still had a lot of time until I had to head west on the metro so I began to walk towards Bastille, a very large and famous round-about.

Bastille

Now I had to make the decision. What to see. I decided on making a brief appearance at Notre Dame but trying not see too much of it. And after walking down a street which I thought was the right one for a while, getting lost, and then getting reorientated, I spotted the small island on which the cathedral was located.

Notre Dame

I then crossed on to the island, but kinda tried not to see too much of Notre Dame itself – I wanted to keep it until I had more time – so just passed by and went on my way. About an hour later I was back at the train station and ready to take the metro to Hoche.

This was crazy, it was rush hour and here I was trying to take the busiest metro in the world with two bags full of junk! I even had to change lines. But it was OK, I made it to Hoche faster than I thought (with enough time to take a little walk around) and soon met my CouchSurfing hosts, Clair and Francis (who was actually from a French owned island off the south-east coast of Madagascar called Reunion). We walked back to their place, had dinner, talked about all sorts of things and had a pretty good evening. Both Clair and Francis were amazingly hospitable and were offering me things left, right, and centre. It turned out that I was the first person that they had hosted!

From this point of my time in Paris, I must be honest, I was a bit lazy! I think I was just tired from all the partying I did in the alps. But I made sure I saw all the big sites. the next morning I got my self out of bed and headed back to Notre Dame to get a proper look. And after all the cathedrals that I had seen in this trip, I have to say I was a little disappointed. This one gets talked up by everyone, but in some ways it dosen’t even compare to many of the others I’ve seen, especially the Italian ones. Here is a picture of it anway:

Notre Dame

From here I headed towards the famous gallery, the Louvre. Again I was lazy, I decided not to go inside. Partly because of time (two days to see the whole thing!) and partly because of money. It’s becoming rather skint and I can’t afford 9 Euros to go to an art gallery, as much as I would have liked to. The buildings and the glass pyramid were especially impressive though! I hadn’t realised that it was so big.

The Louvre

From the Louvre I headed through the massive gardens which extend in front of it. At the other end of them was a small christmas fair with a pretty large ferris wheel. It was here that I caught my first glimpse of the famous Eiffel Tower, and it was then that I though “yeah, I’m really in Paris”.

It was beginning to get dark so I decided to head back. I was supposed to text Clair when I returned to the apartment block so that she could let me in. I was late and my phone had decided to run out of money and not let me top up the credit. So I headed to the apartment and snuck inside with another resident. I got up to level 7 and realised that it was the wrong building! So back down I went and over to the other building. There was no one to let me in so I just skulked around the entrance until a group of people opened it, not thinking twice about who I could be or what I was doing there. I then headed up to the right level 7 and Francis let me in. That night we were going to go out but in the end decided against it as Francis was sick, Clair was getting sick, none of their friends could make it and I was tired.

The following day Clair and Francis had said they would take me out to Versailles so around lunchtime (after a good sleep in) we got in the car and drove out there. The main attraction in Versailles is the palace which has been home to many a French king and queen.

Palace at Versailles

Inside the palace’s grounds and also inside the palace itself were a number of sculptural works from American artist Jeff Koons. The first one which I saw made for a pretty cool photo with the palace refelected in it.

Royal Reflection

The inside of the palace was pretty cool, but to be honest, for the price that you pay it was definitely not as good as the palace in Brussels which was free. There were many dark rooms with large numbers of paintings of past residents, historical beds and furniture, and a terrible audio guide which really didn’t tell you anything you couldn’t read on the signs. The highlight of this palace was the gardens which I hear are very popular and much more beautiful in the summer.

Gardens at Versailles

That evening was another quiet one. Apart from a trip to a street which houses a huge amount of electronics stores to get some things for Clair, we spent most of the night trying to get the French television system to allow us to watch a French film with English subtitles. This  did not end up working, so we began to watch 300 but soon all of us were pretty sleepy and we ended up turning it off and headed off to bed.

The next day was a Monday and Francis and Clair had to go off to work. It was time again for me to see some sights, so mid-morning I set off to make sure I didn’t miss the sights that Paris is known for. My first stop was the Arch de Triomphe, set in the middle of a huge round-about and extremely expensive to visit the inside of. I took a few photos  and then started to make my way towards the Eiffel Tower.

Arch de Triomphe

The Eiffel Tower is big. It was even bigger than I thought it was and it was very cool to finally see it in all it’s glory.

Eiffel Tower

I then headed down towards it. The metal framework is amazing and it made for some pretty cool silhouette photos.

Eiffel silhouette

After a little bit of decision making (time was running short), I decided to ascend the tower. The line took about 25 mintues which was a pretty good amount of time considering people queue for hours in the summer. I chose on of the legs which only offers the stairs and just under 400 stairs later I had made it to the first level. Over 200 stair more I was at the second level. The view was pretty cool from here although the day was rather overcast. This low cloud prevented me from spending further money and taking the lift all the way to the top (which was in fact in the clouds).

View from the Eiffel Tower

By the time I got back down it had started to rain so I got on the metro and began to head back to Hoche. That evening was an interesting dinner. I had told Francis that I had neve eated escargot before, so in no time he had whipped up an appertiser and I was eating some sort of pesto roasted snails – not bad at all really but I found it a bit hard to stomach them, something most probably psychological. After this we had hotdogs with salad and “French” dijon mustard which actaully almost killed me. I put way too much on thinking it was like American mustard and it felt like I was drinking vodka infused with chili peppers – I was crying and sniffing annd Francis thought it was funny!

The next morning I was off again. An early train to the airport and a flight for just over an hour saw me land in London. It was Christmas time!

France and the Beach

I ended up in Cannes because I couldn’t find anywhere to stay in Nice. I arrived on he train from Bern at around 7:30pm and, following the instructions, made my way to my host, Franck’s, place.

Franck was cool. Extra friendly and hospitable and after a long chat about everything and nothing, he suggested that we go and get some kebabs and a drink with his friend Marco, a Dutch guy living in Cannes. So we headed out, only to find that the kebab shop which Franck wanted to go to was having it’s one week of closure for the year. We then headed down towards an Irish pub (they have these all over the place!) and had a few drinks which continued into the night back at Francks, despite the fact that both he and Marco had work the following day. At about 3am, we decided to call it a night.

The next morning Franck poured both him and I a coffee and left for work. It was a beautiful day so I got ready and headed out to explore Cannes. After stopping by the tourism information centre and grabbing a map, I headed down towards the beach only to get distracted on the way by one of those shops which sells hippy clothes, incense, and blankets and other items from various Asian countries; Tibet, India, Malaysia, etc.

I got stuck in this store for about an hour and half. The guy who ran it was half Chinese, half Tibetan and born in Borneo, and a motor-mouth extrodanaire. He talked and talked and talked, and gave me coffee and talked some more. It was ridiculous. But finally I got out, phew!

Me and the shop owner

Then I headed down the main shopping street, passing a cinema which had a small film festival playing French films, and another playing old films in English. They were playing the 1979 version of Planet of the Apes, which incidently I had thought about seeing recently, but unfortunately it wasn’t at the right time. So I kept on walking and ended up at the beach!

Cannes beach

While I was there I saw the real thing, French kids flipping all over the show practising Parkour!

Parkour!

I started to walk along the beach in the direction other than what is seen in the photo above. Soon I had to leave the beach because it turned into a marina full of large, expensive, launches and the theatre where all the films are played during the Cannes Film Festival each year in May.

Film festival theatre

Af ter this I made my way over the Cannes’ old town. I wandered around though this for some time, checking out all the old buildings and old people, then made my way up the hill to where a clocktower and church looked over the city of  Cannes. The weather was beautiful and it was a great view from up there.

View over Cannes

As the sun began to set I made my way back down to the beach and began to walk. I walked for a while along the beach. It was good to smell and feel the sea spray. Soon the beach ended but I continued to walk further along the shoreline with no real objective other than feeling like walking. As I walked the sun began to set behind the hills in the distance.

Cannes Sunset

Once the sun had set, I began to head back. As I approached the Old Town again, I noticed a fun fair which I hadn’t seen on my way out. I spent a little while checking it out, not being able to tell if it was being set up or down, being yelled at by random carnies, and trying to avoid spending any money.

Carnival by night

I soon left the carnival and headed back to Francks where we decided to have a quiet night –  both of use were still feeling the gin from the night before.

The following day I planned to go to Monaco but the train workers were on strike. The shortest amount of time it would take for me to get there (usually a one hour or so train ride) was 5 hours so I decided to flag it. Isn’t the French train system supposed to be one of the best in the world? This is ridiculous. I ended up heading back to Francks and we just hung out for the day, listening to music and watching crazy French TV.

In the evening we set out for Marco’s house for dinner. Franck promptly reversed his car into another parked car then drove off, got lost, went around in circles and arrived at Marco’s about half an hour late. Another friend of theirs was also there and that evening we sat around and ate far, far too much food and drank even more wine, which Marco told me I had to do as I was in France.  He also told me that I had to eat several cheeses after dinner, so I indulged and ate some crazy cheeses which I would never have dared eat before – they were not half bad either. By this time I was bloated, drunk, and it was 3am so Franck and I headed back to his place. No late night gin this time!

(This post is rubbish! I’m starting to get lazy I think. Sorry my fair readers.)

Berning Down the House!

From Zurich I made my way to Bern. I had intially planned to take the Luzern-Interluken route but since I had already done this the day before, it was just a one hour trip. I arrived in Bern at about midday to find my next host, Regula wandering around the station looking for me just as I was doing for her. Lucky for me that we found each other at that time, as my train was late and she was about to leave.

In an old house near the train staion which usually had a bar, cafe, womens area, theatre and holds frequent parties, a once a month flea market was being held. Here you could by almost everything you could think of from scooters and bikes to console games, candlesticks and tea. I had to hold myself back as I saw so much stuff that I would have liked to buy but unfortunately can’t carry around with me. We spent a few hours looking around the markets and then decided to head back to her place.

Crazy bicycle for sale

Regula lived in a very old house which was situated inside an industrial area in a town about half an hour out of Bern called Oberburg. This industrial area has a building right next to the house which begins some sort of extreme hammering each morning at seven o’clock which shakes the entire house, continuing until five in the evening. Asides from Regula living there, there was also Nicole and Dino, a suitably hippy couple, another girl whoes name I never found out, and one more guy and another couple who were away at the time. For me this was great as I was given my own room which included its own fireplace to keep me toasty warm in the freezing nights. That night Regula, Nicole, Dino and I just hung out, ate some amazing food cooked by Nicole (who should be a chef), and listened to music. I spent half the evening dashing up and down the stairs to keep my little fire going.

The old house

The next day I was to meet up with a girl called Flurina who has contacted me the previous night on CouchSurfing, asking if I’d like to be shown around Bern. So at around midday, I met her in the Bern station and we set out on our mission. The first place to visit was the house where I had been at the flea market the previous day. I had wanted to get a betting picture of  it.

Flea market location

Next we wandered down to one of Bern’s many bridges. Following this we made our way to the highest tower in Bern at the XXXXXXX church. It was many more stairs that I had predicted and after we fought our way up with a number of stops, we found the the view was totally worth it. Unfortunately over half of the tower was closed to it was next to impossible to get a decent view from the other side.

View from tower

After we headed back down, Flurina suggested that next on the agenda should be “bears and fountains”, so we went for a walk towards the Bern bears. For some reason or another, there is a pit in the middle of the city which for numerous years has held a number of bears. It’s a horrible concrete pit and many people oppose it. The bears look so sad in there, just sitting around waiting for food and most probably wishing that the winter would become cold enough to hibernate.

Bern's Bear

Next were the fountains. Not as amazing as many of the other fountains which I have seen on this trip, but pretty cool as a number of them (which run up the middle of the main pedestrian streets) are statues of folktales. The one which is the best and I think every one agrees with is this one of a man eating small (bad mannered) children – a tale parents would often tell to their kids to keep them in line!

Child eater!

A walk down the riverside followed lunch, and when we were about ten minutes down stream (which was 6.66 degrees by the way!) I spotted the zoo on the otherside of the river which Flurina seemed to think was free. So back we headed and over a bridge which we had passed. Then we just walked in! Past some ponies and mules, fluffy rabbits and then… RACOOONS! My god I just keep having child-like exciting moments! So mischevious looking and so cute at the same time.

Racooooooon :)

Onward we walked up the hill to find a pond full of pink flamingos. I find these birds hilarious, especially the way the walk around in the water. They would move around to find the sun in flocks, flapping their wings to gain all the sun they could get.

Flamingos

Our trip to the zoo was our last activity for the day, and as the sun was setting we headed back to the train station where I thanked Flurina for showing me around and then set off back to Oberburg for another evening of music and hanging out.

The following day Nicole had no work and so decided to come with me on a trip to Gruyères to visit the H.R. Giger museum. This is the guy who invented the alien from the film Alien. It was lucky that she came along as it involved 3 trains and a bus, plus numerous amounts of German and French speaking. On arrival we had about an hour to spare so we decided to have a look around Gruyères, a very quaint little medival town set on the edge of the Swiss Alps.

Gruyères

At 1pm the museum opened. This place was crazy, the mind of this man insane. There were so many amazing pictures of creatures that I could never dream of. Very dark and for some reason, also very erotic. They had this little “adults only” section which seemed pretty pointless as almost all of his work had some weird alien sexuality to it. Unfortunately you were not alowed to take photos inside, but this was on the outside:

Babies in a gun

And there was even a bar which he designed, indeed also crazy:

Giger bar

And soon it was time to make the long trek back to Oberburg. We were not back for long when Regula came in from work, covered in snow! “It’s snowing!” she called, and looking out the window, it definitely was. So after another beautiful dinner made by Nicole, she, Dino and I headed outside into the already 4-5″ snow to play around. Snow fights were not an option of choice, and I was amazed to find that you actaully can roll snow into huge balls, resulting in by far the best snowman I have ever built.

Snowman!

This went on for a few hours and by then we were all tired and soaked and ready to sleep, but not after more music and hanging out, though!

I had initially planned to leave the following day, but it took me a while to find a place to stay so I spent one more day in Bern. This day I used for doing nothing. I headed into Bern to get a train ticket and then just spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing and watching the snow out the window. A quiet evening and my time in Bern was over, again going so fast!

The next morning I was off to Cannes!

Bring on the Cheese!

I hadn’t really planned what I was going to do after travelling through Italy, and at the last minute I decided to go to Switzerland in search of snow, and to begin my treck towards Paris, where I will be just before Christmas. So the morning after the Cinque Terre adventure, Carmen and I parted ways at the train station, her to Rome and I was heading to Zurich.

Eight train-filled hours later I was there. My first mission was to get to a town about twenty-five minutes out of Zurich called Winterthur where I would meet my host, Lia. Finding the train was the easy part, finding an ATM to withdraw Swiss franks was not so easy. Finally I figured this out and soon I was travelling north to Winterthur where I found Lia waiting for me.

That first night we did not do a lot, we were both tired and had decided to have an earlyish night so she could show me around Zurich thee following day. In the morning we ate and then headed into Zurich, there was much to do! Unfortunately it was raining, but this was not to stop us. First of all we headed out of the train station and down the main street, appropriately named Bahnofstrasse. This was a street filled with expensive clothing and watch stores, intermingled with douzens of different banks promoting private bank accounts. On the way down this street we stopped to check out various churches.

Church clock tower

We ate roasted chestnuts, talked and took numerous photos of Zurich dressed in it’s best Christmas attire.

Christmas pinecones

We then passed the Zurich lake and headed towards a secondhand bookshop which we both wanted to check out. The English section was not so large, but I managed to find Catcher In The Rye and Dracula for 3 franks which is a damned good deal. Lia bought a collection of 13 huge photography books that she would have to collect later as they were much too heavy to carry around.

But before we hit the bookstore, we stopped by:

Google office Zurich

This was pretty cool to see. Apparantly the inside of the building is amazingly well equipped with meditation rooms, aquariums, a gym, and much more. Outside the office was parked this Google bike! I hear that the staff are given them to use.

Google bike

After we left the bookshop, we headed back towards the centre of town, where we crossed the river and checked out another church.

Zurich's riverside

Twin church towers

And now was the exciting part! We decided to head up the local tall mountain of which I forget the name and climb the view tower. We took the train and when we arrived I was thouroughly excited to see a snowy path leading to the top. I could barely contain myself and was running around like an over excited child.

Snowy path

When we got to the top we headed up the tower and found the view of the alps in all directions. It was amazing!

View over Zurich

The sun started to set so we headed back down the the tower and began to construct a small snowman on a park bench which I was actaully able to pick up and carry around with me until I picked him up off of a chair and he lost his balance, his head falling off.

Snowman!

By this time it was getting pretty late and we had a dinner date with 100 other CouchSurfers out in the countryside. This event was run by the Zurich CouchSurfing group and was basically 100+ people in a big cottage in the countryside eating over 20kgs of cheese fondue and drinking too much wine. It was a whole heap of fun! There were heaps of Swiss people and many others from all over the world there too. One guy I talked to had even cycled from Belgium to Serbia in 4 months, crazy!

the CHEESE

This went on ’till the early hours of the morning and when Lia decided that she has drunk far too much, we headed home.

The next day the weather was terrible, it was raining something atrocious, so instead of checking out any more outdoor sights we planned a scenic train trip. This would be from Luzern to Interluken. So we got on the train and headed for Luzern. When we got there we had some time to kill, so went for a short walk in the city, over the famous bridge:

Some old bridge

and past some very cool decorated buildings:

Decorated house

Soon it was time to get on the train, so we headed back to the station, boarded the train and we were off. In no time you could feel the pull of the train heading upwards and soon enough we were engulfed in snowy forest and paddocks. It was like nothing I’ve ever seen before! We opened the window of the train at one point when it stopped to get some photos and the woman sitting infront of us ended up covered in snow! It was snowing like I’ve never experienced.

Lotsa snow!

In what seemed like no time at all, the night fell and we were headed back to Zurich to meet the CouchSurfers again for their monthly meeting which just ended up being a number of people drinking in a bar. It was good to see some of the people again from last night and meet more new people. I can’t keep track of all the people I’m meeting everywhere, there are too many!

That was my final night in Zurich, it really felt like it had gone much too fast but it was definitely a great time. In the morning I was off to Bern.

At last, warmth.

Off the plane I stepped onto Athenian soil, a balmy 18 degrees. The plan was simple enough. I was to make my way to the CouchSurfing meeting at the Barrio Cafe in the centre of Athens and act out the character of the traveller with the lost documents, appealing to the CS Ambassadors.

When I stepped off the metro in Athens Central, I got lost. All the tiny streets going in every which direction, disorientated me rather badly and I ended up wandering around in the night looking for streets which I was supposed to turn up. I sat Wedown on a wall to try and reorganise myself when I was approached by Mike, a Canadian and fellow CouchSurfer. He told me that he had been in Athens for about a week and also the year prior, offering to help me find where I needed to go. Unfortunately, he was just about as useless as the map I was using and it ended up being me who found the Cafe in the end. It was good to have someone to talk to, though – you never know how dangerous these places are at night.

Arriving at the cafe, I staged my act to the first ambassador I saw, Lena. She was much less stressed than I had hoped and the joke kind of faded into nothing. Basically she said that I could sort it all out in the morning. When she found out it was a joke, she kicked me repeatedly in the leg yelling “LIAR!!”. Soon afterwards, I found my host for the first two nights in Athens, Vanessa, and later we headed back to her place, a huge apartment about seven metro stops out of central Athens.

The following day I had agreed to meet up with Mike to check out some of the sights. The first stop was the western world’s most prominent historical place, the Acropolis. We began to walk up the hill and came to a place which had a pretty good view over the city.

View over Athens

Further up we walked, I had an arguement with the ticket office lady over my student ID which has no expiry date on it, and after paying more than I wanted to, we were inside the complex. The main structure which everyone comes to see in the Acropolis is the Panthenon, a huge columned building which was covered in scafholding, my new pet hate. I thought that maybe I had come in a bad time, being winter, but later found out that the scafholding had been on there for 25 years and they were nowhere near ready to take it down. This was confirmed through seeing a number of photos of the Acropolis which all seemed to have been taken in the late 70s.

Panthenon

Down below the Panthenon is the Theatre of Dionysus.

Theatre of Dionysus

After seeing these two amazing sights, we walked back down the hill and checked out some more crazy ruins which I can’t remember the name of.

Lunch was had, then Mike decided that he should probably get back to his hostel and start packing as he was going to head back to Israel (where he was working or attending school or something) that evening. So we parted ways and I decided that I was going to walk up to the top of the Filopappou Hill.

On the way up I passed the Jail of Socrates.

Socrates Jail

Soon I made it to the top. The temple was less impressive than it had looked from a distance (though still cool) but the view of the Acropolis was pretty amazing.

Filopappou Monument

View of the Acropolis

On the way back I walked down through Pynx and past the Ancient Agora, but unfortunately it was closed. That was first on the agenda for the following day. I headed back to Vanessa’s place and that night we hung out, chatting about classic cars (she drove in a Citroen 2CV rally across europe) and good music and such.

Vanessa had friends coming to stay for the next few days, so this meant I had to leave the following morning. But it was ok, I had arranged to stay with Lena, the woman who was kicking me, and her seven year old son, Angelos, so I headed out to her place which was on the opposite side of Athens. Once set up there, I headed back into the centre as the Ancient Agora was calling me. There I met a Chinese American guy who was also travelling alone. Once again I was asked for directions in a city I know very little about, but this time I knew where I was going as he was going to the same place.

We hung out, walking around the ancient ruins, with the most impressive part definitely being the Temple of Hephaistos and Athena.

Temple of Hephaistos and Athena

From here I wandered down towards my last ancient site, the Temple of Olympian Zeus.

Temple of Olympian Zeus

The following day I visited the Museum of Archeology which was pretty amazing, although you can really see only so many marble statues, no matter how impressive they are. They also had a pretty good Egyptian collection and a gallery of Greek vases, none of which I recognised from my 7th form Classics class. After this was my time to check out all the crazy markets and shops which Athens has to offer. A jersey and backgammon set were bought, then I headed home.

The night Lena, her son, and I attended a CouchSurfing meeting in a local park which included crazy games, moonlight backgammon, and a small party at Lena’s upon return. Wine was served from 1.5 litre plastic bottles which looked like they should have contained meths. I thought the Grecians would have more pride in their wine considering ethey had a god devoted entirely to it.

The next day it was time to leave, I was heading for Rome but the mission was long. At first I was ripped off by a taxi driver, not by much, to get to the correct bus station to leave for Patras. On top of my fair he charged me for luggage and for the fact that I called him to come!! At the bus station I ran around like crazy with not much time to spare, only finding my bus at the last minute.

After a three hour bus ride, I arrived in Patras, with enough time to get myself on the Superfast ferry to Bari in Italy. Now this was an ordeal. Firstly, I went to the cabin which my ticket stated. There were two guys in there who started yelling at me about “reception! Reception!”. I so went to the reception to find that my ticket was wrong (like everybody’s) and got given a new cabin. I was alone in a 4 bed cabin which was nice, until aout 1:30 am which a bunch of children busted in and woke me up. The guard then made me get up, pack my stuff and go back to the reception again, to which they sent me back to the room. Now around 2am, I was back in the cabin with no children, but had gained the loudest snoarer in history. I managed to get back to sleep, only to be woken two hours early by the other guy in my cabin going on about us almost being at Bari.

Two hours later we were at Bari. I got off the ferry, became comfused for a while, then took a taxi to the train station, but not after being accosted by a random guy who wanted to take me there for five Euro – not in your random car!

In Bari I had a few hours to kill, so I headed to the tourist information centre, got a map and decided to check out the Old Town. There were town walls which you could walk upon.

Bari City Walls

And a large church.They also had a castle which was pretty cool and had been rebuilt and extended many times over the years.

Bari Castle

Soon it was time for the train to Rome, so off I headed and by that evening, I was ready to sleep!