A brief stay in Italy and then on to Greece! 🇬🇷

After a silky smooth ferry crossing from Barcelona we arrive in Italy and were soon bumping along their pothole filled roads. For those of you who have not driven in Italy it is quite an experience! We were careful to secure any loose items in the Moho and check the tyre pressures before setting out on our journey across to the ferry terminal at Ancona, the roads are quite frankly awful with frequent potholes large enough to lose a small child in! Add that to the impatient Italian drivers, driving in Italy is not much fun! What we did find on our short stay was a friendly welcome from the people we met as well as a really interesting medieval town where we stayed on their motorhomers Aire (complete with fresh water, waste disposal and even electric hook up!)
The town of Offagna is only 10miles from the ferry terminal at Ancona making it a perfect place to stopover before your crossing to Greece, if we visit here again we will definitely plan a longer stay to explore the town and surrounding countryside.

Our view from the motorhome

We checked in to the port and the whole experience can only be described as chaotic! Not knowing the procedure to follow at the port didn't help but by the time we had boarded the ship we heaved a sigh of relief when we entered our cabin for the night! Once again we had a smooth crossing and the time passed quickly, we soon landed on Greek soil and were heading down the road to our first stop at the quiet harbour village of Plataria, a few miles south of the port of Igoumenitsa.
Did I say quiet? It was for the most part, but on Sunday morning the whole church service in Greek was loudly broadcast by loudspeaker right next to our parking spot!

The Greek Orthodox Church Plataria

Fortunately is happened only once so didn't really cause us too much trouble! We were able while we were there to get out on our bikes and cycle along the glorious coast road to a nearby village where we
picnicked on the seafront. For those of you who have never been to Greece, it is a country of thousands of islands and mile upon mile of stunning rocky coastlines. All along these coastlines are many, many seaside resorts with apartments and small hotels for all the visiting tourists.

Distant snow capped mountains 

The sea when the sun shines is a beautiful turquoise colour and the water is so clear, but sadly we didn't see as much of the sunshine as we would have liked as we had frequent grey skies and rain, we wondered if maybe we had come to Greece to early in the season. Perhaps the snow capped mountains in the distance was a clue to the April temperatures!
Well, there is no turning back so with eternal optimism we headed south to the Peloponnese peninsula in search of warmer climes.