Welcome On Board the Fantastic in Palermo!

Dave the motorhome has been reversed into a wing-mirror kissing spot in Garage D of the GNV ferry Fantastic, still docked in Palermo harbour at 12:37. The departure time on the ticket is 10am! We’re not bothered, we’re in flipping luxury. Not wanting to leave Charlie in kennels for ten hours, we’ve coughed up for a cabin which is much bigger than Dave, and Charlie’s got his own ‘Fido Park’ (aka the rear open deck) to play in.

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€327.81 one way is expensive by anyone’s measure, but we’re loving the luxury of sea-facing cabin and having our pet pooch with us.

Getting to the ferry port two hours before departure seems to be an international benchmark. If you’re north European that is. Our alarm didn’t get chance to go off as we left the sosta this morning at 7:30am, a short trundle through Palermo’s traffic to the port. We’ve been here for over 5 hours, locals arrived at 11:00, an hour after departure time.

As the boat’s just set off, and I’m using the phone to connect to t’Interweb, just a few photos to follow. Hopefully we’ll be back on grid tomorrow, depending on how good our Tunisian SIM research has been!

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Halting Dave half way up the on-ramp wasn’t such a good idea as we burned rubber trying to get him moving again!

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A fair few locals have mopeds and bikes loaded onto their roofs.

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Having and entire set of furniture on your roof seems quite normal on ferries to North Africa!

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One of the port policemen spoke perfect English, calling Ju ‘Madam’, and apologisingly telling us the boat would be, maybe, two hours late.

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And they’re off, Italian rules, every man for himself, stop for no man!

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I thought I’d seen it all. They drove this wreck onto the ferry.

Cheaper than Dixons delivery, just pop the fridge freezer on the roof!

Hopefully we’ll get into Tunisia before tomorrow, but we’re really enjoying our time on board so far!

Cheers, Jay

2 replies
  1. Mike and June says:

    Hi,
    Getting exciting now, love the pics of the “cargo cars”

    We don’t know anyone thats motorhomed Tunisia! And we know a few folks! Keep safe!

    Mike and June

    Reply

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