We hauled ourselves out of bed before the first light hit the skies and by 7am we were speeding down the hills of Le Marche towards the town of Pedaso, where we caught a train to Ancona and then boarded our ferry for Greece. We briefly considered retracing our steps to Ancona by bicycle but decided the busy seaside roads weren’t really worth the trouble and time it would have take us to pedal the whole distance. Instead, we were happy to find modern Italian trains with low floors that almost met the platform and made it easy for us to get on with our bikes. The train conductor even shooed several local school kids out of the bicycle area so we could prop our bikes up in a large space made just for them. In Ancona we made a quick stop at a supermarket for provisions for the 15-hour voyage and then headed to the port, just a few kilometers from the train station. When the boat arrived we weren’t sure what to expect. We’d only bought deck tickets and didn’t know what that entitled us to. As it turned out, we were very impressed. The deck was partially glassed in so there wasn’t much wind and each side of the top floor had a long line of large picnic tables , with a swimming pool and hot tub in the middle section. If only we’d thought to pack our swim suits! Eventually we spread our sleeping mats out and crashed on the floor and on the picnic table and managed to get a few hours of sleep before the boat docked in Igoumenitsa at 5:30am.