Like many 21-year-olds before us, my boyfriend and I were on a budget when we travelled to Europe in 2016. We had decided we would spend no more than €100 each day on accommodation, food and transport. For the first few weeks of our trip, which we began in Italy, this was entirely possible.
We walked everywhere until we developed blisters and our feet bled. We stayed at hotels and bed and breakfasts, described as “rustic” and “charming” in online listings, though they were anything but. We carb-loaded to stay full: pastries for breakfast, paninis and panzerotti for lunch and pizza and pasta for dinner. We were having a wonderful time, despite the havoc the lack of fruit or vegetables was wreaking on our digestive systems.
But as we prepared to leave Italy and head to Croatia, we were struck with our first budgetary dilemma. Do we spend €200 each on a one-hour flight from Rome to Split, or €110 for a combined 15-hour train and ferry journey? Given the latter also involved a meal and a night’s accommodation in a cabin that promised “outside views”, we decided to give it a go.
We arrived at “passport control”, which entailed a woman having a cursory glance at our documents and directing us to place our baggage in the scanner. The first red flag was the spiderwebs on the machine. The woman shoved our baggage through the stationary conveyer belt and we were cleared to head to the pier.
The second red flag was how few travellers had gathered. The ship was huge – I later Googled it and found it had an occupancy of more than 1,000 – but there were about two dozen of us. It was early June, so not yet peak season, I explained to my boyfriend.
In hindsight, most travellers probably read the horrifically bad TripAdvisor reviews and steered clear. (A recent reviewer said swimming the Adriatic Sea or walking for days on end through northern Italy and Slovenia to get to Croatia were both better options than catching this ferry service.)
As we rode the lift from the car deck to the passenger lounge, it was as if we hopped into a time machine, though it was unclear what era we had arrived in. The lounge was carpeted a deep red – though there was no hiding the stains – and there was a curved, wooden bar in the centre, surrounded by matching wooden tables and red swivel chairs.
There were a couple of old box TVs bolted to the walls, which we were told by the man attending the bar – who bore an uncanny resemblance to the Roger Moore-era Bond villain Jaws – would be switched on to play the latest Euro match. There was apparently wifi but we could not find it.
In the adjacent room, there was a cafeteria with linoleum flooring and blue plastic chairs that matched the blue plastic tablecloths, where we ate the only dish on offer: a very sloppy spaghetti bolognese served on a steel tray.
Later, we learned there was a dining room with white tablecloths and leather chairs serving three courses, though no one was eating there. Nearby, there was a ballroom, with a disco ball and colourful, sparkling lights synchronised to music, though there wasn’t a soul on the dancefloor. I can’t even begin to describe the bathrooms.
The hallway to our cabin, which featured a bunk bed, a plastic-covered window obstructing any “outside views” and a handheld shower head hanging over the toilet, was similarly empty. The only staff members we saw during the journey were Jaws and the two people working the cafeteria. The music playing throughout the ship was on a loop.
“I feel like we’re in The Shining,” my boyfriend whispered to me, though there was no one else around. We’d been on the boat for less than two hours.
We went back to the lounge and watched the Euro on the grainy TV – under the watchful gaze of Jaws – then decided to bunk down in our cabin. We put a chair against the door for safety purposes, though all that would have done was warn us of impending doom, given there was nowhere for us to run.
We made it through the evening, skipped the cafeteria’s breakfast and disembarked in Zadar, not Split, where we were ripped off by a taxi driver for a five-minute drive to the bus station, then forced to pay extra to place our luggage on the bus.
We are planning another trip to Europe this year. We have loosened the budget and instituted a ban on overnight ferries.
