Sleep peacefully through the Great Storm which delays the ferries by more than five hours and, further north, threatens to submerge Venice, where my stepfather is staying. When we wake it's 1.30, according to my phone, but I hear people moving luggage out of their cabins. Unbarricade the door to investigate and see the lorry driver leaving his cabin. He gives me directions to the 'self service'. Leather Man emerges from another door and staggers off down the corridor.
Up on deck I am surprised by daylight, sun shining on sparkling blue wavelets outside the window. The clock here tells me it's 2 and, confused, I ask the lorry driver if the time is different here - yes, time's different here, he smiles. And everyone's speaking Albanian now. 'We're all Albanian', he admits, but nothing is said about why they have pretended otherwise, or about the delay. The Little Principessa, as she has become known, races around making friends and babbling her own version of Italian.
At the first sight of land people gather at the windows, waiting for the Port of Durres to come into view. The lorry driver shows me where to queue to disembark and says our passports will be returned as we leave. (I've found a photo of the mural we stood next to as he left us, which identifies our ship as the Apollon, at: http://hhvferry.com/blog/?tag=bari )
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