Skift Take
The difference between airplane and ferry travel is like the difference between taking a guided bus tour of a town or spending a few hours talking to locals in a neighborhood cafe. Each has their place, but one provides a more textured experience.
Back in the times when international travel was measured in weeks, not hours, and it was easier to journey by sea than by land, the Mediterranean was not so much a barrier between Europe and Africa, Western Christianity and the Holy Land, as a highway. It connected buyers to sellers and seekers to oracles, sometimes literally (Delphi was just inland of the Gulf of Corinth). It was a vital channel of information and retail: the ancient world’s internet, albeit a little slower than ours.
Yet there is an appeal in slowness. Hence my crackpot plan to sail by ferry across the Mediterranean from Valencia to Naples, a journey guaranteed to afford me the luxury of time. Time to consider the changing face of the Med, from trade route to holiday destination, and whether that constitutes progress. And time to ponder the fact that, while the Phoenicians apparently had no problem tootling from Ibiza to Sardinia by boat in 9800 BC, by 2013 this had become impossible: I had to go via Barcelona.
Most of my journeys would be overnighters, I learned, at least saving me the cost of a hotel as I frittered away time like a profligate millionaire chucking currency at the ocean. I wanted to experience the Mediterranean as my forefathers had and, simultaneously, to disprove the claim of that great sage Miss Piggy that “you have to be going to a pretty awful place if getting there is half the fun.”
I arrived in Valencia on a blazing day at the end of April and wandered through the grandiose squares of a great trading port to the best food market I have ever seen, covered in yellow and blue tiles (Valencia was famous for its ceramics: Edward IV once shipped his dinnerware in from there) and filled with stall after stall glowing with fruit, fish and vegetables. Legs of premium ham dangled enticingly; spices were pi
