The incident with the disappearing food was but the prelude to our epic cross-country journey to Croatia. We traversed the southern coastline of France - Cannes, Antibes, Nice, Monaco – en route to Italy just in time for the late afternoon sun to bounce off the Ferraris, blinding white villas and Dior glasses of the beautiful (but suspiciously orange) people lounging about sipping complicated-looking cocktails.

But – as we noted with a certain bitter satisfaction, I must admit – all their glamourous yachts with helipads and dozen jetskis on board still hadn’t bought them sand for their beaches.

Envy aside, we were due to arrive in Voghera, Italy, at 10:06 pm, leaving all of 12 minutes to locate the ticket office, buy two places on the train to Ancona (where the ferry to Croatia departs from), find the platform and board the train. There wasn’t much margin for error.

Imagine our consternation when we discovered there was a train strike (’Questa Italia! That’s Italy!’). As the hour approached we could be found perched on our packs by the door of the train, poised to spring out and run for it the minute we pulled up, trying to distract ourselves with the word association game:

‘Italy?’ ‘Impossible.’
‘Train?’ ‘Slow.’
‘Croatia?’ ‘Far.’
‘Tickets?’ ‘None.’
‘Time?’ ‘Short.’
‘Bladder?’ ‘Full.’
‘Bag?’ ‘Heavy.’
‘Dinner?’ ‘Pringles.’

Somehow we made the connection to Ancona, arriving at 3am with our eyeballs drooping out of their sockets. Despite all our earlier bravado - ‘It’s cool, we’ll just sleep at the station til the ferry port opens, we can handle it’ - we didn’t even need to confer; just stumbled out of the station, crossed the car park and sleepwalked straight into the nearest hostel, where we rested our weary heads…

…for three hours, then dragged ourselves down to catch the first ferry to Croatia.