Naples, Part Two: Something I forget until I'm back in the Mediterranean - the amazing numbers of ferries here. There are big ones, small ones, ferries that carry cars and trucks, others that carry only people, water jet powered fast ones, lumbering slow ones.
Tied up alongside us is a car ferry that links Naples to Palermo, Sicily. On this coast there are regular routes to and from Corsica, ditto Sardinia and Malta. My guess is that there are regular ferries to Tunis, the ports of Algeria, Tripoli and Benghazi in Libya too.
In the Adriatic there many routes linking Italy with the Balkan statelets across the water - places like Montenegro, Croatia and Albania, plus Greek islands like beautiful Corfu and spectacular Santorini.
What it really says is that water routes are shortcuts in this maritime environment, when they aren't the only surface routes available. Ferries run like buses so we shouldn't be shocked at an occasional mishap, though most of those happen in Asia to overloaded boats.
