After the Big Bang is it Space-Time that expands or the distances between the things in it?

Something I continue to have trouble getting my head round is the idea that there are bits of the universe that are so far apart (and accelerating away from each other) that there hasn't been enough time since the Big Bang for light to travel between them. So there's a kind of quantum foam of light cones that can't interact. But if nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, then how did these bits of stuff get further apart than light could travel in the available time?  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion tries to explain this and I think I'm beginning to get it. It also helpfully points out that lots of highly qualified physicist have trouble with understanding this as well so it's not just me! There are bits of it that still feel like handwavium. In particular it feels a bit like http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copenhagen_interpretation in that it's only difficult to think about because you're treating the equations as objective reality. It's all very well to say that it's space-time that's expanding not the stuff in it but, but,