After arriving home at 10.45 last night with a bag of home grown tomatoes from Mirco & Paola and a note at the door saying that the boat trip was on for 10:00am we were relieved to know we could sleep in a bit. Ah no…thanks to Caz we were awoken by the phone at 6:38am!! Oh well another early start.
We set off in what was going to be another beautiful day for the meeting place which the 4 Estonians in the apartment at the front were also doing. We went across the road and about 20 metres further down the road to the boat fuelling depot where we thought we had to meet the boat. The guy that works there, who doesn’t speak any English told us that we should be another couple of hundred metres up the road a bit. Doubting our instructions from Mirco we head as told further up and whilst up there trying to figure out where we should be one of the Estonian women had come up asking if we were on the boat cruise and that we should be back at the petrol depot where we originally started. The irony in that was she spoke very little English herself but managed to work it out and find the dumb Australian’s who had obviously gone astray!!
By the time we walked back to the depot the boat was waiting so on we hopped. Rino was our captain and didn’t speak English. You get that a lot here. There was another woman already on the boat, Gabrielle, and when we asked if she spoke English she replied a little. Now as is the case with Gabrielle we are finding that when they say a little they are very helpful but when they think they know English they don’t seem to be of much help at all. I think we had a won a friend in Gabrielle because she kept us informed of points of interest throughout the trip. She asked us where we were from and when we told her she said ‘aah Oustralian’s’. Some of the towns we passed we had been to by car but were able to see them in a different perspective. We stopped at Portovenere and had 2 hours there to roam the streets. On the way up to another Church I tripped up the step and Kim said she could hear every part of my body hit the marble steps. I can tell you marble is hard and I certainly felt every part of me hit them!! I was taking a photo and when I turned to continue up I must’ve been right on a step because over I went but just as I thought I’d corrected myself down I went again. I grazed my leg a bit but it wasn’t too bad. Once again we meandered through the tiny little laneways and shopped and then stopped for a gelati. We haven’t had one everyday but we have had a few and they are yummy.
We got to the jetty a little bit early and had a conversation with Rino, once again he with no English and us with no Italian but strange as it may seem we were communicating. Whilst standing there with him waiting for the others we saw the best looking Italian guy we’ve seen so far. Kim and I both had to pick our jaws up off the ground but unfortunately he soon left to take some people on a tour. We boarded the boat which took us around some more inlets and stopped at one for lunch and a swim. We both had a pasta, Kim a fresh tomato sauce, me with a pesto sauce. Very, very tasty, we’ve decided you don’t need to overload with heaps of ingredients and hopefully we will learn that in our Italian cooking class on Friday. The boat then pulled into shore where we waded into the water to board her again. We cruised around an island, Palmaria before heading off for home which we arrived at about 5:00pm. This was all for the princely sum of 30euro which we couldn’t have asked for more, a fabulous day relaxing for a change with no driving.
Whilst writing this having a vodka and salada snack (due to big lunch) we are hearing the bells in the background from the local church which play the most beautiful little tune. What are you all doing?
P. S. Sorry about the delay with the blogs but we were internet down over the last couple of days, we didn’t know that when that happened we should go out to the fuse box and flick the switch! Another case of stupid Australian’s although I believe the Estonian’s fell for it as well.
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| Kim with fisherman! |
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| Lunch |
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| Portovenere |
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| Kim, Rino & Jane |
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