Saturday 20 September 2014

Saturday 20 September 2014 - Tropea

Despite having all the time in the world we were up fairly early.  We had breakfast on board and then get ready to go up to the town.  The idea is to do the walking around this morning before it gets too hot.  Richard has found that there is a Vodafone shop in town and we may need it to top up our internet device.  Before we do that we check the thing and it works!  So Richard must have got really clever and managed to top it up on line (in Italian).   

Having solved the internet problem we don’t really need to go up to the town.  We really saw much of it last night.  But we have paid for two nights and may as well do a thorough job.  So we make our way back up the 200 steps to the town.  The only thing we really missed yesterday was the Cathedral.  It is very ancient and apparently interesting.  It is very plain, but curious.  It is in two styles, one older than another.  After that we wander around some of the newer parts of town we haven’t seen before.   It is getting very hot, so we stop for a drink and decide to have coffee granita - quite good for a hot morning.  We try to find a supermarket, but see nothing very big and nothing that sells fresh semi-skimmed milk.  We go in to the tourist office, but they don’t help much with information about Stromboli.  However we find a lady on one of the computers and she is much more helpful.  The volcano is always active and always pours lava into the sea.  You have to go to the opposite side of the island from the anchorages to see it.  So we shall see how we get on.

We finally find a shop and indeed it sells fresh milk.  So we buy that and some of the local famous red onions.  We still can’t find any salted butter, so we will have to use the sweet butter I bought the other day.

It is still fairly early and we want to get to the beach so we go for lunch.  We decide it is time to have a pizza.  The restaurant are very nice and put our milk in their cold drinks fridge, so it won’t go off before we get it back to the boat.  Well, it was too much to eat.  Between that and the heat I begin to feel rather odd.  So we make our way back down the stairway to the harbour.  On the way back I feel so bad I don’t want to walk all the way back to the boat and then to the beach.  So I go on to the beach and Richard goes back to the  boat to put away the shopping and to get our bathing suits.  I cannot get us beach chairs because I have no money on me!  So instead I sit in the café in the shade and feel quite comfortable.  Richard arrives and gets us chairs and we have a nice few hours on the beach regularly going into the water to cool off.  By the middle of the afternoon it has clouded over, but it is still very warm so we stay on the beach until nearly 5:00pm.

While we are in this marina I decide to use their laundry facilities to get a bit ahead with the washing.  So we spend the early evening doing laundry, having showers and reading our books while waiting for the washing to get done.  But it feels good to have got that out of the way.  We also go to the café and have a couple of drinks and then back to the boat.

We had thought of going back in to the town where there a more free concerts, but we are feeling lazy and decide not to.  We shall have an early night instead.  I am still not hungry and it is too hot to cook much.  So I just make us cheese omelette with tomato salad for supper and that is enough.  While we are eating dinner there is great excitement on the pontoon.  Someone has fallen off their passerelle into the water.  We don’t go to find out the details because there are frankly plenty of people there helping.  However it seems suspiciously like what happened to me the other night.  It still can’t believe I didn’t go into the water on that occasion.


A 50 foot Dufour from Prague has just moored next to us.  It is a very tight fit.  Hope we can get out without trouble tomorrow.

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