Epiblog – Thursday 12 October 2017 – Venice to London

Well, the sailing season is well and truly over.  I am sitting on our easyJet flight back to London.  The last week has been very good.  Even the weather improved.  The skies finally cleared and the sun shone in the afternoons making it pleasantly warm.  Of course as soon as the sun went down it got cold and by morning it was only 14C in the cabin, so heating was used on a regular basis.

We basically spent the last week being sightseers.  We even got ourselves Venice travel cards which last for 5 years and reduce the cost of a vaporetto ride from 7.5 euro to 1.5 euro.  You pay for the card, but make up the cost after 9 journeys.  So we felt like real residents.  We did a few things we never did before.  In particular we went to the Biennale.  This is the alternate year international art festival held in Venice.  The art was all very Avant-garde, and generally not great, but the atmosphere was lovely and it is held in a beautiful garden full of specially built “Pavilions” for the various countries who participate.  They were also very interesting.  The exhibition is also in the Arsenale, where countries which don’t have permanent pavilions exhibit.  Again, the venue was more interesting than the art being in the old Arsenale buildings and canals.


After four trips to Venice I finally got to do the tour of the synagogues in the Ghetto district.  They were well worth the wait.

We tried to do shopping, but found nothing we wanted.  The only Venetian glass I really like were Mezuzahs being sold in the Ghetto.  They were beautiful.  So if anyone out there wants one tell me as I would love to buy them.

We indulged in a couple of Michelin starred restaurants and an outrageously priced Bellini in Harry’s Bar.

We had lunch at the Met and were the only lunchtime diners!


All the sightseeing was exhausting.  Richard’s phone counts steps and it regularly said he did 15,000 to 20,000 a day.  I do about 20% more (short steps), so it was no wonder I was exhausted each evening!

The Marina is OK.  
Very peaceful

The marina from the bell tower at San Georgio
We are unimpressed with the lack of staff and lack of help.  We waited all week to no avail for the person in charge of works to come and look and the boat and put things in motion.  So we will have to do that from London.  We are now certain that the water tank is leaking and needs to be replaced.  Richard has been in touch with a company in the UK that can make us a new one in plastic, but the marina will have to remove the old one and liaise with them.

One strange thing happened.  One morning we woke up to find a crab in the saloon!  (Only a little one – not worth eating.)  Heaven knows how it got there.


Speak to you all next year!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Wednesday 4 October 2017 – Certosa Island, Venice

The weather certainly did improve today.   The sun has been shining all day and it even felt warm.   With the better weather my view of the marina has improved.   The best thing is that we have found toilets and showers only 50 yards away!   They are a bit tired, but we had heard that.   They seem perfectly functional and certainly will make our life a lot easier. We have decided to spend the day sorting the boat out.   We start at the marina office where we try to get a further discount for being a member of the Cruising Association.   As we suspected because we got a 10% discount on the bill for a Boat Show special they are unwilling to give another discount.   Fair enough.   We speak to someone about the maintenance work we want done over the winter.   We need to send him an e-mail with the full details and he will get in touch with the appropriate tradesmen. I do a load of laundry.   Not a roaring success.   Their tumble dryer hardly dried anything other than the sheets, s
Read more

Monday 11 September 2017 – Porto Montenegro

Up fairly early.   Went to the toilet block.    There is still no hot water.   The weather doesn’t seem so bad and for a few minutes Richard contemplates setting off from here today.   But the forecast is bad, so we stay put.   The marina office sends a golf trolley to us to take us to the showers on the other side of the marina where there is hotish water. We finally joined the washed of the world.   We have a leisurely morning trying without much success to download the Times.   We finally succeed and decide to take a walk into Tivat (the local town). We discover there two supermarkets, and a proper market selling fruit and veg and fresh fish.   We also make it to the tourist office where we get details on how to catch the bus to Kotor.   We shall probably do that tomorrow if we are still stuck here. I stop at a Slam shop and buy myself a new waterproof jacket.   My Quba sail’s one is no longer properly waterproof and given the current weather I don’t feel like relying on it
Read more

Sunday 1 October 2017 – Umag

It’s my birthday.   However, it is not going to be a day of celebration.   We didn’t even manage to get a bottle of champagne aboard to make any festivities. So we left port fairly early, about 8:30.   We didn’t have far to go to get to the last port in Croatia to sign out and go to Italy.   The weather forecast is for settled if cool and slightly cloudy conditions.   It certainly has been cold.   It was 14C in the cabin this morning when we got up.   We put both the boat and fan heaters on!   In the cockpit the sun shone enough to stop us freezing, but we were both wearing our fleeces. There was little or no wind, and what there was eventually went on the nose.   So it was another day of motoring.   Other than the fact that Richard plotted us a course which almost took us into a ridge of rocks, nothing eventful happened.   (There was a gap but safety first!)   One curiosity did occur.   When Richard finally put his heavy fleece on, I noticed a little string hanging out of the
Read more