Change in Motion

I woke up this morning with a little apprehension about moving to our new marina. The wind was blowing and it’s tight quarters where we are headed. Luckily, two men greeted us on the docks, one who carried a bow line forward on the neighboring boat and the other on the dock to fend us off and catch a stern line. Mike, once again, did a great job getting Indy gently into place despite the wind blowing right on our beam. We were happy to be settled and then headed into town for some errands…and food! And then it was back to the boat to enjoy siesta before venturing back out again in the late afternoon. After a drink and yummy snacks, and more pizza for dinner we found ourselves wondering what to do the rest of the evening. Since there are 2 movie theaters in town, we decided to take advantage. But no luck, they were all dubbed over in Italian. This area is such a contrast to Turkey and Greece and has been the most non-English speaking region we have been to yet. Even in Istanbul and the coast of Turkey it seemed like most people spoke English. Here we find that people who can speak a bit of our native tongue will at first adamantly deny that they do but then reluctantly succumb. Thankfully, Italian seems more intuitive than Turkish or Greek, and with Mike’s broken Spanish we seem to be getting by. It is actually nice to be in a country where you are forced to learn and attempt to speak the language instead of being really lazy and letting the locals practice their language skills. But after the movie was a no-go, we wandered into a shop to buy a bottle of wine to take back to the boat. It happened to be a shop called ‘La Dispensa Della Nonna’ which seems to have some notoriety. They have been in that location since 1925 and produce their own olive oil. The shop keeper was a very interesting character and Mike was able to communicate with him in Spanish. He let us sample the olive oil, even went in the back and gave us a sample of some red local red wine, a variety called Negroamaro, which was absolutely delicious, like velvet. Needless to say, we walked out of his shop with 2 bottles of wine and a bottle of olive oil!
And our conversation about the boat vs. home continues. We are finding ourselves being strongly pulled towards the latter. It feels like this is all happening so fast but it truly feels right. And the change in Mike is already evident. Some of the weight has already been lifted from his shoulders just by us getting close to making the decision to put the boat up. It’s good to see the smile back on his face.

Our short cut into town