Florence

View of the Duomo from our room

A local artist and street signs

Cinque Terre

Vernazza

Corniglia

The Italians love their padlocks

Villa dell'Amore

He's only 2. He doesn't know how to spell his name yet.

Riomaggiore

Getting cozy in our apartment in Corniglia

Rome

Trevi Fountain

The Forum

A yummy shop

The Spanish Steps

'Calliope' the muse of epic poetry in the Vatican Museum

The Sistine Chapel

Rome by night

On the Road!

The day was spent working on Independence, well Mike that is. I was having myself another epic blog day. There was some scraping and painting some spots on the bottom hull where the anti-fouling got eaten away. Then I washed off the decks with hopes of getting the last of the salt water off to help preserve her just a bit better. And then there was packing for tomorrow. In the morning we are catching a bus to Rome and will be traveling for the next few weeks. Then we will return to Independence at the end of the month for a couple of days to finalize putting her away before flying home to Seattle on November 1st. We won’t be traveling with our laptop so there most likely won’t be much blogging done while we are gone. Well, maybe if there is something really fun to tell! But will let you know when we make it back to Independence and are on our way home. Have a great October!

Haul Out

We turned on Independence’s engine for the last time and motored her over to be hauled out. It is just so sad to see her back in the cradle, in a parking lot again so soon. We have a lot of mixed emotions going on. I think they are mostly just sad and, but do have to admit some feelings of defeat. This week there was some thought about why didn’t we push on, why did we give up so fast. But we can’t look at it like that. We have to follow what our hearts, minds and bodies are telling us to do. And they are telling us that it’s time to go home. Most likely, Independence will still be here and have hopefully braved the elements well. She should be ready to go right back in the water if we want to continue the way west towards home. Or maybe she will get passed to new owners who admire her as much as we do and will continue to have adventures and write their own stories. Only time will tell.

A Week in Sibari

I decided not to bore you with daily entries this week. There really isn’t much to write about. We have been laying pretty low because there just isn’t a whole lot to do around here. And that has been ok with us. We’ve spent our days putting together a spec sheet for the boat (if you are interested you can go to http://www.svindependence.blogspot.com), doing some prep work for the boat to be hauled out, making travel arrangements, going for walks, making dinner at home, watching movies, reading, napping. Even though it has been relaxing, it has felt like we are in a bit of limbo. We know that we are getting really close to putting the boat away which we have very mixed feelings about. And we are excited to spend the next few weeks seeing more of Italy, but then we are also ready to just be home. It’s hard to imagine that we are hauling out tomorrow and putting the boat away for another year. Hope it’s not too disappointing or a let down for you readers out there. To be honest, it is a bit for us.

Pics of our nice walk to the beach

Drive Back to Indy

This morning we woke up to the sound of rain. As the morning progressed, and we were eating breakfast in our room, it picked up to a pretty good rain storm. And great, we are leaving this morning and didn’t pack a rain jacket or umbrella. We thought we had timed it pretty good by leaving after it seemed to have let up but about half way to the bus stop it started to pour. Once we saw that the bus stop was packed and there was no cover, Mike was able to buy an umbrella from a most timely (or perhaps just opportunistic) walking umbrella salesman, which kept us from getting completely drenched. We were pretty happy to see our bus pull up a few minutes later. At the next stop we were relishing in the fact that we didn’t have any luggage to haul around. Oh, those poor souls. We are also happy that we took the advice of the hotel to walk a bit further to the first bus stop. We had a comfy seat and perhaps a smug expression when we pulled up to the second bus stop in town with dozens of tourists standing in the rain. And then watching them try to get their luggage under the bus as cars were honking, trying to pass with barely any room, the bus driver pulling away before everyone was on. I will be reminding myself to pack very light when we head north for a few weeks of traveling before heading home! And somehow we made it on a bus to Sant’Agata, well with just a short walk in the rain. It was good to get into the dry car and start our way back to Independence. A pretty uneventful drive until there was a detour off the highway. It routed us along a 2 lane road through small villages which was nice until we got stuck behind a huge truck going about 20 miles an hour. Our turn and moment finally came to pass and we were off. But were quickly tailed by a car that had been about 10 cars back and making some fast (read “crazy”) moves to get past the hold up. We had just been talking about how despite all the crazy drivers, you never see an accident. Well, we spoke too soon. We came up to a small bridge on a turn with a semi approaching in the other lane. We slowed down to take the curve but the fast car right behind us wasn’t able to slow down in enough time and slid right into the semi. It appeared that it wasn’t too serious and we debated on whether to stop but kept on going. Plus there was a line of cars behind that semi as well who were witness and spoke the language. And then it wasn’t far until we were in another line of traffic at a dead stop for about half an hour. Once we got through it there appeared to have been another accident. We were happy to make it back to Sibari safe and sound. We took advantage of the car and stopped at the grocery store, and since this was our only chance to do shopping for over a week, we stocked up. There is no ‘running to the store’ from the marina. Our poor fridge is packed to the gills! It is good to be back on the boat and we are looking forward to a pretty mellow week before we head to Rome.