A bit of a miserable day, catching up on shopping, boatschool, and then a walk to the railway station to check out train times to Pizzo where there was supposed to be a local speciality ice cream truffle.
Wednesday: Vibo Valentia
This time we decided to head out early for the station so we could appreciate Pizzo, unfortunately we had only glanced at the train times yesterday and didn't realise that they only ran every hour in the afternoon, not in the morning. Never mind, we wandered off and found a playground instead where we found numerous children... I guess it must have been a random no school day! There was an amazing wheelchair friendly swing there which all the children enjoyed playing in.
We then went back to the boat via the ice cream shop on the front as we had heard that they sold the Pizzo ice cream speciality there anyway.
Esmé had an amazing hot chocolate which reminded us of the chocolate river in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
We then went to pay up and say goodbye to Angela at the Marina, and Esmé made friends with the bird, very disappointed that she hadn't seen him before now.
Thursday: Vibo to Bagnara Calabra
For Roger's first trip out on Laurin we set out with a little trepidation as the forecasts had been a little mixed and not very reliable over the previous days. In reality the trip was fine, except for the end where we got a little wet, and it felt like we were motoring in to a harbour of doom!
Once in the harbour we circled around until a guy gave us a shout and beckoned for us to go alongside the fuel pontoon. Once the rain stopped it turned into quite a nice evening, until it started again! The kids, Patrick and Roger went for a walk to the tower and then the kids enjoyed climbing on the sea wall near to Laurin.
We ended the day with rather good pizza at the restaurant about 50 yards away from the boat.
Friday: Bagnara Calabra to Riposto...... via the Messina Strait
It was with yet more trepidation that we approached the Messina Strait. Before we left I looked up the rules for reporting in to the Messina VTS and realised that Bagnara Calabra was already within their limits so I gave them a call and provided information on our boat name, size, and number of crew. It was an interesting trip along the Italian Coast, we could see whirlpools and our speed ranged from 4 to 9.5 knots depending on what the current was doing. As we were about to cross the shipping lanes we called Messina VTS again and they instructed us to proceed with caution. We saw a gap and went for it, dodging ferries, hydrofoils and other commercial ships.
Once on the Sicilian side we started to relax and enjoy the trip down to Riposto.
George, a Cruising Association HLR is based at Riposto in the winter so had advised the marina of our impending arrival and shortly after we had tied up he appeared to say hello and invite us to the liveaboard's Friday night. We turned up with leftover curry and a couple of bottles of wine and enjoyed a pleasant evening sampling the delights of other peoples offerings which included some amazing meatballs!
Saturday: Jobs day in Riposto
We awoke to an amazing view of Mount Etna but unfortunately very quickly the Volcano was covered in cloud. We realised that if we wanted to visit we would need a car and an early start. AJ at this point also said that he would prefer not to travel on his birthday so we talked to George and he very kindly arranged a rental car for us. We spent the rest of the day doing Laundry and a little shopping.
Sunday: Day out on Etna - AJ's Birthday
AJ woke early, opened his small pile of presents and very quickly built his new Lego set before we had breakfast and then set off for Etna. It was about an hours drive with a little tricky navigation but finally we were there. We bought tickets for the cable car but declined the four wheel drive bus tour further up the mountain as we didn't really have the footwear for walking on snow. In any case just the cable car was ridiculously expensive and adding the bus and guide more than doubled the cost.
We all enjoyed the trip on the cable car and then went outside into the snow. Esmé immediately complained she was cold but we pressed on and walked upwards for a while. It was really the first time Esmé had experienced snow in any real quantity and it had been a long time for AJ too! Despite it being relatively poor visibility we enjoyed being in the different surroundings which was somewhat surreal when only hours earlier we had been in T-shirts at the marina!
We investigated the different rocks and then Roger offered to take Esmé back to the café while Patrick and I stayed with AJ who was having a whale of a time playing in the snow.
AJ still seemed to have plenty of energy, I was feeling a little rough, and I could see that Patrick was desperate to climb higher so I went to join Roger and Esmé for a 5 Euro hot chocolate (Thanks Roger!) and left the boys to go on a little adventure.
Apparently AJ did really well and we are now considering a return trip for Patrick and AJ and booking the tour right to the top!
Just before we left the café the cloud cleared and we had a lovely view of the top of the volcano smoking away.
On our return Patrick insisted I this picture for his colleagues at ECC as an example of Italian roadworks.
We were back on Laurin by lunchtime so we brought out AJ's final surprise, a fruit tart instead of a birthday cake as he absolutely loves these.... this is the first time we bought a family sized one and he was over the moon!
All in all, a lovely day!
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