11/2/2025-Milan, Italy
One thing we have found in Italy is that they have mosquitoes
but they do not believe in window screens. We made the mistake of leaving the
windows open yesterday during the bewitching hour for mosquitoes. This resulted
in an overnight battle to kill them before they ate us. Fortunately, they like
Suzette way more than me…go figure. We packed up our bags and called an Uber
for the 20-minute ride to the airport.
Arriving at the airport and checking the board for gates and
times I quickly realized we were at the wrong airport! We were at the Linate
airport just outside of Milan, but we were supposed to be at Malpensa Airport
29 miles outside Milan. We jumped in a Taxi and took a 200-euro taxi ride. As
we approached the taxi stand there appeared to be an argument between two taxi
drivers, we ended up with one of them as our driver. On the way to the airport
a car in front of us was moving slowly out of the toll booth and our driver
lays on the horn. The guy in front of us accelerates then hits the brakes. Now
our driver is pissed, and he follows him closely until the guy pulls off the
road. They stop and our driver gets out of the car. I’m screaming that we do
not have time for this, we have a plane to catch. The driver of the other car
is out and nose to nose with the Taxi driver. Then his buddy hops out of the
passenger seat. Suzette jumps out and intervenes, coaxing our driver back into
the car. He was full of Italian explicative. The upside is he was mad and
driving faster.
At the airport he was trying to talk me into a tip, but I
was not feeling it. He apologized profusely to Suzette and went on his way. We
managed to check in on time, and we made the flight to Barcelona. This is the
reason I like to be early to the airport, you never know what will go wrong.
How should I know there are two Milan airports! Oh yea, I live in So Cal where
there are about 5 airports in a 30-mile circle, but only one Los Angeles
airport…in my defense. All is well that ends well though it was a rough flight
and a very hot landing.
As we exited baggage claim our driver was there with sign,
William Lewis. This was a free perk extended to us by Booking.com because I use
them so much. I like Booking because they have both hotels and apartments and
the price they give is the full price for the stay, including the secret city
tourist tax. We arrived at the Bonanova Suites where we have stayed several
times. It is a very nice hotel apartment in the very nice neighborhood of Saint
Gervasi. It is a place where people live and work, not so touristy. And it is
walking distance to IMO, Suzettes eye care facility.
We settled in and took care of a little business. Most importantly
we needed to cast our vote in the California special election. The front desk
printed our forms; we filled them out and then had the front desk scan them for
us. Then we email them to a place that faxes them to Orange County. Hopefully
we are not too late.
We walked to a little restaurant at the end of the street
for a light dinner. It was Sunday night so there was not much open. It had been
a long busy day, so a good night’s sleep was in order, cool comfortable bed and
no mosquitoes!
11/3/2025-Barcelona, Spain
The morning was spent grocery shopping in the European way,
the vegetable stand for fruits and vegies, cheese shop, bakery for fresh bread
and a regular grocery store for grocery items. Now I just need a good wine shop,
a place for good Spanish olive oil, and we will be well stocked for our weweeklongtay.
We spent the afternoon at IMO where Suzette ran through the
usual eye tests and eye exams with the doctor. She received a glowing report,
everything looks really good. The doctor suggested that she continue 1 drop per
day of the Nevinac eye drops to keep everything tuned up. This eye drop is a
great example of our broken pharmaceutical system in the US. Here in Europe, we
35 euros for a bottle, in the US it is $400. Needless to say, we stocked up.
11/4/2025-Barcelona, Spain
The weather in Barcelona is warmer than we have seen so far, high 60 to low 70 and sunshine. We will be here for a week while Raffaellesco is making her way to St Thomas. The reports so far are that the ship is on schedule. Looking at the weather, it looks like they will have favorable winds and seas.
A lazy day and my turn to make dinner, frittata it is.
11/5/2025-Barcelona, Spain
Up at 0300 for BWCC board meeting followed by a 0430 membership meeting. We did crawl back into bed and manage to sleep until 0900 or so. Another lazy day catching up on finances and watching too much news. It was an overcast but warm day, we did get out and walk for a bit.
Stopping at yet another pharmacy we were able to pick up
some more of Suzette’s eye drops. They will only sell you so much at a time but
there does not seem to be a central database keeping track of our purchases so
we are stocking up.
They have a great bulk store here, nuts, dried fruits, grains, coffee and tea by the kilogram. We are trying hard not to have any food left when we leave here so we only bought a small amount of nuts and muesli for our lunch fruit bowl.
In the evening both of our phones went off on alert. It is
the Civil warning System and somehow, we are on it. The warning was for severe
flooding and wind overnight, glad I am not on a boat. Though this hotel
apartment is about the size of our boat.
11/6/2025-Barcelona, Spain
Up with thunder, lightning and heavy rain. A day not fit for
a duck but good for napping and making soup. By afternoon the sun came out, and
the stiff breeze continued drying up the streets. It was noticeably cooler, but
a walk felt good. There are so many parks in Barcelona and most of them have a
fenced in dog park. We found one high on a hill with a view out to the sea.
In the evening it was homemade soup, fresh bread and a great
wine. The marina in in St Thomas got back to me with their offer for a 1 month
stay. It looked like it would cost about $7,000! I started working on plan B.
In my ideal world we would put the boat on the hard and have the bottom painted
along with a few other maintenance chores while we were away. I reached out to
the only yard in St Thomas, and they said that they could not accommodate me
until January! I managed to find a yard in Tortola and before the night was
done they got back to me with an offer that looked good. Now I just need to get
the boat to Tortola.
The news was full of flight cancelation news as a result of
the government shutdown. We should just fire them all for not doing their job,
congressmen that is. Unfortunately, to roughly quote Monroe, “men are not
angels thus we need to have a government” …so true. Hopefully our flight will
get us to St Thomas in time to retrieve our boat. Lots of balls in the air.
11/7/2025-Barcelona, Spain
In the wee hours of the morning my brain kicked in and I realized that I did not get a new Navionics chip to cover the Caribbean. So now at 0 dark thirty I am on the computer shopping for a chip. It seems like you should be able to simply download it to a chip and transfer it to my MFD but they want to send you a new chip with the data on it. I checked with our VRBO to see if we could overnight the chip to our apartment but they said no. Navionics is owned and distributed by Garmin. I found a Garmin store here in Barcelona, maybe they can help. Plan C will be to simply use Navionics on my phone.
We took a very long walk to the Garmin store but hey were all about watches and hand held GPSs. They knew nothing about my chip. We found a couple more dog parks along the way. I am going to say that dogs are very well behaved here in Spain.
I spent a lot of time on the computer sorting out check in procedures for St Thomas and Tortola. My agent in St Thomas says that when we leave on our boat from the ship we will be checked in and there will be no further requirement in St Thomas. Checking Navily it looks like fuel is available near the ship terminal. We have arranged a VRBO in St Thomas near the ship terminal. Other than that, it is a pretty tight schedule we are on. The driver is an 11/15 commitment to be in Virgina for a celebration of life for my Aunt Dawn who passed last summer and family visits on the east coast. No pressure.
11/8/2025-Barcelona, Spain
A gray day in Barcelona. A good day to get a haircut. The
salon around the corner was very busy but they took me right in and put me in a
chair. The women who cut my hair did a great job. After my cut she washed my
hair and gave me a great scalp massage. The chair I was in was a massage chair,
but I was a little big to fully get the benefit of the chair.
We stopped for a bottle of wine and some cheese at a very
nice cheese shop. We also ended up buying a huge dark chocolate and almond bar
and an interesting honey almond nugget. I am trying desperately not to have any
food that I need to carry with us when we leave but the food here has been so
good. I fear that the food in the Caribbean will not be so great.
A nap in the afternoon and then we packed our bags for tomorrow’s flight. We have checked in, and Delta indicated that our flight was NOT canceled, though they did have to cancel some flights.
Comments
Post a Comment