A Day In The Life...

My July 4th Holiday

After finally recovering from my 2 days of flying, I was able to sit down an enjoy a decent meal. Mind you it may have been shipboard food, but that was the best meal I had in the past 48 hrs...

Now the question is how to I get to land...apparently, these water taxis run approx once an hour to each of the ports...so in fact it could take close to 45min to get where you need to go...I decide to go and visit La Maddelena, since I had heard so much about it...I left the ship to catch the 12:45pm ferry...Man, was it hot! ! ! I look up at a display they had set up and it said 91'F. Thankfully it wasn't humid, the sun was just hot.

Now that there's daylight I can see that our water taxi looks like the size of a 45-ft yacht with a lot of benches...a bunch of us got on board and were off...First stop was Palau. The water taxi doesnt go very fast, that's probably why it takes so long to get to where we are going. The a distance the port of Palau looks nice. Lots of hotel and plenty of little shops. Reminds me a lot of Catalina Island. Many of the buildings were on the hillside...lots of people were in the streets, others were driving their cars while others drove scooters. Scooters are a popular thing here. All ages ride scooters, if fact I saw an old lady (maybe in her 70's) with a helmet on racing down the street. It looks like everyone on the island of Oblia comes to Palau to ride the ferry across to the La Maddelena side. There are these 2 huge ferries that take cars to the other side...

The boat ride from Palau to La Madd is a bit longer, almost 25min...as we got closer and closer, I noticed that La Madd looked the same as Palau except, it appears that La Madd was more younger and hip. The landing was lined with boats, both personally owned and for rent. I heard that some sailors rented ZODIACS and visited other surrounding islands big boats couldn't get to. I walked to the piazza (not Mike from the PADRES) the big open area in the shopping square. It looked to be set-up for some little carnival with rides and concessions. You can see restaurants all over the place, selling [what else?] italian food. It's sooo hot inside that most restaurants have tables and chairs outside. It's all bunched so close together that you cant tell where one restaurant ends and the other one begins...

As for myself, after walking up and down the alleyways countless times I finally stopped at one and had a lasagne dinner...i was somewhat displeased at the size of the portion and disappointed with the taste...it was kind of bland, nothing special (Edie's Lasagna blows this out the water). Then I went and had some Italian ice cream (i think its called Gelatissimo or that might be the name of the store) anyway that made up for dinner...The ice cream was soooooooo frickin' gooooood, I even went back for another (larger) cup.

It has been said that Italians rest in the afternoon so they can party at night, and I guess that's true 'cause as I was exploring the town only a few stores were open for business, but by the dinner time a lot of the stores had opened there doors, selling everything Italian, but nothing name brand.

I made my way back to the ship around 9pm, just in time to see the sun set. I guess they dont 'spring forward, fall back over here'....Oh by the way, the Italians beat Germany are are going to play for the World Cup...It's going to be a madhouse here if Italy wins it all...I can't wait! ! ! !

posted by Frogue @ 5:20 AM