Marina di Ragusa: Trip to UK and Dallas!

Wanderingdragon
Stephen & Anne
Sun 11 Nov 2012 15:38

36.46.84N 14.32.74E

 

Over the last two weeks we have been busy. We started by getting ready to visit the UK. This involved unearthing our warm clothes and travel bags. Our first task in the UK was to move some of our furniture which we did without any problems. The real purpose of the visit was to meet Mia & Steven’s cats Kyra & Luna. They are just over a year old and made us realise how inactive Yoyo has become. Kyra & Luna were just so inquisitive. We had a lovely stay with Mia & Steven and we would like to thank them once again for hosting a wonderful meal for us, along with Clive, Kathy, Alan & Michele. 

 

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Kyra & Luna  - they do have one thing in common with Yoyo – a love of food.

 

We then headed further North to visit Stephens parents where we celebrated an early Christmas, complete with present opening and crackers. After the weekend we headed back south via our accountant and Foxes chandlery in Ipswich. Up to this point the trip had gone really well, flights were on time, the weather was cold but dry (mostly anyway) and we had managed to fit in all the socialising and shopping we needed to do.

 

Our flight back was good however we did have a bit of a detour as Catania airport runway was closed for maintenance work. We landed at Palermo, about 150 miles “off course”. We knew this was going to happen however the airline didn’t handle the change very well so it was all a bit confusing. The flight crew were fantastic and did their best to sort things out. As we had known about the change we had hired a car which meant we saw some of the North coast of Sicily and the centre of the Island.

 

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Central Sicily – the countryside was rather impressive.

 

We had a few days recovering and trying to find homes for all the bits we bought back from the UK. The social scene is still very active in the marina, with “skippers de-stress” meeting on a Wednesday, the usual happy hour on a Friday and this week we went Line Dancing on Saturday.

 

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Ranch Dallas – home of line dancing in Sicily!!

 

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One of the American cruisers, Hugh,  got roped in to playing his banjo with the resident performer “Danny Cash”.

 

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We hadn’t really thought through the line dancing – although there was a teacher most of the instructions were in Italian. The teacher very kindly gave John, Vanessa and us  a quick Italian lesson for the instructions we might need. He was very good and actually did switch between Italian and English. We had a great night  - now we just need to get in some more practice before we go back.