39.12.059N 9.07.504E

The past week has been a hectic social whirl around Christmas.

Karens parents arrived from the UK on Thursday and appear to have bought some good weather with them.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday we put the washing machine here into good use and at last managed to catch up with our Laundry. The days have been bright and sunny and so washing was drying reasonably well.

On Saturday we went out for a Pizza with Karen, Richard and Karen’s parents. We went to our favourite pizza restaurant and as usual had a great pizza.

Monday we went off to Carrefour for our big Christmas shop. Then on Tuesday we went to the local market to pick up the hard to find vegetables, sprouts and parsnips. We were successful with the sprouts – but there were no Parsnips to be found.

Christmas eve we did the British thing and went Carol singing around the pontoons. David, Sarah, Bethany and Bryn from Cape were joined by Gary and Julia from Wild Oats to start the singing off. After they sang to a boat, the crew from that boat then joined the carol singing. We all then headed back to Cape for some mulled wine. We didn’t stay too long on Cape as the children were tired and went to bed early. (We think they were trying to sleep early so they could catch Santa delivering the presents, however having failed to spot Santa they woke their parents up at 4am wanting to open their presents) The party transferred to Pyxis and at 12.30 we all went to try and spot Santa flying past (apparently this is when Santa visits Cagliari). Having failed to spot Santa we called it a night. Stephen popped out during the party and went to the midnight Christmas mass – his lack of Italian was only a little problematic.

After a leisurely morning opening presents with a bottle of “Spumante” we got going on cooking the nut loaf and Roast potatoes that we were taking to the gazebo for the marina Christmas lunch. Each boat was preparing part of the meal. Food arrived in the gazebo at 1.45 and we sat down to lunch at 2pm. It was a traditional Christmas lunch along with party hats and crackers but alas no Christmas pudding.

After all the festivities we had an easy day on boxing day. We cooked our vegetarian Christmas dinner. We had a Christmas pudding bought back from the UK so we “borrowed” the microwave on Pyxis to heat it up.

Christmas Lunch in the Gazebo

Christmas Eve – view form the Marina of the local church

Christmas Eve – looking towards Cagliari old town