39.12.072N 9.07.603E

Sorry it’s been so long since we last blogged. Well we did say we would only blog if something interesting happened, and it did yesterday afternoon.

One of the tug ships that ties up against the dry dock was manoeuvring out yesterday afternoon when it hit the pontoon we are moored on. Luckily we are at the land end of the pontoon and actually only noticed something had happened because of all the shouting!! The British boat on the sea end of the pontoon was also quite lucky. They weren’t sure if the tug actually hit them or not – but they suffered quite a jolt and their boat made quite a few un-nerving noises along with the water alarm in the bilge going off. After checking the boat – it appeared they had not received any major damage. Most of the late afternoon/early evening there were marina staff and various police inspecting the pontoon. This morning divers went down to check the pontoon. The pontoon has obviously been well built as it appears to have survived the tug hitting it.

We have been taking time to explore Cagliari and find the local and not so local supermarkets. Today we went out of town on the bus to find the large “Conad” supermarket. Conad is our favourite supermarket chain in Italy so far. We won’t be visiting the large store very often. It is a bus ride and a long walk away. There is a Carrefore hypermarket which is much nearer the bus route – so if we need a lot of shopping that’s where we will head.

We are enjoying the Italian/Sardinian food, especially the local biscuits and fresh pasta. Maybe we need to go to the large Conad store to walk off all the food we buy!!!!

The weather has taken a bit of a turn for the worse – it’s quite Autumnal now. We keep getting wet stuff falling from the sky – rain we think it’s called. But it only lasts an hour or so and then the sun comes out. Anne keeps thinking it’s getting cold –but then checks the temperature and it’s still over 20 degree centigrade. Well we suppose it is 10 degrees cooler than it was for the last few months!!

Our Italian lessons from the marina staff are progressing slowly. We can now ask for “two tokens for the washing machine” and to tell people that “we don’t speak Italian”. We did get rescued by the guy from the Marina office today – we were trying to find out how much it cost to go swimming at the pool nearby – as he was walking past he saw us and popped in to help in the  translation – they really are friendly here.

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