36.46.84N 14.32.74E

Wow – doesn’t time fly. We can’t believe it’s almost a month since we last did a blog.

Boat Jobs – well these have not been going very well …  or if we are totally honest they have not progressed at all. The social life is still fairly hectic. Mondays an art group meet, Tuesday is the Electronics group, Wednesday is Skippers de-stress, Thursday Womens coffee and dinner with Venice Lion, Friday Happy Hour. Saturday and Sunday are free – but then it’s the weekend!!

In among these weekly activities there are other events. We took part in our first “Progressive Dinner”.  We cooked a main course and went to two other boats for our Starter and dessert. Each course is with different people, so by the end of the evening we had sat with 12 other people. Stephen cooked the meal and is getting rather creative (I think he’s been watching too many cookery programs) He cooked a risotto stack with Taleggio cheese, accompanied by Black carrot parcels, courgette and red peppers with a balsamic cream reduction.

Melanie tucking into her Risotto stack.

The weekend of the 24^th November we hired a car. With Vanessa and John  (NOSTROMO) we headed off to explore some more of Sicily. After picking up the hire car in Ragusa we headed off to Modica. In Modica we hit our first challenge, the road we wanted was closed. Luckily not only did we have our directions from Google we had borrowed a friends GPS. This was quickly put into action and soon got us back on the correct road.  We soon arrived in Marzamemi. This is definitely a summer town. Although there were a few shops and cafes open most were closed for the winter. Marzamemi is a lovely little fishing village famous for it’s “tonnara” (Tuna fishery).There was plenty of smoked and salted tuna around for sale – but with a rather large price tag!!

The main square in Marzamemi

It is Italy – so you just have to stop and have a coffee. As you can tell the weather is still quite warm!!

The view from our coffee stop – the Marzamemi fishing fleet

Marzamemi is very picturesque 

After Marzamemi we carried on to Catania for a bit of retali therapy. We visited Ikea and the large supermarket Auchan.

On Sunday we had a quick trip to Lidl then on to Donnalucata. Donnalucata is the next village down the coast from Marina di Ragusa. It has a morning fish market which John wanted to visit. The day we were there a motorbike event was also taking place. Even though the town was only about 5 miles from where we are we had seen no adverts for the event. There were plenty of posters on Donnalucata though.  We watched the first race. . .

. . . unfortunately we didn’t have the camera ready so missed all of the competitiors going over the first ramp. This is the 2^nd lap, by which time they had spread out!!

This week we went out olive oil shopping. Jenny and Robert (VENICE LION) invited us out for a drive to Chiaramonte to pick up some olive oil. This was made by a local farmer – it was the first cold gentle press and is unfiltered. The olive oil is amazing – the taste is like no other olive oil we have ever had, it is very friuty almost flowery. I always laugh when food experts describe olive oil in this way – but having tasted really good olive oil I now understand what they mean.

Chiaramonte is in the mountains near Ragusa. It was after dark when we arrived so we were unable to take too many photos. The town had a very eerie with mist swirling around the roof tops, which we failed to capture on camera. We will have to try and go back in daylight to have a look round. Chiaramonte looked rather interesting with lots of narrow streets and balconies.

The church in the main square of Chiaramonte.

The weather this week has turned rather cold and windy. Up to this week although we have had a few rainy days it was staying pretty warm. We have now had to dig out the long trousers and jumpers!!