Marina di Ragusa: Winter 2013/2014

Wanderingdragon
Stephen & Anne
Mon 2 Jun 2014 13:33

36.46.832N 14.32.744E

 

As the summer season is fast approaching and we are starting to say farewell to our winter friends we realised that we had not been blogging. So here is a catch up on the winter of 2013/2014.

 

We had a trip back to the UK in November and had an early Christmas with Stephens family. While we were there we bought a very expensive cat toy for Yoyo – an iPad!! Ok so we use the iPad too, but we found a game for cats and Yoyo loves it

 

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Yoyo trying to catch the mouse on the iPad.

 

In the run up to Christmas we went on a trip to the chocolate festival in Modica. It was a lovely evening wandering around displays of chocolate and tasting the samples – we all came back feeling slightly sick!!

 

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One of the amazing  chocolate sculptures.

 

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A carving in progress – along with a guy collecting the discarded chocolate to take home.

 

 

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Stephen tasting one of the displays in the chocolate museum in Modica.

 

Christmas was a social whirl in Marina di Ragusa –

 

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.. there was the Christmas eve concert …

 

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.. the Christmas day “progressive dinner”, where we had starter on one boat with 4 other people, then went to another boat for main course with 4 different people, and finally to another boat and 4 more people for desert.

 

The New Years Eve party was a karaoke ..

 

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… which was great fun …

 

 

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… on New Years day we went to Ispica to see the “living Nativity” This is the final scene with Mary, Joseph and Jesus. It is quite an honour in the town to be the proud parents of the baby that chosen for Jesus.  Somehow on our picture we have manged to miss off the animals that were also in the scene, the live sheep, goats and Donkeys.

 

The living nativity was a great event, we worked our way down from the town to the foot of the gorge, visiting lots of caves on the way. In each of the caves were people demonstrating different crafts.

 

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Bread Making, complete with working wood burning oven.  A very popular cave as it was lovely and warm!!

 

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Basket weaving

 

Early March it was Carnevale time. We had been told that the best event was in Acireale, at the base of etna just north of Catania. So off we went.

 

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The children all get dressed up  …

 

 

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There are two types of  floats  ones   decorated with flowers …

 

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.. and the more mechanical ones. These stopped at various points in the parade to put o a show.

 

 

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The floats were quite large – only just fitting down the narrow streets. One or two did have a few hit points where they obviously had not made it round the corner.

 

 

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We were then into the farewell concert season, with a guitar concert along with a sing along to the film Mamma Mia and a concert by the “Sailing Nomads” a group of musicians and singers from the marina.

 

Anne has spent her winter/spring on various sewing projects, making new curtains for the saloon, a new bimini and a cover for the dinghy. Stephen has done various engine repairs and helped with the sewing projects and improved his guitar playing immensely. Yoyo as ever has slept and played on the iPad J

 

We thought we started early getting the boat ready for the sailing season, however once again we seem to be setting off well after all the other cruisers. Anyway watch this space for our summer adventures.