We only have two days left of what was supposed to have been a six-day road trip. We sort of “lost” the first two days due to the package ordeal, but we are still satisfied with the trip. We are especially excited for today.

But let’s get back to last night. We arrived at the Maison D’Hôtes Dar Fatima in the early evening. This is a B&B and what a B&B it is! We 100 percent recommend this to anyone who wants to stay in a lovely home, with delightful and friendly proprietors, and excellent food! Oh, if you like cats, you will like one of their cats. Even they say that one is nice and one is mean! 🙂

Here are a few pictures of the rooms and the terrace:

We ate a big breakfast and headed out the door.

I’d told Michael that I wanted pictures of camels today. We hadn’t seen many at all thus far (maybe three?) and hadn’t taken any pictures. Boy, did we hit the motherload of camels!!! I mean, we didn’t really hit them, we just admired them. First there was just this one guy by the side of the road:

Then, there were 11 camels crossing the road. . . . quite near a camel crossing sign. 🙂 🙂

We decided to take a road trip. As I began investigating places, I learned that several Star Wars scenes were filmed here. In fact, Tunisia is distinguished as the country with the second most number of unique Star Wars film sites (12 in total).

Our road trip began with a bit of a challenge.

Day One:
We first drove to Tunis (2.5 hours in the “wrong” direction) because a portside window that was supposed to have been delivered to the marina was held up in Customs. Not knowing where exactly to go, we went to the airport. One person directed us to an office at the airport. After finding someone who spoke English there, we were told to go somewhere else. There, we located a FedEx agent who told us that we had to go to a different location to see the Customs Inspector. He mentioned that the inspector works from 9:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. It was about 2:00 p.m. at this point. He told us we could go there anyway to see if they would release the package.

The building he showed us on the map turned out to be the wrong building. After asking a few people where to go, we found the FedEx building. Here we learned two things: 1) the package was there, and 2) they would not release the package until the inspector had done his thing. We were instructed to return to return at 9:00 a.m. the next day.

We didn’t want to drive 2.5 hours back to Monastir only to have to return the next morning, so we spent the night in Tunis. We stayed at a lovely hotel and had a nice dinner. But we completely missed the site we were supposed to have visited that day.

Day Two:
We arrived at the FedEx office the next morning at about 9:30. The inspector arrived at about 10:30 a.m. He informed us that we needed to pay a 100 TD fee, but that we needed to go elsewhere to pay it. Luckily, the “payment” location was where we’d been the day before, so we knew where to go. We made the payment and headed back to FedEx with the receipt. We paid another 18 TD (why, we don’t know) to FedEx, after which they assured us that they would mail the package to the marina.

We now needed to drive straight to our hotel, so we didn’t get to see what we’d planned to see on the second day. We drove the last hour in the rain and darkness on some iffy roads, with water, sand and rather large rocks deposited at unexpected intervals due to recent heavy rains. We enjoyed the view of the thousands of trees planted along the way, as well as how the terrain changed from orange to tan.

We left Palermo on October 13 for our two-day sail to Tunisia.

Why did we go to Tunisia? The main reason is because it isn’t in Schengen. The other reason is that it is on the southern coast of the Mediterranean Sea/northern coast of Africa and therefore a warm place to spend the winter. Finally, we’d read that Monastir Marina was a very popular marina for cruisers. We had joined a Monastir Group Page on WhatsApp and had already been in communication with a couple of the cruisers. We learned that they get together for a BBQ every Sunday and also enjoy happy hours, coffee, and watching football (soccer) games together. We were pretty excited to get to the marina!

We had to motor the entire way to Tunisia. There was little to no wind. Here are some pictures of our trip to Tunisia, including arriving in the middle of the night, where we anchored outside of the marina until daylight (in fact, not until midday; we slept in and took our sweet time). I should note that we didn’t see land for most of the trip, but the pictures I took include the land because they are more interesting than just looking at water. 🙂

We had hoped to leave for Palermo earlier than we did. We had to wait for a repaired battery charger to be delivered to Seahike.

To be perfectly honest, though, we probably needed the break. We had come down with something (we later learned it was Covid) during our trip to Venice and Cinque Terre. My theory is that we picked it up on the train from Venice to Cinque Terre. At any rate, we were both tired and wouldn’t have wanted to make an overnight sail. Sometimes the stars align in really weird ways!

We left about 30 seconds after the package was delivered to Seahike on October 10. We were able to sail a bit, but we motored most of the way. We arrived in Palermo on October 11. Here are some pictures of our arrival in Palermo. I also want to call out Sitimar Marina. It was wonderful and the staff members were SO helpful!!!

My legs felt well worked out after climbing hundreds of steps the prior day, but I was still excited for today’s two hikes.

The first hike was from our “home town” of Riomaggiore to Manarola. This would be arguably the most difficult hike because it was basically up, up, up, up, down, down, down, down. No flat sections to speak of. I will admit that my thighs felt the up, up, up, up, but they agreed to keep going.

Here’s the info about the trail from a Cinque Terre trail website:

Hiking trail Riomaggiore – Manarola – (Via Beccara)
Difficulty: difficult
Length: 1.8 km
Duration: 1h (Note that this lists one hour, but the map lists 36 minutes. One hour was correct.)
Hiking fee: no
This trail between Manarola and Riomaggiore is an alternative to Via dell’Amore (which is currently closed) and can be done in either direction. (I went from Riomaggiore to Manarola.)
The Cinque Terre Card is not required for this trail. Very good physical condition is required!
The villages of Riomaggiore and Manarola are very close to one another but have a very steep mountain separating them. Half an hour of challenging climb due to the number of steep stairs up over the ridge, through a metal gate as you pass across the high point then drop through terraced small-plot grape fields into a beautiful town for refreshments. The trail offers panoramic sea views.

Our visit to Cinque Terre was all about hiking for me. Most of you understand by now that Michael can’t exert himself much due to his heart issues. But he is a great sport about meeting me somewhere after I’ve hiked there.

Today’s first hike began in Corniglia. I bought a Cinque Terre Tren card and took the train from Riomaggiore to Corniglia. The Tren card made the most sense because I would be hiking the two trails that have a fee associated with them (the other two I would be hiking are free) and would be taking the train enough to make the Tren card the way to go. Michael also bought the Tren card, but for him it was because he would be taking the train numerous times.

The first portion of the hike consisted of climbing the 383 steps to Corniglia, the only one of the five towns not located at sea level. Once there, I walked around a bit to enjoy the town. It is very pretty.

Three trains (high speed, regional, and inter-city) and five hours later we were in Monterosso! We stopped at the first restaurant we saw for a late lunch/very early dinner. We each had a local beer and a panini.

It wasn’t too much longer before we decided to head to our hotel, which was in Riomaggiore, at the opposite end of Cinque Terre. We decided to take the ferry so we could see Cinque Terre from the water.

It was time to take our trip “up north” to Venice and Cinque Terre. I’d been to both before (in 2001) but Michael hadn’t been to either. I didn’t have specific memories of either place, but I had a warm fuzzy feeling that made me excited to see them again.

We’d headed to Agropoli a couple of days prior to catching the train to Venice. They have a marina that is less expensive than those along the Amalfi Coast. We needed to be in a marina for a couple of reasons: 1) we don’t leave Seahike at anchor when we go out of town for safety reasons, and 2) we were having a repaired battery charger and four new solar panels delivered to Seahike and needed a real-live address to do so.

We didn’t spend much time in Agropoli, but it seemed to be a nice city. The train station was a bit of a hike, so we were glad we didn’t have a lot of heavy luggage to carry.

We arrived with about 10 minutes to spare, only to learn that the train was 10 minutes late. We went to the correct track to board the train then proceeded to get lost in our phones. All of a sudden, Michael looked up from his phone and asked where everyone was. It was then that we realized that the train was arriving on a different track than where we were standing. And the train was already there! We went into panic mode and I tried to ask someone how to get to the track on the other side. He didn’t speak English. Michael said, “he doesn’t understand you,” and we took off. We saw the stairs that led to the underground passage. When we reached the bottom, several people exiting the train pointed to where we needed to go. We sprinted up the stairs to the train and boarded. We’d only been on the train about 30 seconds when the doors closed. Whew!

So, that was exciting.

We’d started the trip on a regional train, then changed to a high-speed train in Salerno. The rest of the seven-hour trip was thankfully uneventful.

When we arrived in Venice, we were greeted with this sight. I immediately felt like I’d come home to an old friend. It was so exciting!

We bought a ticket for the waterbus (definitely the way to travel – inexpensive and quick!) and started to enjoy the scenery along the Grand Canal.

I haven’t talked much about Salerno, even though we have been using it as our home port (and loving doing so, by the way!!). As a city, it is a story in contrasts. Parts are modern and clean, others are dirty and old. (Not that this is specific to Salerno, but it is a bit different from some of the other “Disneyesque” cities along the Amalfi Coast.) Many of the walls are covered in uber colorful graffiti. Very few people speak English (not a complaint, just a fact). There are two marinas and ferry stops within a kilometer of each other. The city’s residents – some with pet dogs – make excellent use of the beach located next to one of the marinas (and where we are at anchor). Some residents are daily walkers – in the water. I think they use the water as a source of resistance and/or to protect their joints while walking back and forth. They are quick to respond with a smile and “Bonjourno” when you say it to them. The residents also enjoy socializing on the numerous benches located along the long promenade that is densely decorated with beautiful flowering trees.

In short, the city is both welcoming and very interesting.

My favorite day in Salerno was the day I visited the Arechi castle. I’d decided to walk, not because I didn’t know how to get a taxi (which I didn’t), but because I thought it would be a nice walk. It was. Google Maps took me through narrow streets, on wrong turns, in back alleys, etc. When it told me to turn onto a non-existent street, I just retraced my steps until I found a street going in the right direction, went down it, and checked the phone again. Once I was through the city, I followed a “regular” road to the castle.

But let’s learn a bit about this city before we talk about the castle. Here are quite a few facts and dates:

We thought we would spend an hour or two visiting the ruins in Pompeii. We spent four. The woman at the tourist center recommended that we just visit the sites underlined in black on the map. So that’s what we did. Seventeen sites. Four hours.

The first thing we saw when we entered the ruins was the anfiteatro (amphitheater). It is the oldest among those known from Roman times. It was built in 70 B.C., on the initiative of magistrates Caius Quinctius Valgus and Marcus Porcius who also had the Odeon built. It could hold up to 20,000 people.

In 59 A.D., the cheering of the audience led to a bloody brawl between the people from Pompeii and those from Nocera. As a result of these riots, the Senate of Rome decided to close the arena in Pompeii for ten years, however, this measure was withdrawn in 62 A.D., after the disastrous earthquake struck the city.

The exterior of the amphitheater has staircases with two flights to provide access to the upper steps and a downward corridor that provides access to the lower steps.

Our next stop was the Casa di Giulia Felice. It is a large complex of buildings built at the end of the 1st century B.C., following the incorporation of previous buildings into a single building complex set as an “urban villa,” with a predominance of green areas.