Greetings to all,

Just a short note to let you know that we arrived safely in Rome around 8:20 am local time today.  We had an uneventful flight and landed on a gorgeous, sunny day with very little breeze.  It took forever to get our luggage, but there was no hassle for immigration (didn’t even stamp our passports!) or customs (didn’t look in any of the bags and had no idea about Shadow).  We got a taxi as soon as we came out; a guy asked if we needed a big one with all of our luggage.  Well, they saw us coming, as they charged us 75 euros to Ostia Lido, which is only about a ten minute drive.  You do the math; that’s about $110 USD!!  Nothing to do but pay it and move on.

Anyway, we got to the boatyard.  Mauro was there and let us into the yard.  The boat weathered the winter and summer well but is filthy dirty.  We will have a couple days of just cleaning to remove all of the dust, grime and bird droppings.

Shadow did well on the flight and seems happy to be back on the boat.  We’ll see how he feels once we’re back in the water!  We realized, once we reached the boat, that we had taken his cat pan back to the US with us as we had spent our final days in Rome last year in the city renting a room.  So we got here and the poor cat has no pan.  We will shortly head to the store to get him a pan & scoop and us a few groceries.

We are both suffering from jet lag and it’ll be an early night.  It feels great, though, to be back on the boat, although it will be a big task getting it in shape to set sail again.

Love to all,
Dar and Robert