Some of you may have read me writing superlative after energetic adjective describing the wonderment that is Gelato. Emmas in particular makes fantastic Gelato.
Now with glorious technology I can bring you what greets me every time I walk in.
Well it took us six months but we finally have a job together on a Super Yacht. To give you all an idea of how zany Yachting can be please enjoy the following timeline.
Sunday: Anna is homeless and jobless. Karina and Darren take pity on us and put us up for a few nights.
Tuesday Karina tells Anna of a new boat that needs crew and advises Anna to call on Wednesday.
Wednesday: Anna calls and is told to come in for lunch with the crew.
Mad rush to print off Anna’s CV. I take a chance and print off a copy of mine.
I do an expert iron of Anna’s polo shirt.
I am two glasses down an excellent red and I get a phone call to also come and have lunch with crew.
Meet Captain and his Wife. We are told they do not like to employ couples but……
Captain begrudgingly tells me the boat is a computer with two rudders and two engines.
I rub my hands together.
We get a tour of Yacht on Wednesday night. More about that later.
Thursday: We have new jobs. Anna starts today. I start as soon as I can get out of my contract.
So what about the boat? Well it is brand new. 62 metres in length. It has an on board gym and lap pool. It has really good crew areas which is good as the Captain likes to cruise and not sit about in port. It is full of technology and I can stand up in the engine room which is a novelty.
We will be leaving Viareggio on the 20th of November for the Maldives and Egypt. We will then go to the Dubai yacht show.
Life is good.
PS Interested devils can enquire here for chartering our work place. No pirates allowed.
Continuing where we left off.
Having slummed in the Riviera for two months, yachtied in Italy for four months I am well accustomed with watching people watchers and in particular tourists. Paris really refined some of my personal theories on how to get more out of your time and lower your idiot footprint TM
Let me quickly explain the idiot footprint theory.
Think of carbon footprint. Then think of all the stupid noise, pollution, mess and down right crazy things Tourists do to ruin a place.
Parisians have a reputation for being rude. We found them them lovely, why? because we did not look like tourists.
Here is my idiot proof lower your idiot footprint guide to Paris.
-Do not carry a camera around your neck.
-Do not say wow, ever.
-Carry a copy of Le monde or a local news paper. Do not worry if it is not in your language.
-Do not wear a bum bag. Do not wear a day pack. Sure you might have to carry your valuables in normal bag but guess what? you will not look like a tourist and an easy target.
-If you have to carry a map, smuggle it inside that news paper you picked up before.
Now for some quite specific rules.
-Don’t fall on your face outside a restaurant into your Chinese lunch and then loudly blame the sloping floor outside the door which don’t exist in America, apparently.
-Don’t compare public transport systems with the rail system in Pennsylvania.
-If you have to talk really loudly, actually just don’t.
See how easy it is!
Anyway, back to Paris. On Tuesday we took the liberating trip outside of Paris to visit the Palace of Versailles.
Versailles was the French royal palace for about 100 years from 1682.
It is an incredibly large monument to royal excess, grandeur and I do believe I said wow a few times.
The weather was a bit iffy which was a bit disappointing but it put us in good stead for London. More on that at a later date.
Please enjoy my photos and comments.
Section of Garden.
Section of Garden with handsome sense of scale device in foreground.
Section of Palace from outside. Camera could not fit it in.
Swarming revolutionary horde of Tourists. See how few have read my guide!
Excellent chandelier.
Quite a tasty alcove.
I rate Versailles.
Having not been knowingly scammed in a while I was surprised and pleased to be hijacked outside a pub in London.
I was sitting peacefully minding my own iPhone. A man came along purporting to be selling the big issue. a magazine sold by homeless people in London) feeling charitable I gave him five pounds. The man assured me he was homeless and promptly walked off never to be seen again.
For the Australians in my readership he was supposed to give me a copy of the magazine that he was carrying. The big issue. Maybe he only had issues.
Let the reader beware, I was told to stay away from homeless Big issue salespeople by our gracious host Jacqui. A couple of glasses of merlot may have affected my judgement.
After the crispness of Paris and the bi-polar blast which was London it is nice to be back in the still balmy Italy.
I have quite a few travel tales to tidy up over the next week. I also have to reapply for my job as we have a new settlement date for the boat.
The good news is we are now 200 metres from the best Gelato in Viareggio.
photo has nothing to do with Gelato but is awesome all the same.
Last weeks serious natural disasters did not leave me unscathed. Friday was a neat cataclysmic coupling with me losing the remnants of my thumbnail, squashing another finger and the death of my laptop.
Naturally I was quite chuffed at this and I have been skulking the streets of Paris, taking notes with my ruined hands and trying to carry off the unimpressed air of someone who now calls Tuscany home. Well on Facebook anyway.
Without further dilly dallying here are my thoughts on Paris.
I love Paris. I love it a lot. I could see myself living here with little coaxing. Its a beguiling place which seduces you quickly and leaves you sad to walk away. I am not going to pretend I have even nibbled the ear lobe of Paris. It is a vast place full of wonderful things to write about. Let me just write about what we did, what we enjoyed and what I would do to improve time spent here.
Statue Bro?
Not being much of an fine art aficionado I find the statue avalanche that confronts you at every turn in Paris absolutely awesome. Give me a statue or sculpture over a painting any day of the week.
My first Caesar. Does anyone else see the irony that I had to go to France to see my first Caesar and I saw my first Napolean in Italy?
Actually some paintings are pretty awesome
Now that ends my iPhone photos. We now own a HD camera/video camera combo unit. Expect more video and nicer photos. Thanks iPhone. I look forward to using you for more phonely pursuits haha, whatever.
Sitting down. Paris has been designed well for the pedestrian and for the most pedestrian of pedestrian. Forget the cafes. Walk anywhere and you will find chairs, benches and all manner of things to sit down and just enjoy time off your feet.
Cuisine. Paris has great food. The constant deluge of tourists mean there plenty of scope for the enterprising restaurateur. You can find every type of restaurant in good supply for every price range.
Pro tip. When you are feeling overwhelmed by the Frenchness of it all. Go to the Mexican themed Tex mex restaurants. The burittos are fabulous.
An interesting thing I noticed about Paris is that it was all strangely familiar just on a grander scale. Why is this? Because I visited three French colonies last year. Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Want an example?
Contrast this
exhibit a Laos Vietenne
with this
exhibit b some famous thing in Paris that I dare not spell incorrectly and hide my embarrassment behind some words as is often the case.
More to come. In the next instalment we shall look at the finer art of palace running, Parisians, music and how not to appear American or English.
Footnote,
On the third day of my laptops death it rose again with a broken backspace key. I shall type very carefully from here on in.
In what can only be best described as an unfortunate incident I have started by first serious travel writing holiday in a while with a broken laptop.
With by wifes laptop safely stowed in board Allegro I will not be even punctuating with a pink keyboard.
Creativity is ignited by such challenges and I shall do my best to drizzle a saucy sweet concoction on this page for the next week. All by using French keyboards, begging for internet access on the street and a healthy dose of Dragons luck.
Sometimes the world moves in mysterious ways.
On Monday I was sunning myself on the Riviera living the life.
On Tuesday we made our way back to Italy. Our agent could not find us a berth in Imperia or Viareggio. We ended up in Livorno with no berth and we docked in the Commercial yard.
That is our boat sitting amongst piles of limestone and other useful metals.
I have had my second run in with our engineer. This time I was not as nice. I used a choice smattering of expletives and adjectives. I do believe I called question of his self esteem levels and impolitely told him to stay away from me and to limit further communication for my mental health.
Whether this will work remains to be seen. I will give our next heated interaction some thought.
I may make a show of head butting a stainless steel rail to signify the futility of our previous discussions.
First off let me apologise for not having updated my blog in over a week.
I did take the precaution of loading up my internet key with 40 euros worth of internet time before we left Italy. Unfortunately the French resistance taxed my internet time so I ended up with following for my investment.
1 Email check
1 Small face book session
1 Internet banking session
International roaming charges are incurred at 2 euros a megabyte. That is quite steep.
Anyway….
For the last week we have been anchored about half an hour away from Monaco. The trip here was good in that I loaded up on sea sickness tablets and was not violently or even peacefully ill.
We have had two temporary crew members for two weeks. They are both from England and it has been nice to banter about in my mother tongue.
They are both characters and have earned a couple of nick names.
The first; Deckhand/Engineer has been named Prince Malcolm or the Deckhand formerly known as Prince.
He has an almost regal bearing. He went to school with the heir to the throne of Dubai and it is where Prince Charles was schooled.
Malcolm loves Sail Boats and loves talking about them. Almost all of his work place talk is peppered with the following conjunctions.
Sail boats are cool because…..
On Sail boats ……
We do this on Sail boats……
The second is our First Mate. We have named Hulk.
Hulk shares my cabin and has been a fount of knowledge. He has been very good at getting us organised and going to leave me a list of things to do when he laves. I think he suspects I am lonely here on account of all the talking I do.
The Hulk earned his nick name through a series of actions.
Firstly our stewardess noticed his pants are often almost falling down.
Secondly the Stewardess noticed he has been rupturing his trousers.
Thirdly he announced he had split his pants and he had no underwear on.
Quite the character is our Hulk.
Anyway our days have been spent getting the boat ready for potential buyers and ferrying people to the boat from ashore.
I have been taking a lot of photos whilst I have been working. Something the Hulk is secretly proud of.
Sunrise at Beaulieu
Children Sailing school
One of my cooler tasks this week was taking a swim in the pristine waters to scrap sea growth off our underwater lights and the swim platform.
I also had to swim to cut a line off a tenders propeller. I am getting paid to swim. I am a professional swimmer!
On Wednesday morning I went with our Captain to Monaco itself to get some mail and brochures.
The Monaco maritime museum
Shot of the Maltese Falcon. Check it out on Wikipedia. Quite a Yacht.
Leaving Monaco we followed a small Sub. All I could think was Nemo…….
Other highlights of the week at anchor were.
Spending half an hour coloring in a book with a little girl named Anastasia. She was quite the artist for an almost three year old. I am getting paid to play with kids. I am a professional nanny.
Being named Knots McConnell on my inability to perform knots in a timely fashion when my Captain is watching. That being said, I now know three more knots thanks to Prince and Hulk.
Going out for a couple of quiet Long Island iced teas. Returning back to the boat under the cover of darkness. Quietly drinking a couple of Gin and Juices and being called a herd of elephants in the morning by our illustrious Captain.
Learning a lot of new stuff including how to pay out an anchor using winches and a lot of useful deck tricks. Apparently working on a Super Yacht can make you OCD. Look out friends I am turning OCD!
Enjoying France not being unemployed, it is actually quite a beautiful place when you are not worrying about where you are going to sleep next week.
Currently we are in France. We are heading back to Viareggio tomorrow morning. Anna and I will be flying to Paris on Saturday. We are going to spend four nights there and three nights in London
Excellent.
Vomitorious.
adj.
The elation felt when you have vomited every single thing from your stomach.
The tale that lead to the discovery of this new word is just as stupidpendous.
My Friday night was relatively tame. I had visited the Red Lion for a pre dinner drink. Red Lion patrons, Vanessa makes a semi drinkable blow your head off gin and tonic. Kevin makes a take no prisoners annihilate your liver gin and tonic.
I met my crew mates for dinner. Sans Engineer of course. Dinner was middling or muddling. I do not remember my pizza. The waitress cleverly did not give me a menu so I would not embarrass myself ordering. We walked home stopping at the Red Lion. I just ordered plain tonic this time.
I slept a little too soundly and arose surprisingly chirpy. Today we would go to Imperia! The first few hours went well. We bunkered (took on fuel) tied up our tender for towing and were on the open sea by 11am.
Unfortunately the antics of the previous night combined with a very greasy english breakfast and sizable swell. I started to feel pretty rotten. I would have probably managed ok if I had not been on the bridge trying to fix a navigation computer problem. I wisely decided to exit stage left and try to recuperate.
We do have sea sickness tablets on board. I did take some of these four hours later than they would have been effective. They were seen soon after as I slid into the trance like state that accompanies a prolonged bout of forced stomach contents expulsion.
Never again.
When will it end?
Why me why?
I think I might cry.
Sheepishly I did try to return to navigation duties but I soon returned to my bathroom to reacquaint myself with my English breakfast and the barrel load of water I had drank.
But then the feeling soon came. I was vomitorious! I had nothing left to give. I could sleep soundly.
Never to drink again. Till next week.