We left the boat in good hands back in Aegina and have headed to Italy.
Mark had been shopping for airline tickets to get us back home to Oregon via Florida where our youngest daughter Chloe lives. She’s on an internship at Walt Disney World and we wanted to stop by and say hello to Bedouin’s favorite bosun turned cast member. While shopping for tickets he discovered a repositioning cruise ship that was waaaay cheaper than the price of the flight we were about to book. The thought of relaxing our way back to the states, and getting a chance to preview a few spots we would be sailing to next season, sounded much better than an airplane seat. So we booked it.
We grabbed a quick flight over to Rome to meet the boat. Our first stop was to visit the Rome Temple, which we’ve been looking forward to seeing since its completion in 2019. It was just as stunning in person as it appeared on all the photos we’ve seen. And a lovely afternoon with some amazing new friends.
After a fantastic few hours there we slogged our way around the corner and down the road to a giant mall. We aren’t really mall shoppers, but a visit there was necessitated by the fact that we weren’t really cut out for big boat cruising either. When we left Bedouin, all we had was shorts and flip flops, I had wrinkled summer dress, some running shoes, and that was it. Not a thing to wear otherwise that looked remotely grown up. Our little repositioning cruise across the Atlantic seemed to necessitate the repositioning of our wardrobes as well.
So we snagged a couple sweaters, a pair of sensible shoes, and a few pairs of pants, and headed to the ship, hoping they’d let a couple rag-tag sailors on who were not used to wearing a lot of clothes.
Here’s some beautiful photos of the temple, the mall however, was completely forgettable.
These were my fancy dress shoes that I paired with my wrinkled sun dress. This ensemble is clearly what led us to the ginormous mall to get some acceptable grown up clothes.