Big boats and bureaucracy (Siracusa, Sicily)

 

We awoke to what appeared at first glance to be a massive skyscraper that had popped up next to us overnight. On closer inspection this turned out to be a monster of a cruise liner - The ‘MSC Seasside’. To give an idea of the scale of it, it has 18 decks, room for 5179 passengers, that’s in addition to the 1413 crew! Chez and I are not particularly deep sleepers, normally waking for mosquitoes or an unusual rattle of the rigging, but surprisingly we slept through the arrival of this behemoth completely.

Today is the day we’ve opted to head ashore and finalise the process of checking in to Italy - a process that has dragged for the last four days so far.

Realising that we might be number 5180 in the queue at Customs if we didn’t hurry, we made an early start, briefly heading over to our Swedish friends to let them have two of our Covid self test kits. They too had not heard the cruise liner arrivsal and were as surprised as us to see it looming above them.

Chez - with her metaphorical captains hat on headed into customs solo at 8.15 to try and beat the rush!

She left customs at 8.20 and headed for the harbour master.

Meanwhile, I’ve stayed with the tender and got chatting to a nice much travelled French lady.

At 9am I get a wave from Chez.. come over to customs - it’s air-conditioned.

In the Customs office confusion reigns:

‘What is your VAT status?’

‘Uh..Brexit?

‘How long you stay??’

‘You’ve been Where??’

‘For how long?’

‘Where is the boat?’

..etc etc etc...

After an hour of this the person dealing with us - the mysteriously named ‘Dr. April’ - disappears without explanation. After another half an hour he returns and gives us an indecipherable second hand document previously used by a Kiwi yacht now with the name crossed out for us to take back to harbour master.

We decide on a change of tack and instead head to the Polizia di Frontira (immigration). The outside gates are locked, so an intercom exchange ensues. After several attempts by the person at the other end to fob me off with a phone number, after some whispering and an exasperated sigh the gates before us open and we are in.

To now, everyone has been quite nice, polite, mainly confused or bemused by our presence. The stern faced balding short guy at immigration was the first mildly officious person we’ve dealt with. Suspect he might have been having a bad day before we arrived.

‘Wrong door! Go outside!’

Then at the right door:

‘Stand there! What is your problem??’

We explained: ‘There’s no problem, we’re just trying to check into your country’

‘You cant - You don’t need stamp no schengen it’sa OK’

That doesn’t seem right...

‘Are you sure’

...and with a stern finality that ceased any further dialogue:

‘Si I’ma sure!’

Ok then...

Back to the harbour master - we provided the second hand scribbled document from Customs to our ‘Please standby’ friend from the VHF radio of the last few days - she turns out or be a smiling lady in crisp bright white uniform.

After a short wait in the large opulent foyer of the Harbour Masters building we speak to a Señor Dellia, a tall man also in crisp white uniform.

We share the second hand document given to us by customs...

As a frown furrowed his brow:

"Non Capisco" - we didn't capisco either..

In a not unfriendly tone he asked:

‘Why he give you that ‘I AM THE HARBOUR MASTER!’

(I should also mentioned he had previously addressed Chez as Mrs. Serenity

Wait....

After a short period of reflection Señor Dellia tells us to come back on Friday... I give you another one!

So this is the second country where, customs, police and harbour master are less than interested in whether we are checked in or not.

We are at least now happy that, in similar fashion to when we left Greece, we’ve at least tried to do the right thing.

Back to the boat for the sweltering afternoon.

Now we have - in our minds at least - the keys to the city we decide that a nice stroll and a pizza out would be a good idea all round.

We took the tender into the marina and chained her up (there’s sadly been a few thefts reported from here).

We headed up into the town on Ortegio island, and discovered a gem of a place, with cafe lined piazzas and architecture that could give Venice or Florence a run for their money. Wandered in awe for some time until deciding some refreshment was called for. Stopped at a small laneway bar with tables outside and sipped our beers as the world passed by. The people here are a very different breed from the simple rustic Greeks we’re more used to seeing, stylish and chic seems to be the unofficial dress code. Suitably refreshed, we walked a few more streets, and in doing so, began to put the town layout together in our heads. Chez had checked Trip Advisor in the afternoon to find the best pizza place... now I don’t know if there were better pizzas elsewhere, but the ones we had sitting outside as darkness fell and the temperature cooled were pretty damn good. Slow stroll back to the tender (still chained in place) and back to Serenity Now for bed.