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Lunch in Pisa
A rather delicious meal. Cold beer made it oh so much better on a smokin hot day.Happy Canada Day folks!
Now that it’s July I have been here for more than a month. I can hardly believe how fast the time goes by. It feels like just yesterday I was getting on a plane in dreary Vancouver. Probably has something to do with the fact that on top of school work, hitting the gym every second day, and having meetings with officers, I’m also working 10 hour days. One day I had to grease all the mooring equipment on the forward deck. I never though this would be a bad job until I realized the big painted number on each winch was the number of grease nipples each had. The big winches had 80 each, and there are 14 winches in total. Needless to say, I’m never complaining about trying to find the 8 under the 4runner ever again.
Just after my last update we hit a few days of strong wind. Upon leaving Lisbon we encountered winds gusting to 65 knots. The morning after I felt like I was going to get blown off the deck, but alas I’m still here.
Apparently whenever we’re in Southampton lots of people try to get off
Main Square
Side of the leaning tower and the big church in Pisa. Cost to enter: 18 euros for a few hours as it’s only a 5 minute walk to a big mall. So I went to Ikea to get some magnets and a whiteboard for keeping notes in my cabin. Ikea in England is almost the same as back at home, except you can buy even more things that one wouldn’t expect. The weirdest of these items being soaps and shampoos, power tools, and beer.
Although food aboard repeats every few days, it still has a tendency to surprise me. We’ve had some awesome meals; Mahi Mahi, Lobster bisque, Tacos, Burgers, even Pizza! And then theres the deck parties the blue boys (people who work under the bosun, including me) throw. They have the power to get anything they want. Big BBQ dinner with chicken, steaks, lobster tails, and what must have been 20 cases of beer and atleast 4 cases of wine. The only thing that went wrong was the barbecue set off the sprinkler system for 20 minutes.
I’ve been watching lots of world cup football and have been thoroughly annoyed by those bloody Vuvuzuelas. All the games are shown on an outer crew deck; I walked onto said deck filled with 50
Leaning Tower
Notice lack of obligatory: I'm holding up the tower photo. England fans for the Germany vs England match on Sunday while wearing my Germany jersey. After some brief heckling I found the other German fan. Needless to say we pissed off the English pretty well with our cheering and DEUTSCHLAND chants :P After the game the HR manager told me that if I was to go out on any crew decks that evening I would have to take off my jersey. Dream final: Holland vs Germany
I managed to get off for an afternoon and take the crew tour to Pisa. The route from the cruise ship terminal took us through some shady neighbourhood. Someone’s quote was “holy crap, I didn’t think Italy would be such a s***hole”. Luckily Pisa being a tourist place was much nicer, not a whole lot to see as they wanted 18 euros to get into a couple churches and get up the tower. But we had an amazing dinner, and back by popular demand a food photo is included! Also had some real Gelati, a really refreshing thing on a 30 degree day. Sidenote: You can buy Duff beer in Pisa!
I walked into Civitavecchia to see if there was anything worth.
Oh... That sign
Why the italian woman yelled at me after I casually strolled into the church. Although siesta was supposed to be over at 4, and I was in town at 5 nothing was open. I got yelled at by an Italian woman for walking into a church with shorts and a camera. But I did find another thing named after Garibaldi. Apparently he was an important guy.
The day after we left Sardinia I was looking over the side and noticed just how much trash was floating around in the Mediterranean, lots of plastic bags and other floating stuff. After spotting what I thought was a big piece of garbage, I saw a sea turtle! And then an hour later saw another!
Every week aboard we have a drill, this includes getting to your emergency stations and then muster stations. If you happen to be on a fire team like me, you take part in a fire drill as well. Normally the fire drill is pretty laid back as there are 8 teams and only 2 go into the simulated fire. But yesterday was our time to shine. Full turnout gear, on air, head into the room and it’s full of fake smoke, can’t see a single thing and we’ve got to recover
a victim. But thanks to training instinct kicks in and it all happens without a hitch.
If anyone would like my mailing address I’d be happy to give it to you, I just didn’t feel comfortable posting it online for the whole world to see. Just keep in mind, if you do send me anything make sure you give it enough time to get to me before I potentially leave on the 9th of October.
Leave a comment or drop me a line: gbeier@gmail.com
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Dad
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Beer at Ikea ???
I have to know - what kind of beer do they sell at Ikea ? Is it from Sweden? Can't get enough of that wonderful Duff !!!!!