6 June 2023 - Vieste

In the bakery, here in Rodi Garganico, they sell those tiny little croissants (I don’t know what they are called), which typically having the fillings of crema, pistachio or chocolate. They are divine. So, it was a great treat to have some of these with our morning coffee, especially as today was Steve’s birthday.

Our experience here in Puglia, is that both the food in the restaurants and the produce in the small shops and supermarkets is top quality. It rates right up there with the food in Sicily.

We had a heavy rain storm in the morning, and fortunately it was clean rain, that gave the deck a nice wash, rather than depositing sand all over it. It was a great relief that the rain had stopped and the deck had dried before our planned departure time of 4.00pm. There was a full moon two days ago, so even though the tide in the Med is very small, and we don’t usually need to pay special heed to it, today it was going to make a difference to us, allowing us to exit the marina, without causing ourselves further worry. Today was a spring tide. That meant there was 40cms difference between low water and high water, enough to give the extra clearance to get over the sand bank at the entrance.

The marinaro came with his tender to lead us out, as we had requested, and we departed with no dramas. There was no wind, so we motored back to Vieste, which is also very shallow, but has just sufficient depth of water for us to get in and out, without touching the bottom.


The town square in Rodi Garganico

There are a series of watch towers, like the one in the centre of photo, along the coast

Our chosen restaurant for dinner overlooks the harbour, facing west. On other occasions there must be a fabulous view of the sunset, but on this evening it was too cloudy. However, we got a wonderful view of the fishing dock, which gave us great entertainment. After dusk, and certainly up to 11.00pm and possibly longer into the night, fishing boats arrived at the quay, off loaded their catch and went out again. They arrived at intervals so that none of them had to wait for a space on the quay. Lots of them had not been here at the weekend, so it appeared that this was not their home port. It was like a beautifully choreographed dance, but in a bus station. When darkness has fallen, it looked all the more romantic because the boats look like shadows, with bright navigation lights, until they get close. As you know, from our previous writings, we have the upmost regard and respect for fisherman and, I’m sure, just as airplanes must be in the sky to be making money, so fishing boats must be at sea fishing to make money, so none of them stopped for long. They had been out all day and were going to be out again all night.

Miles today           15

Miles in 2023     692

Tricia (& Steve)





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