We kicked off Croatia with a visit to Dubrovnik which was very pretty and quaint, if a little smaller than expected. It was also full of both English people and English speakers which came as a bit of a shock after a month in Italy, although admittedly we do generally appreciate being able to communicate beyond "thank you" and "do you have". After our second day in the old town, we moved to a secluded little bay on the island next door where (drum roll...) I went...

From Sicily we needed to make two long crossings to get across to the heel of Italy. The evening before we'd planned to leave for the first of those (a 24-hour journey), the weather forecast suddenly changed to predict storms for the next day, scuppering our well-laid plans. We decided to set off immediately so rushed around trying to get everything ready. Ironically, that night we were pretty much surrounded by the thunderstorms we'd hoped to avoid but fortunate...

Our first stop in Sicily was in a place called Milazzo which, depending on which direction you look in, is either very pretty (up towards the old town) or very ugly (across the bay to the enormous oil refinery). We turned our backs on the refinery and took a walk up to the citadel. We were greeted by a super friendly Sicilian guy who was inexplicably delighted that I was English and gave us an impromptu free tour - inclusive of handpicked flowers, some very amusi...

Kicking off with our most exciting news - we saw a whale! Or to be precise, we saw the water plume of a whale. Twice! We set off from Salerno on a Sunday, stayed a night in a cute little (ghost) town called Acciaroli and then jumped into the deep end taking on an 85nm journey to the northern-most Aeolian island, Stromboli. That route took us further offshore than we've been so far on the trip, and that's when we saw our whale! It was very exciting but with anothe...

After just over a week of speed-socialising which included a 1st birthday party, Harding Christmas and a trip to The Netherlands, we flew back to Naples on 23 April. Our journey to the marina in Salerno was slightly more painful than we'd anticipated since the brand new metro system (which had opened a few days before we tied up in November) has now closed down due to a lack of funds...our first reminder that we're back in Italy! When we did eventually get back t...