Maura says I have to write a post about being on a boat.
I have not actually been on a boat in a long time, contrary to what one might expect from a naval officer. I had to go out with the Italians for about 2.5 weeks to run their big biannual war game.
The rooms on the Italian ship were much nicer than my room ever was on a submarine. Maybe about the same as on a US aircraft carrier...EXCEPT... on the Italian ship I got a bathroom right inside my bedroom. No more tramping down a hallway in a bathrobe passing sailors trying to do their jobs.
Just because they're out to sea, don't think the Italians are going to reduce coffee consumption. The coffee is served at one of 4 little coffee bars onboard. Yes seriously. You buy a little coffee bunch card. for like 10 bucks and get 60 some punches or something like that. Each shot of espresso is $0.16. I filled my card out by the end of my time onboard, but I also bought a few sodas, which cost like 4 coffees. A beer cost 5 or 6 coffees I think.
Pasta, pasta, pasta. Every meal I think always had a pasta option. Breakfast though was just cold pastries. I missed eggs and bacon. Wine is available at lunch and dinner. Compared to an American ship I think the food had less variety. It was fine enough food, but I would want a taco night or lumpia every so often. Pasta pasta pasta.
Here I am standing outside the ship, the Cavour.
Here is another Italian ship that was in the harbor next to us. It looked picturesque.
Here is the painting inside the ships airplane storage area that shows all the unit crests for the associated aircraft squadrons.
Here is the giant elevator they use to bring airplanes up to the top part of the ship to fly, and lower them back down for storage.
There were two other Americans with me. One night all the Americans got invited to dinner with the admirals. There silverware was much fancier than the stuff for us riff raff. Food was about the same.
I took one day off when we were in port and walked around the town a little bit. I did a good job taking pictures because I didn't want Maura to yell at me. I found an aircraft carrier in a toy store. It was a French aircraft carrier though.
This was a very tempting display.
A nice ped-mall type area of the town.
Hey! There's the boat!
Neptune or something? King Trident?
There were statues of mermaids in the port. I did not see any Jamaican lobsters.
Mermaid.
This is some sort of old castle, battlement fortification thing. I wanted to try and take a tour, unfortunately you had to make reservation in advance because... of COVID or something?
So I didn't get to.
I take such artistic photos.
Anne Getty eat your heart out. Is Anne Getty who I'm thinking of?
An anchor outside the castle. That's the crest of the Italian Navy.
Panorama!
I think this might have been the symbol of the town of Taranto or something.
Some sort of old model ship that was near the harbor. I'm sure it was very educational at some point before it had been out in the elements for decades.
More mermaids.
I thought these boats looked neat, I wish the covers had been off of all of them.
Mmmmmm Grease Food. So all the Italians told me the local thing I had to try was "Puccia" which is like a sandwich stuffed with cheese wrapped in bacon. Unfortunately, by the time I got done walking around it was between lunch and dinner and everywhere was closed. I got dinner with some friends from the boat, but the place didn't have Puccia. :-(
The true test of my Italian skills thus far, reading industrial machine instructions to try and figure out how to get clean underwear and not end up with a giant wave of suds flooding down the hallway.
In conclusion, the most interesting part of being on a boat, is the little bit of time you are not in fact on the boat.
