Well, my e-mail’s down again as we drop the hook in the harbor of beautiful Triete, Italy! I’ve not been able to send my daily message to Girlbysea or my son.
We completed carrier qualifications, the Atlantic crossing, a live fire exercise at Wrath, Scotland (for those of you who’ve followed the Vieques Issue, that’s where we had to go to finalize the battles groups for live fire support), in-chopped to the Sixth Fleet (Mediterranean Sea) and conducted five days of presense operations in the Adriatic Sea. A very busy 21 days.
In port, I’ve arranged 640 ship tours for Italian citizens as well as office calls by the admiral skipper and CAG to the offices of the Mayor of Trieste, Prefect of Trieste and the President of the Region. The skipper will return the favor by bringing those folks aboard for dinner tonight. Needless to say, I won’t be getting off the ship today.
But now it’s time for liberty! I’ve got the duty today, but Saturday and Sunday I’ll be sipping espressos, licking gelato and scarfing pasta.
My trip to the Italian Alps is off. There’s not enough snow there to ski. So Saturday I’ll be bumming around Trieste itself, seeing the Roman ampitheater (they must have a law over here – you must have a Roman ampitheater if your city is located withing 10 kilometers of the med. Every fricken’ town has one!), and the Miramare Castle, the “love-nest” of Maximillian and Charlotte before he accepted the burdens of the Mexican Crown.
I’ve pushed back my Venice trip to Sunday. I’ll be taking the 0607 train from Trieste to Venice’s Santa Lucia Station. I’m going with a couple of European newbies so I have a feeling a gondola ride is in my near future.
I’ll update all of you Monday night.
Voted Best Sport
And narrowly averted the despised moniker Smiley Master
Forward deployed until 18AUG00