Yeah, I’m the taxman Pity the errant British circumnavigator. When they buy their boat they have the pleasure of paying Value Added Tax to Her Majesty’s treasury. A princely 20% of its purchase price. Having parted with significant wads of …
Position: 41°15’45″N 13°44’46″E Cat Sitting For the past couple of weeks we have been cat sitting in Minturno. All three of us. Marlon, ever the charmer, has learned to live with cats. More or less. In his youth, he paid …
Position: 40°44’58″N 13°54’28″E Ischia’s most recent claim to fame is as a backdrop to Elena Ferrante’s Neapolitan series of novels. Her characters escape Napoli’s summer heat for fun and frolics on Ischia’s famous beaches. Having avoided Naples, literary tourism was …
Position: 40°45’38″N 14°01’47″E Never far off the grid, it was clear from news reports things were heating up Covid-wise in Italy. Mafia incited ‘No more lockdown!’ riots added more, albeit unnecessary, justification to our decision to avoid Naples. Thick, brown …
Position: 40°01’35″N 15°17’43″E Without irony, the Mossad agent’s critique of America’s terrorist alert levels circa 2006 went something like this, “In Israel we don’t give the terrorists any idea of how well they are doing.” Europe has adapted a similar …
Position: 41°12’57″N 13°34’23″E About a month ago I realized I’d neglected to order electronic charts of the eastern Mediterranean for our chart plotter. The eastern Med apparently starts on mainland Italy. Without details, Aleta now sails across beaches and climbs …
Phone booths I am old enough to remember phone booths. You may not be. Your loss since I’m about to expound on them, briefly. Commonplace in cities around the world until the 2000s, phone booths housed many indecencies, including dirty …
Position: 38°06’59″N 13°21’48″E Palermo holds a central place in modern American mythology thanks to Mario Puzo, Francis Coppola and the rise (and fall) of the American Mafia. Founded in 734 BC, it is Sicily’s capital and its largest city. Heading …
Position: 38°47’43.8″N 15°12’54.1″E Rod Heikell, author of The Italian Waters Pilot, proposed the area bounded by Ustica, the Straits of Messina and the mainland be designated the ‘Aeolian Triangle’. A part of the Tyrrhenian sea where unpredictable winds come together …
