Palermo – Cagliari

Day 45

At 7:15 this morning, the four of us left the Agrotourism to head to the ferry boarding. I got in without any problem, but T got quite a scare because we forgot to put Beast's license plate on his ticket and they wouldn't let him through ☹️. It was fifteen minutes of anxiety watching to see if he could solve it while Thorqui and I delayed boarding just in case they wouldn't let him on. This crossing is currently once a week, so if he had missed it, we would have had to change the entire route and go back through France.

Fortunately, he went to the office and they solved it super quickly, and when the ship set sail, we were both on deck watching Palermo fade away on the way to Cagliari. This trip, we are a bit distracted with the boats; I think we are getting too confident, as if we did this every day… and of course, we end up messing up.

Since the price difference was small, we took a cabin despite traveling during the day. I don't mind because I use the trip to get some work done, but T likes to take a nap and have a shower before leaving the ship 🫡. He’s quite the gentleman 😂.
We are traveling again with Grimaldi Lines, who are great in the office, but the boarding and disembarking are a complete chaos. We don't know if this only happens in Italy because Italians are generally quite chaotic 😊, most of them charming, but a disaster in almost everything.

We really liked Sicily in general, except for the roads and the large amount of trash you find lying around everywhere. The rest areas on the highways are a pile of half-broken bags with all the waste thrown around. Apparently, they have a big problem with this issue since they don't have recycling plants or incinerators, and there are many illegal landfills. We've been told that many people avoid paying the garbage tax, so they don't have the right to use the containers (which have access codes) and end up throwing their waste in the ditches 😖, which gives a lamentable appearance to the surroundings.
They also say that waste management is tied to economic interests and sometimes to mafia intervention. Meanwhile, the trash overflows, literally, wherever you go.

Other than that, it has been a pleasure to drive around the island because it has a world of beautiful places to visit. We, despite having been here for ten days, are leaving with half of the territory unvisited 😥.

We watched the ship's departure from the deck (something we both really enjoy, especially watching the performance of the “harbor pilot”), made ourselves a sandwich for lunch, and went down to the cabin to take a nap until they asked us to leave it (usually an hour and a half before leaving the ship).

Punctual arrival with the sunset and the disembarkation was a disaster, as usual. T, Gerhard, and Lina went to the chosen spot to spend the night, and they left me behind even though I told them to wait for me. 😖.
I was about to kill them for not doing so. We don't like driving at night, which is why we always look for nearby places when we leave a ship at night, and we are supposed to go together to find them. That wasn't the case today. They forgot about me 😯.

The chosen spot was a dirt parking lot by the sea. We are going to spend the night here and continue our journey tomorrow. Gerhard and Lina set up the tent, and we all went to sleep right away because there wasn't much to do.
Good night… I’ll keep you updated 😘.