The end of our second season was approaching. So end September we decided to sail to Romewhere we would leave the boat. Timing was perfect as early October the weather deterioratedand sailing would have been much less pleasant. En route to Rome we passed by Giglio island. Thissmall island became famous when the Costa Concordia hit the island and the passenger boat sank.When we passed the island the wreck had already been removed but to our surprise a huge cranewas still on the site. This crane was now removing the platforms that was built to remove thewreck. The people on the island opposed this project as they wanted the platform to become aplace where divers would visit an artificial reef. The ministry of the environment rejected thisproposal and now the platforms are being removed using the crane.Our passage from Elba to Giglio was very pleasant with a wind of around 10-12 knots. Once wewere close to the island at around 11am, the wind dropped and we had to motor for the rest of theday. Rome was still too far away so we headed to the port of Santa Marinella. We spent the nightanchored next to the marina. The day after, we visited the village, but it had nothing of interestto us. Mid-morning we started the engine and headed directly to the port of Rome. The distancewas around 24 nautical miles. As we neared our destination we saw more and more planes landingas we were getting closer to Rome's main airport. Our marina is located close to the airport so weknew we were on the right course. The marina (Porto Turistica Roma) is modern and from there itis easy to reach the center of Rome by subway although it does take about 90 minutes . The onlydisagreeable feature of the marina is the airport, but luckily, from 2300hrs until 0700hrs we arenot disturbed. We now started to prepare the boat for the winter on the days when the weatherwas not ideal. However when the weather was good, we visited the city of Rome. Before returningto Belgium we visited the Vatican as well as the old port of Rome, Ostia Antica. This place isconsidered as beautiful and interesting as Pompei, but less frequented by tourists. For moredetails of our visit to Rome, please go to the next page. On the 30 of September we boarded theplane to Belgium and started our cold winter months.