Today we slept in and ate our own breakfast in the room (much better). We decided to walk down to Elena’s early to pick up our tickets for our boat trip to Panarea and Stromboli (pronounced Strómboli) only to find that our boat that was supposed to leave at 12 was cancelled due to high winds! She told us we could get on the 2pm boat because it was a bigger boat and that it would do basically the same tour. We decided to do it because it stayed out late to watch the eruptions at Stromboli and we didn’t want to do that on our last night. The boat was big and it was very nice inside- there were big tables and benches inside and a sitting area upstairs. We put our stuff on a bench downstairs and went to sit up to enjoy the views. At first it was nice, but then we started going faster, and kept getting wet. Finally, it was at the point where it was really wet, and we could see that the child across from us (on the side that was leaning into the water) was soaked to the skin! We had to sit downstairs because we didn’t want to get all wet! Our driver was going way too fast over the waves. Also, as we came up on the island of Panarea, the woman who had been speaking on the intercom started talking in English! She said she had only just been told that there were English speakers on board! We assumed that she didn’t speak English because Elena had told us there would probably be no one who spoke English, so we didn’t even ask! Very odd. They gave us 45 minutes in Panarea which was a complete waste of time. Apparently there are old archaeology sites on the island, but there were no maps or signs telling s where to go and no one spoke English to ask! We got some chocolate muffins and walked around the three streets of town until it was time to go. They had said we could go swimming, but the very small beach was covered with fishing boats and there were no lounge chairs- not fun at all. We got back on the boat and re-claimed our seats downstairs which turned out to be a good idea because after about 10 minutes people came back downstairs completely soaked! The driver should have slowed down- what’s the point of having an observation deck if no one can enjoy it?