On May 22, I left for Italy for work. One of our daughter companies has developed something for a major bicycle brand and we were going to test it in the Giro D'Italia stage 14 Individual Time Trial on Saturday. I had a very nice hotel in Venice and equipped with a small map and the GPS function on my iPhone I went to search for it in the pooring rain. It took me the good part of an hour to finally find my hotel, I later got a better map and found out I got out of the canal boat a few stops too soon.
The next morning, I went to the Giro d'Italia 14th stage in Treviso, a beautiful old town surrounded by a city wall. Again, weather was horrible and it didn't take long to get my shoes soaked. Fortunately, the test was flawless so we had an easy job of observing and learning a lot from the bicycling professionals.
In the afternoon I headed back to Venice and didn't have troubles locating the hotel. A nice bath was all I needed to get warmed up again after the long day in the cold and there was a very nice resto-bar just across the hotel where I had a light meal before I went to bed early in the beautiful hotel room decorated like only a real Italian hotel can be.
The next morning weather was great but due to an annual event, there were no canal boats to take me to the airport later that day so I had to leave early. Our well-known Forum friend Andrew Thomas sent me a message that there was an IWC boutique at the St Marco square and with my time schedule it would be perfect to spend an our or so there so I headed over to the boutique, where I was welcomed by Julia and Andrea. I explained that I was a huge IWC fan and Julia and Andrea kept showing me all those novelties and a few more familiar pieces. When I talked about the IWC Forum Andrea told me he recognised a few of my pictures!
I told them I really liked the Portuguese line and they showed me plenty of the new models:
Portuguese Annual Calendar with blue dial:
Portuguese Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month:
Portuguese Perpetual Calendar:
Portuguese Annual Calendar with white dial:
Portuguese Annual Calendar in Red Gold with white dial:
Portuguese Hand Wound 8 days Edition "75th Anniversary" in steel and RG:
Portuguese Yacht Club Chronograph with Ardoise dial:
Portuguese Yacht Club Chronograph in Red Gold with white dial:
Portuguese Yacht Club World Timer (can't find it in the collection on the site?):
A few Portuguese Yacht Club watches together:
The new smaller Portuguese Yacht Club:
They also had the brand new Ingenieur Perpetual Calendar Digital Date-Month in Red Gold and Titanium Aluminide:
Two other very nice Ingenieur models were the Lewis Hamilton version:
And the Nico Rosberg version:
This model really caught my eye and I immediately liked it a lot, the Ingenieur Automatic Edition "Laureus Sport For Good Foundation":
No visit to an IWC boutique can be complete without having a look at a few Pilot's watches as well. Here is the Pilot's watch Chronograph Edition Antoine de St Exupéry:
Big Pilot's watch Edition "Le Petit Prince" in Red Gold:
They even had the Silicon Nitride Pilot's watch Chronograph Edition "The Last Flight":
A few pilot's watches together:
Since I had still some time to spare, I asked to have a closer look at the new Portuguese Perpetual. At first, I was sceptical about the star set moonphase dial but in real life this watch is a stunner!
Julia pointed out the differences in the new movement, like double barrel, smaller balance wheel thus 4 Hz and the ceramic parts:
The blue on this watch is again executed to perfection by IWC:
A bunch of watches we had examined:
And finally it's time for the reveal. The calling of this Ingenieur Laureus was too strong to resist:
Julia and I posing with my new Ingenieur, picture taken by Andrea:
I was a bit worried about shipping since I traveled with hand luggage only but in the end I didn't have a problem getting the watch on the plane with me.
Since I still had time for lunch before heading to the airport, Julia got me a reservation at a great restaurant "L'Ombra del Leone" where I had a wonderful lunch of grilled Tuna and a wonderful Pinot Grigio, finished off with a double Espresso and a wonderful Tiramisu.
After that, I had to rush to the airport to catch my flight home with an IWC on each wrist!
I hope you enjoyed my story as much as I did enjoy writing it.
Kind regards,
Clemens
PS: excuse me if some colors seem odd, I had a new camera with me and the colors didn't turn out great in the artificial light so I had to do quite some post-processing on some of the pictures.
