Month: September 2015

Switzerland is over almost as soon as it began. Very different to Italy, which is just as well or it wouldn’t be Switzerland. You get a sense that there is much more order in Switzerland. I doubt if you would find the Swiss parking anywhere they damn well please. Bern looks much more medieval than anywhere we stayed in Italy – wide cobblestone streets and architecture very Gothic. 

 
 

 

 

 

 
After giving the old town the once over last night we decided we should start the day with a visit to the Bear Garden. Bern is apparently named for the bears (they are everywhere in one form or another) and the burghers have had them in bear pits since goodness knows when. After an interesting walk through parts of the old town we didn’t see yesterday, we came to the bear park – but no bears. The bears are on leave whilst their enclosure is made over. Good news though – two bears remain in town, over at the zoological gardens. Let’s check them out.

 

 
Another meandering walk back through a different part of town and along the river bank should have found us at the zoo. Miles later, no zoo. Can’t anyone read a flaming map?

“Look, it says right there ‘#44, zoological garden’, see?”. 

“What’s that little arrow under the 44 mean?” 

“What little arrow? I can hardly see the 44.” 

 

 
“So it’s off the map then.” 

Damn. Here goes Rome and Florence all over again.

“We haven’t even see a sign pointing to a zoo, are you sure it’s this way?” 

“I don’t know. What does that sign there say?” 

“I don’t speak German, who knows?” 

“Okay, then. What about the one just above it that’s, like, 3-feet high”. 

“Oh, ‘zoo’. Must be up ahead then.”

It was, but the bears were still elusive. We gave up on them and caught a bus back into town.

 

 
Let’s just get some coffee and chocolate then. We did. Both were lovely. The Swiss seem to have a simple secret to prevent people overeating their chocolate. The damn stuff is dearer than gold. We bought some anyway, and we ate it.

 

 
After lunch (chocolate is food) we split up. I ventured off to the Communication Museum and the girls shopped and checked out Albert Einstein’s flat, where he apparently lived while he developed his Special Theory of Relativity. Let’s hope some of that cleverness rubs off.

Because we are in Switzerland, and because the country is renowned for its banks, I’ve opened an account. I’m starting small.

 

Tomorrow is Luxembourg. Most of the day on the train, except the bit where we have to run for a bus. If we miss that we sleep on the streets somewhere in Germany. What can go wrong? The train gets in 15 minutes before the bus leaves and we don’t even know where the bus leaves from. No problem. Let me check out the map…

If you don’t see a post tomorrow, you know what happened.

Cheers, Steve J.

These are some of the interesting conveyances seen thus far. No particular order. I’ll update from time to time when I think it’s worthwhile. I should have put the newest ones on the top, but I didn’t. I’ll do that next time.

 

    

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have heard second hand that not everyone can post a comment. Can someone with this issue screenshot the error message and email it to ipad@jewell.id.au? 

Unfortunately this is one-way email, I can’t reply. If I can see what the issue is I might be able to change something in the setup to fix it.

Thanks, Steve J.

Italy begone, we’re in the Confoederatio Helvetica now (Switzerland for the rest of us). We crossed the Alps around lunchtime and left Italy behind.

This will be a short post, as we spent most of the day entrained and I’m sure you don’t need a blow-by-blow description of that. We noted that we have been on 4 different Italian trains, and they have all been totally different. The first, from Rome to Florence, was the best: more room, better seats, more room for luggage, the WiFi actually worked. 

No photos from the train trip. If you want to see two beautiful locations I would recommend Stresa in Italy and Spies in Switzerland. These towns are nestled alongside big lakes. Very impressive. I could happily live at either of these. 

There is an immediate and noticeable difference between Italy and Switzerland. Mown grass. Switzerland from the train looked neat and trim. Very green, very tidy. No wonder these guys produce good watches, I couldn’t see the Swiss being satisfied with close enough.

I can’t tell you much about Bern yet, I am still working it out. This evening we will decide what to do tomorrow.

Bye, Steve J.

A few photos of Bern to keep you amused in the interim:

 

 
 

 
  

  
 

 
 

 

No, not really, it was a great day. The headline was Milly’s idea, she may still be delirious. The girls have rated today as the “best yet”, so it must have been okay. Or it might have been because today was a serious shopping day. How serious? Well, I need to go back at work on Monday, so reasonably serious.

The good news is Milly bounced back a bit and spent the whole day out out with us. She kept going to sleep on the bus and boat, but other than that she was back with us.

We got away early and bussed into Venice to catch the boat over to Murano. I’d never heard of the place but apparently they do a reasonable trade in glass ornaments and knick knacks. It turns out they do indeed turn out some half decent stuff. Who would have thought that I would have been entranced by glass baubles? They are very, very pretty. I even weakened and bought some really swish artistic pieces myself, see below.

Not satisfied with one island, after a short sojourn on Murano we embarked for Burano. Burano’s claim to fame is lace and coloured houses. Michelle bought lace and I took photos of coloured houses, so between us we had that covered.

The coloured houses look something like this:

 

  

  

  

 

Back to Murano to buy more glass and then home. Shame Milly didn’t really get to see Venice itself, but she was happy with what she did see.

It’s arrivederci to Italy now, as we catch a train at 8-something tomorrow morning and head for Switzerland. If we haven’t got what we want from Italy by now it’s too late. Next stop the chocolate capital of the world (it probably isn’t, however it’s close enough, so we are eating chocolate).

Some final (fresh) observations about Italy:

• People in Italy might drive crazy, but they can park a car. If the space is longer than the car, they’ll park it. By longer I mean anything longer, 1mm will do. And they usually get it in first go.
• People in Venice can handle their boats, regardless of the size/type. The gondoliers were very good, as you might expect. I was also very impressed watching the fingertip control and faultless manoeuvring of the speedboats. The boat-bus creates a huge swell coming into the terminal that should have thrown the speedboats waiting to dock up against the mooring poles and each other. However the drivers calmly held them steady manoeuvring in and around each other without mishap.
• Anyone who can establish a Jims Mowing franchise in Italy is set for life. I swear I am yet to see any public area of grass in the country that is mowed regularly, if at all. The country makes an absolute fortune in tourist dollars, God only knows what they spend it on, not maintenance.
• Italy has a long hard road ahead if it is ever to match Australian standards with regards to smoking. Inside buildings (and buses) is about the only place no one smokes. People pitch butts as if they were orange pips.
• Most Italians can speak at least a bit of English, for which we are very grateful as I can’t even manage a half decent grazie. Even the Italians who claim that they speak only a little English, and not very well, speak  the language better than about 25% of Australians.
• Obese people have been virtually non-existent in Italy. What are they doing right that we are doing wrong? Maybe it’s the smoking reducing their appetites?

Okay, bye for now. Catch you in Switzerland. I feel a bit like James Bond – flitting about Europe, leaving Venice for a rendezvous in Switzerland. Only without the cool car, and no neat gadgets, and no georgeous woman (I have two! Beat that Jimmy!). Other than that….

Steve J.

More photos: 

   

  

 

Some of the missing photos from Florence. The so-called captioning feature is a bit hit and miss, so if it hasn’t got a caption then forget it, it’s not getting one. Every time I try and correct the caption, something else screws up.
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

 
 

  

 
 

 

We left Florence this morning on the train (another drama for another time) and wound our way up country to Venice. We were met at the train station by the host of the apartment we are staying in – which was damned decent of him. The apartment is on the mainland, rather than in the lagoon – sort of in the suburbs. A bus stop is located just around the corner and takes you straight into Venice proper in about 15 minutes. This one is a very modern apartment, rather than the pieces of history we have been in up until now.

Milly is still not well, so she spent the afternoon in bed while Michelle and I wandered through Venice. I think she has past the peak, she is at least trying to eat. Hopefully she will be sightseeing in earnest on the morrow.

 

 
We did out usual trick, starting at the bus terminal in Venice we more or less wandered in no particular direction for a couple of hours, photographing interesting things and looking in the shops. If I wanted a mask to go to a ball, this would be the place. But I don’t, so it isn’t. Lots of nice stuff though. Lots of large numbers on the price tags. No hawkers in Venice?! Maybe there just isn’t room for them, as the so called streets (not the canals) are so narrow that you can’t really fall over, you would just fall against a wall.

 

 
We managed to find all the usual tourist haunts: the Rialto Bridge, Piazza San Marco and the Doges’ Palace. The Rialto Bridge was under restoration, so no photos. An interesting thing about building restorations over here is that the facades are covered in scaffolding and hessian (as you might expect), however the hessian is printed with a facsimile of the building underneath. At a glance you don’t even realise that it has been hoarded over. It doesn’t even show up in photographs unless you look carefully. What a great initiative, maintaining the sense of history and culture even when under renovation.

 

 
By the time we got to Piazza San Marco we’d had enough of walking. Even with out map we weren’t sure if we could find our way back before dawn, so we jumped on a water bus and cruised down the Grand Canal back to the bus terminal. This is a very good way to see a large part of Venice, not exactly in comfort though as they don’t seem to have any limit on the number they are prepared to jam onto the boat.

Fortunately Milly was still alive when we got home, so all good. Tomorrow we might take a boat trip to Murano and Burano. 

All for now, it’s late.

Cheers, Steve J.

Q. How do you make a Venetian blind? A. Throw sand in his eyes.

Just for the sake of it, more photos.

 

  

   

Michelle lurking around another gondola 

Firstly, an apology. The camera ran out of battery on the upload, so there are no photos. I will do a special photo post tomorrow. Or whenever I manage to get some more AAs. I thought I put the power cable in, but no it’s the AV-out cable.

Milly is still sick, only sicker. She has huge tonsils and fever, on top of runny nose and cough. We thought maybe we should take her to a doctor and get some antibiotics, as it would be a shame to lose her so early in the trip. Seemed simple enough, there’s a red cross on the map, that must be a hospital. And within a stone’s throw of one of the bus stops. Couldn’t be easier, so we caught the very first hop on-hop off bus of the day (with a convenient stop a few hundred metres from the apartment) and sped off. 

Needless to say we couldn’t find a hospital at the marked location, as there wasn’t one. We did find a sign pointing in the direction of a hospital so we walked that way, hopeful. I won’t bore you with the details, except to say that we have seen a lot of Florence that we hadn’t planned on seeing. We started out from home at 9am and about 1 pm we were finally at a hospital. Fortunately the hospital was the easy bit, only a 15-minute wait and 15€ later we had a script and were back on the streets. Shortly thereafter we had the much needed antibiotics and a bus home. It was a good move getting a 2-day ticket for the HOHO bus, we have got value from that.

The doctor confirmed the tonsillitis diagnosis (which wasn’t hard) and suggested Milly might have pneumonia as well! 

Michelle thought she had better stay with Milly during the afternoon. Being the devoted family man I am, I abandoned them and went back into the city to look around some more. I walked up and down every interesting side street I could find, and there are a lot of them. Florence is quite a contrast to Rome, as the city is comprised entirely of tiny little streets and mainly pedestrian traffic. It’s also much cleaner. Everyone in Italy seems to smoke and in Rome it shows, as there are cigarette butts everywhere. Much less so in Florence.

Navigating around Florence city centre is reasonable easy, as whenever you look up you can see either the Florence Cathedral or the tower of the Palazzo Vecchio. This will make more sense when I post the photos, or when you look it up. I ventured into the Cathedral and marvelled at its octagonal dome. I really do recommend you Google it because it is quite fascinating. The photos won’t do it justice. The dome doesn’t start until 50-odd metres off the ground, then the dome itself is 40-odd metres high which adds up to a sore neck when you try and take photos from the ground. I didn’t climb the bell tower, which claims to have 400+ steps. I don’t really do steps unless I have to, especially more than 400 of them.

Being an engineer at heart, stopping to photograph interesting bridges wherever I come across them, I was more than a little taken with the Ponto Vecchio. I have about 100 photos of it that I am happy to share, plus a little statuette thing as well. I mean, it’s a bridge, much more important and impressive than a silly church.

The latest news is Milly is hanging in there and has ordered gelato for dinner, so she must be okay. We ate at the little restaurant over the road, meaning about 5 metres from the front door. We are off to Venice tomorrow so I’d better get some more batteries ASAP. I suspect there will be some bridges needing documenting.

Until then, arrivederci.

Steve J.

for those of you who are too impatient to read the whole thing – a short summary: Left Rome, arrived Florence. Bye for now.

For those of you with more patience:

Woke up this morning and packed our bags ready for the short walk (bit over a km) from the apartment to the railway station, only to find it pouring rain. Our host, Aldo, rang us a taxi. Turns out he and his wife own the whole building (about 8 apartments) although he doesn’t live there, he has an apartment elsewhere in Rome. His wife’s family has owned the building since at least the 1930s. They are gradually renovating the apartments. No complaints at all, happily recommend the location and Aldo. 

The train trip from Rome to Florence was over in an hour and a half, which was a shame as we were travelling first class and I could really get used to that. It was largely wasted on me though as I kept dropping off to sleep.

A tip for visitors to Rome’s Termini train station, be wary of friendly people who want to help you. Although it sounds like a lovely gesture, it probably isn’t. We were puzzling over which platform we needed to be on when a friendly, helpful young woman offered advice and insisted on showing us where the platform was, although we had worked it out in the meantime. Then she insisted that we owed her a 5€ tip for the assistance. Should have known better, she was an Indian lass and it would be equally suspicious if an Italian popped up at a train station in New Delhi to provide advice.

The taxi from Florence station to our new digs was another adventure. Very little traffic, but huge numbers of pedestrians in central Florence and I’m sure the taxi driver wanted to scare the bejesus out of as many of them as he could. Another nice little apartment, which is directly behind a church. I am going to go out there and wring that bell ringer’s neck before we leave on Monday though. We have only been here a few hours and he’s already annoying me, ringing the bells every 5 minutes. Maybe tomorrow will be quieter, being Sunday and all…

 

  

 

Today was another day of wandering around amazing cobbled streets and marvelling at very old buildings and old bridges, plus looking at an array of statues with willys. Tomorrow we will go and see the real statue of David. We also did a lap of the city on the hop on – hop off bus and they are happy to go up even smaller streets than the buses in Rome. Who needs drugs when you can get this kind of adrenalin rush?

   

  

 

That’s all for today.

Cheers, Steve J.

The time has come, we leave tomorrow morning. We have to get ourselves packed and up to the Terminus, ready to catch a train at 10am so there won’t be time for sightseeing. 

Today was an interesting mix, with a few changes of plan because Milly is as sick as a dog. Head cold and temperature, hope she hasn’t caught flu. After finding a chemist and dosing her up with everything at hand, Michelle and I headed out for a few hours on our own.

We walked down to the Piazza Venezia and had a good look over the monument to Victor Emmanuelle I. It’s quite spectacular. The display of regimental flags inside is very extensive, although after the first 20-odd variations of the Italian flag they all started to look the same. Not sure that Milly would have been impressed, so she was better off in bed. 

 

  

 

After a few days and a lot of walking we are getting fairly used to the layout of the city. We have hit 20,000+ steps every day so far. 

After lunch we dragged Milly out of bed and down to the Vatican. It seemed a bit sacrilegious to be in Rome and not at least have a look. We went through the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. Because we didn’t really do our research, are not in the least religious and know next to nothing about the Pope or the Vatican, we skipped the really long line for entry to St Peter’s Basilica. That was a mistake. We will have to do that one on the next trip.

 

  

 

It poured rain when we were in St Peter’s Square and the first drops had hardly hit the ground when all the hawkers selling selfie sticks and ice water were suddenly selling ponchos and umbrellas. Very impressive businessmen.

A summary of  how I found Rome, based on extensive on-ground testing and very little research:

• If you’re interested in ancient history (which I am) you could spend weeks here before you would be even slightly bored
• Ditto for lovers of churches (which I am not)
• Every second shop front is a cafe, so beats me how they all make money even if the food is great
• There are hawkers everywhere in the vicinity of a tourist attraction and 100% of them are Indians (are Italians not allowed to sell selfie sticks?)
• There are Italians, dressed up as Roman legionnaires, at historic sites. If you pay them a Euro you can have your photo taken with them. At least 9 out of 10 are middle-aged and overweight (yes I know – “look who’s talking”). I am starting to understand why the Roman Empire fell into decline, if this is the best they can muster. 
• The traffic, as I’ve mentioned, is chaotic but strangely fascinating
• The narrow cobble-stoned streets are equally fascinating (as is the architecture) and it’s just amazing what will fit down the narrow streets, and the speed at which you can travel
• You’ll never cross a street unless you are brave and confront the traffic, although I suspect pedestrian life expectancies are low
• Parking can be done anywhere, anytime as long as there is space. You need not consider signage to the contrary, the impact on traffic or any other superfluous detail.
• Buy your beer at a supermarket

That’s all. Bring on Florence.

Steve J.