Florence to Roma Churching It Up

Following the relaxed Italian Riviera, our sights were set on Florence.  Florence is the hub for Renascence art with many famous painters and sculptors all having works on display in such places as the Uffizi, Galleria Academia, etc.  Being the cultured Australian I am, this seemed like the logical place to be.  So it was all stations go and back on the road again.  Along the way we made a brief detour to a well known town called Pisa.  Joining the masses of people we made our way through the Africans selling their street goods and on to the leaning tower.   I was surprised upon arrival to see that the tower was in such a pristine state, other than it leaning at a 4.5 degree angle.  I soon found that in these parts of the world, ordinary stone was for the villagers, if you wanted to make something cool, well then it was off to the marble market.  As is customary, we managed to take the recommended dose of photos including all those funny little ones making use of the towers lean.  If you couldn’t figure out how to make these just scan the crowd and you’ll pick it up pretty quickly.  I think I invented a new one though :)

From Pisa, Florence was just a stones throw away, but necessity mandated one more detour to a supermarket for the old important belly fuel.  I just have to say, Italians do supermarkets way better than Australians.  Firstly, there is sooooo much fresh food on display and it is CHEAP!  Premium beer is about 3 Euros (about $4 AUD) for a six pack.   The most expensive meat I could find was 18 Euros (about $24.50 AUD) for a choice cut of beef.  They have separate bread, cured meat, cheese, fish and red meat delis, nibbles by the gazillion and pasta enough to eat differently every day of the year.  Both Dids and I were maxed out with excitement at this and needless to say, we shopped more than we needed too.  The only down side was fitting it all into the car, poor old Fiesta.

Finally in Florence, we pulled in to a rather large campsite called Camping Michelangelo just on the edge of the city, probably a poor choice in retrospect.  Though it was a simple bus ride from the campsite into town to visit all there was to see, the whole experience seemed quite impersonal and the night club on the adjacent hill which pumped its tunes until 4 in the morning could just go get stuffed.  Even the fire flies kept their distance, we only saw one the whole time we stayed.  

Visiting the sights the next day we made our way around the usuals such as the Uffizi, Galleria Academia and all the different cathedrals.  The amount of beggars, street merchants and tourists were all quite overwhelming and you had to take solace in the fact that it wasn’t anywhere near the peak season yet.  The free public displays were amazing with the sculptures being my favourite.  Past the freebies, well you better like waiting in line otherwise you are in the wrong place.  I was definitely in the wrong place.  I did the old stuff it and paid extra to reserve an entry time that saw us into each attraction with far less fuss, although it would not be Italy if it was totally stress free.  Note to the wise, Italians really do signs poorly, so expect confusion and with confusion there is usually a whole heap of Americans around…..Awesome.  

The statue of David outside the Uffizi

This was pretty usual around Florence.  I guess that makes me crowd equipped.

 Awesome fountain at the piazza outside the Uffizi

Basilica De Santa Maria, Florence

Not having dabbled much in Renaissance art I found myself looking at the mother load all for the first time barring a few exceptions.  Dids studied it all at school and had a good understanding of what was what so there was some knowledge to impart on that front.  To summarise what I learnt:  

Firstly, Jesus is great……  Almost all the paintings are biblical and not many are of scenes depicting reality.  There are tonnes of cherubs, angles etc all crammed into the one painting.  Not being a man of much Christian religion, I maxed out on my limit of this kind of stuff by the end of the day.  

Secondly……Artists used to paint on plaster with pigments mixed into egg yolk.  This was hard work because the mixture used to dry quickly so you had to be fast.  This kind of painting was called a fresco and is not renowned for standing up to the tests of time due to the short lifespan of the media.  It was later that artists started painting on wood and then canvas using oil paints as devised by the other great artistic power house Flanders (I was told the Netherlands until I gave Dids a bit of ah ha! In your face go Netherlands, then it became Flanders to be exact). 

 

Back to the tent cave for some beer cleansing.  I had left the fridge running off the car battery to cool all the food we had collected earlier in preparation for our big cook up to come that night.  Well all the smart readers will know at this point in time that the car battery was flat.  And all the smart ladies will know that Dids had warned me so.  The good thing about a little car though is that it is easy to push start….. apparently.  Steps to push starting shall we:  

• Tell your girlfriend to put the car in reverse (the only direction I could push it), keep the clutch in and release the park brake.
• Get an uber lad to push the car up to speed (that would be me).
• Get your girlfriend to release the clutch and turn the ignition key……. not hit the brake instead.
• Attempt 1 failed.  On to attempt 2 and like all good second attempts, do it yourself.

Well now the only way to go was down.  Pointing the car down a rather steep hill, I put it in 4^th and got Dids to kick a tire to send me on my way.  She did this with an amazing amount of glee…..  Dodging tents and with a fair bit of speed up I thought hmmm, I should hit the brakes a little to ease the shock of this big ditch I’m coming to.  Obviously this didn’t happen because Dids had hit the brakes earlier and I had no power to recharge the brake cylinder, ahh well, I hit that ditch good.  With my speed hitting something ridiculous, I released the clutch, turned the ignition and shazam, one running car and the adoration of the crowd (one guy looking on laughing).  Definitely felt like one of those olden day movies with a car hurtling through the countryside out of control just before running into a barn or hedge.  Luckily there were no barns or hedges for me to hit, just tents and people.

Now with that fixed and my safety finally back in hand it was on to the manly duty of the barbeque.  There were no fires allowed on site because of it being so close to the city and a little matter of world heritage listing.  So to shorten this section and limit my incrimination, I didn’t have a fire and it did not kick up tonnes of smoke and sausages with loads of fat in them do not perpetuate the smoking of a barbeque…..Oh man……

The following day we managed to usher ourselves down a few freeways and on to Sienna which is a lovely town with big pizzas, an awesome fortified old section and one hell of a cathedral.  So far this was the most decadent of the cathedrals we had seen but I am sure the Vatican has something special in store.  Have a look at some of the photos to understand the amount of wealth poured into these places.

With the parking meter expiring we had to move on with one destination in mind, the beach.  Both Dids and I are water babies and we need to be around it from time to time to keep our sanity.  Unfortunately the beaches we found all had black sand which makes the water a little less inviting, especially to the Aussie crowd who knows how to do beaches.  So a compromise was reached; a camp site with a massive resort style pool and slippery slide, haha!  The campsite catered for 500 tents and 100 villas which was amazingly ridiculous, but lucky for us it is the low season now and the place was nearly a ghost town. 

Well, with relaxing in mind, we found ourselves with a good amount of time at our finger tips.  Dids had been telling me over numerous occasions that she was awesome at cutting hair, so what the hey I thought, let’s give it a go because I needed a bit of a trim.  Well, as I found out halfway through the hair cut, in Dids mind being awesome at something apparently does not translate to past experience and I don’t count dogs, my little pony nor dolls hair!  I was not prepared for this revelation at all; there was a distinct lack of beer circulation through my mouth and veins for my anxiety to be dulled.  In the end though, I exercised the necessary amount of faith and it all panned out well.  On a totally unrelated topic though, apparently as I approach 30 I have begun suffering from a very localized form of balding on one side of the head, very unfortunate…..Hope I can still make friends.

For now it is all roads lead to Rome (Roma for the Italian crowd).  Arrivedecci.

Mountains to the Med

Well good news to all those following the blog, I found a good shower in Switzerland, hooray!  Switzerland is probably the most beautiful country I have seen.  It is mountainous and spectacular in its contrasts, but holey CRAP is it expensive!  We spent our first 2 nights staying with one of Dids’ very good friends Helen in Zurich.  I had been told that Zurich was a very livable town and getting around it, it is very easy to see why.  The town itself is situated in a basin surrounded by the Alps and right in the middle you will find a great big aqua-marine coloured lake which frames the setting very well.  There is an older portion of town where you will find a heap of historical sites all in mint condition, I was amazed by the age of some of the places they were looking that good.

Don’t expect to eat in Switzerland however, it is really that expensive.  With the Swiss being such a good bunch of conservative fence sitters they managed to avoid the trend of moving to the Euro as their national currency and retained their Swiss Frank instead.  The conversion rate for one Swiss Frank to one Aussie dollar is nearly one is to one, so keeping track of costs was easy.  For example, chicken breast is $45 per kg, steak is $55+ per kg and marsh mellows, yes marsh mellows are $4.50 for a standard pack!  Helen’s average working day in Switzerland is 10 to 12 hours, I guess for obvious reasons!  

People are a little crazy in Switzerland as well.  Immediately you notice their premeditated compulsion to bash into you in the street while you are walking, in the car while you are driving and in Dids’ case in the supermarket with a trolley while you are trying to shop!  Zurich is in the German part of Switzerland and it must be something to do with that.  You definitely notice their need to organize all as well as their more than apparent need to uphold social standards.  I actually saw a parking inspector take about 15 minutes to write up a ticket for an illegally parked car because he had to run his tape measure over every aspect of its location which I am sure was to get ever cent out of the poor blighter.

It is always welcomed on a trip like this (not that I have made many) to find out nice little things about your partner.  What I have found out about Dids is that she has the ability to control the most unforeseen things.  Example:  all she needs to do is say something like “I really came here to see castles” and the next thing, bam there is a castle, despite me looking for the last half hour for one!  At first I thought, sure just a coincidence, well….not any more.  It has worked for the craziest things and all in the weirdest of places.  I have been putting in requests for gold but I really don’t think she’s trying.  And as much as I love you babe (she hates me calling her babe!), saying that I am all the gold you need does not put an Audi on my front door step.  One thing is definite though, the superstition of it all has me hoping she keeps thinking well of me otherwise this could get interesting…

After our time in Zurich, minus the gold, we decided to head south for Zermatt, a little town at the base of the Matterhorn (a really big famous mountain as seen in a James Bond movie On Her Majesties Secret Service).  This was our revised destination after my request for traveling to Lichtenstein (a really small country bordering Switzerland) so that I could fulfill my boyhood dream of driving through an entire country from start to finish drunk (as a passenger mum chill out!) was rejected by Dids as silly.  What a disappointment……   Well moving on from this crushing blow, wasn’t traveling to Zermatt interesting!  To get there you have to pass over the top of the Alps and unfortunately we found the last leg of our chosen route (the literal last 5 km!) closed due to a heavy snow falls.  This forced us to concede to backtracking a massive portion of our travels, but on the plus side I got to see proper snow for the first time in my 29 and a half year life (pathetic to some I know).  And I threw a snow ball, or two, awesome!  They might have been aimed at the car, and Dids  might have yelled at me…. 

 Top of the world.  This is a glacial river that has been dammed and marked the point where we could pass no further to Zermatt

 This was my first ever snow ball

Second ever....

 

This closure though turned out to be a blessing in disguise as we decided to set up tent for the night in a little town called Areschlucht just below the blocked pass.  Check out the photos to see what I believe to be one of the coolest camp sites you’ll ever see!  

 Dids having a bit of a Heidi moment

 The campground....

To top this experience off, we found a communal fire pit down by a nearby glacial river.  The added bonus to it all was that with the town being so small and remote, we had it totally to ourselves, how romantic.  The fire pit was a big stone affair with a suspended metal grill plate above the fire, some chairs and a table, a fresh spring feeding a big one piece granite trough (good for keeping the beers chilled) and best of all a massive stock of chopped, neatly stacked, free to use pine fire wood.  This all made for an absolutely huge camp fire cook up right in the middle of the Swiss Alps, unforgettable!  

The next day, after thawing out and me taking back everything I have previously said about Dids’ choice in -10 degree C rated sleeping bags, we headed off to explore some local glacial caverns on foot which was a nice change from the incessant driving of the previous day.  As you can see the scenery was nice, quite a difference from sunny ol’ Australia.

Packing up again (which I am becoming a gun at), we headed out with thoughts of hitting Italy, but lazily we pulled up just shy of the Swiss border in a place called Lugarno.  The camp site there like all the previous ones we have visited was absolutely gorgeous.  It was situated in a valley right on a beautiful aqua marine lake with a little jetty etc.  Obviously we camped right next to the water and hung out dangling our feet over the edge of the jetty contemplating the tastiness of all the fish we could see.  Mmmm tasty fish.

 Some of the sight along the way

 Another castle

 

The next day we actually made it to Italy.  Well, isn’t Italy a little different from Switzerland!  We first really noticed this at the border crossing where the police took a ridiculous amount of time just to check our passports and yabber on to each other.  There were 10 guys there to do the job of 4 (maybe less) and making their job even more blasé was that everyone with an Italian license plate just got waved through without a care…  The Italians seem very good at being disorganized (and slack); their driving is a testament to this!  There are soooo many vespas, motor bikes etc here and they simply do what they like in the most insane manner.  Wrong way down the road at 80km per hour into oncoming traffic, yes please!  And they are angry, OH so angry!  I just want to jam one of those little nancy sounding horns into their somewhere very private the next time they get the urge to toot at us!  I know we are cruising around in a little ford fiesta, but in terms of road safety, they are still more temporary than us. 

One thing that has got me in love so far with Italy though is their food!  Heaps and heaps is what they like to serve and surprise, surprise it is exactly what I like to take!  I will not go hungry in this country mum, and you will be pleased to know that so far the food has all been tasty.  I really do look forward to experiencing more as we travel Italy for the next 2 weeks (maybe more).

 

At the end of our first day in Italy we pitched tent in the little village of Tellaro on the Italian Riviera at a delightful campground named Gianna.  The campground was set up into terraces and we managed to snag a top one overlooking the Mediterranean as you can see from the photo. 

 

The campground is expensive but is equipped with a really big pool, bar and restaurant which serves up delicious food.  Night time brings out the fire flies and makes the whole experience a little surreal as we sit around a borrowed table by candle light.  You listening lads, that’s how you do it for your lady!   

Yesterday we made a trip to Le Chinque Terra, a group of 5 rustic villages perched on the Mediterranean coastline, each famous for their little cobbled streets, old buildings with terraces and churches.  Our preferred mode of travel for this experience was a boat.  Basically I’ll leave it to the photos to explain how nice the whole day actually was.

 

Summary: Italy is such a cruisy place once you embrace the mayhem, vespas and max out on the food.   We have set the mood to aaaaahhhhhhh……and we’ll see how it all pans out.   

    Dids knitting me a beanie for South America

Camping it Europe Style (Andrew)

Well, with the family and friends visited, it was time to start our adventures around Europe.  Moving on from Julianadorp, we drove to Amsterdam which is quite an interesting city! It has only 750,000 people, way less than we were thinking and it is very cosmopolitan.   First stop, brownie town cause we were feeling a little peckish…..   There are a whole heap of “coffee shops” where you can get what you like in Amsterdam.  We found them down most little alley ways, some were a little seedy but there was the odd one that had a good vibe.  The “edibles” as they are called are cheap, about 4.50 Euros each and they are oh so tasty. 

 

With the first prerequisite out of the way, it was time to lap the town.  Finding your way around Amsterdam is a blast, although I have no idea how many times we trekked the same spots.  All good though :)  There are plenty of places to satisfy your hunger pangs, especially with Amsterdam being frites-central (frites is the Dutch name for chips served with a ridiculous amount of mayonnaise), the beer is pretty good too. 

 Frites in a paper cone, mmmmmmm

We toured our way around the red light district which is a bit of a must for visitors.  I think Dids was a little upset at all the attention coming my way….  Those pushy ladies :)  One thing was for sure, we were pretty surprised by how good looking most the girls were. 

All in all, Amsterdam was really COOL!  Man I woke up parched (and about 5 hours later than usual)!

Moving on (unfortunately) we made our way to Belgium to a region known as the Ardennes.  Dids told me that Belgium was consistently voted the most boring country to visit which needless to say had my expectations running high.  Well if it is boring, then I am really keen for the rest of Europe!  The Ardennes is beautiful and its beauty is added to by the fact that the beers are all good in Belgium (all 800+ of them!) which I guess is not a little known secret.  The people are pretty sour faced around there though, which is a bit unwarranted.  I guess speaking French will do that to a population.  We took the chance to camp out in a little town called La Roche-en-Ardennes which has a lovely river running through the middle of town along with medieval chateaux and amazing cured meat shops.

 The Belgium campsite in La Roche.

 One of the zillions of castles we are set to discover.

In the morning we decided to do a bit of a tour around the nearby villages before heading for Luxemburg which we were thinking would be a quick pass by before entering France.  Well weren’t we wrong, Luxemburg is definitely a surprise and the sights along the way like the little town of Esch are spectacular.  This is the joy of our trip; the discoveries and the flexibility to make the most of what we find and like.

 The little town of Esch in Luxemburg.

 The local tour guide.  Notice the wrist Inge...

 We ended up camping for 2 days just 4km South of Luxemburg city in a friendly little caravan park with some cool amenities like an outdoor ping pong table.  Luxemburg’s ancient city fortifications and food scene were pretty interesting and one thing was for sure, for a country renowned for its bankers, they do a mean fondue….so much cheese!  That much cheese actually got Dids a little loopy; she was convinced we were camping next to an ice skating rink before we finally went across to find out it was just a sauna….  Too much cheese will do that to a person.  It’s alright Dids, I thought it was an ice skating rink too...

Check out some of the photos of Luxemburg. 

 Luxemburg is a real mix of old and new.  The city is built around a whole heap of old castles and forts.

A little home style BBQ cooking in Luxemburg on my trusty mini Weber.  Best 10 Euros eva. 

Our final destination before Zurich was a little campsite about an hour south east of Strasburg.  Taking in Strasburg along the way we visited the Notre Dame Cathedral and walked around the old town which is absolutely gorgeous.  Strasburg is a place that I think I could have spent more time, simply for the food and scenery, but unfortunately this is what the rest of the world believes too making the town a bit of a tourist trap.  

 This is Notre Dame Cathedral, the size of it is hard to photograph.

 Inside Notre Dame Cathedral

 This is part of the Strasburg old town area.  The old buildings are very different and nice from what I am used to.

 Just pausing at a cafe for a beer.  Sooo lovely. 

Our campsite for the night ran on typical German efficiency.  Everything was smart card activated from the entry gates, toilet blocks and even the showers.  Programmable logic controllers activate every gadget under the sun making sure the buildings were well ventilated, super energy efficient and so on.

Now to the topic of showers in Europe which has been a bit of a pet peeve of mine.  What the HELL!  Europeans seem to want to mess with my daily cleaning regime, I am sure it is all part of some sort of weird fetish they have!  At our first camp site, the showers were coin operated and would run for a set time before just cutting off.  Very cool when you don’t know how long this time is, you’re not quite done yet and it is 4 degrees without the water running.  The next campsite had free showers but you had to keep pushing the tap button to keep up the flow.  If you pushed before the tap button timed out the flow would be interrupted but if you waited for the tap to time out (every 5 seconds!) the flow would be interrupted!  ARRRRGGG!  So you basically worked out a little rocking action just to brush the tap timer which seemed to not interrupt the flow and keep the button from timing out.  How convenient…. This left you feeling like a bit of a go-go dancer.

Finally, the piece de resistance…. German showering…. Well, the showers at our last campsite as mentioned above were smart card operated.  The lady at the desk gave us an elaborate run down of the workings of the shower on a test module she had prepared earlier.  So much for technology making our life simpler…..  The deal goes, put the card into a holder in the shower cubical, push the button and you have 10 minutes hot shower credit to chew through with a little timer letting you know where you are up to.  Sounds great, so I put the card in, pushed the button and away I went with a wonderful hot shower.  About one minute later, all lathered up with soap the shower stops, what the hell!  So I looked at the box only to find it is reading Error 32!  Frigging fantastic!  I tried taking the card out to reset the timer but with my soapy hands I dropped it onto my foot sending it scooting along the floor.  Double freaking fantastic!  So there I am butt naked and soapy walking around this shower block looking for my smart card, because without it I’m having an even worse day.  I finally found it and managed to get back to the shower and finish up.  Now just as I’m about to get dressed, the lights go out…blackness…. Fun, fun , fun…..so there I am again butt naked in the middle of the shower block waving around trying to activate the light sensor to so I can get dressed….  Can’t wait for the next place!  The irony of it all is that all these sites have elaborate fully articulated hair drying systems and other gadgets that I can run till my heart’s content chewing up as much electricity, water etc as I want but I can’t get a bloody decent shower!

Well off to Zurich to stay with Helen, one of Did’s old school friends who hopefully has a working shower.