We’ve done a lot since Venice, and yet very little at the same time. Because of internet issues, we’re a little behind, but with a few short paragraphs I think we can get caught up.

First of all, we went to Genova, Italy. It’s a lovely port town and it’s probably got some neat things to see, but we never got around to doing much in the city itself.

From there we took a day trip south and went to see Pisa, specifically the leaning tower. Really, we wouldn’t have bothered but it was a free trip with our rail passes and we couldn’t think of anything better to do.

The next day we were hoping to take a trip to Monaco, but as it turns out, Monaco is inside the France border and the rail strike made it impossible to get there. Sad really, since it’s only 20 kms from the end of the Italian rail line.

So, we went south along the Italian coast to Cinque Terre. It’s a section of the Italian coast line named for the five villages perched on the cliffs beside the sea. It’s also one of the priciest places in Italy. There is a national park of some kind, but technically it was all closed for the season and we’re not sure what was what. But, even though it was ‘closed’ the trails were still open and we hiked some 15 kilometers along the Mediterranean, through olive groves, orchards and vineyards, over steep cliffs and through villages. It turned out to be an absolutely spectacular day that rates among one of my favorite destinations this year. It was cloudy though, so the pictures are a little less than amazing. I would love to go back sometime, maybe do a little snorkeling in the crystal clear, blue water… ahhhh…

The French rail strike wasn’t looking any better that night, so we decided to head north to Torino (Turin). We thought we’d go further north from there – we discussed Hungary and Romania, but it didn’t come to that. After a couple of internetless, frustrating, rainy days in Torino, the strike was ‘over’ and we decided to head to France.

Of course, the strike wasn’t as over as we would have liked. We did have a three or four hour delay at the border waiting for the French train to arrive. There were a lot of people waiting and we were worried that the train would be packed, but somebody had the good sense to hook up a few extra cars and there was plenty of room. The trip through the mountains was great, but foggy. There was a lot of snow, which scared us a little, but it kept warming up as we got further south.

So we landed in Nice. Very, very nice place. It feels really expensive, but thankfully the low season has provided some great deals on accommodation. We spent a day wandering around town and just enjoying the sea air, but not, however, enjoying the rain. We’ve had too much rain and cloud this week and we were starting to get grumpy.

But today! Oh, what a glorious day! Sunshine from sunrise to sunset. And so – we saved the best for last – we spent the day in Monaco. We really loved it, though we never really ‘experienced’ much of it. For one thing, you can’t really do a lot without spending a lot. Two of the world’s best restaurants are within walking distance of the train station, but there was no chance we’d be dining in either of them today. For one thing, we don’t even own the right clothing, never mind what we were wearing.

Speaking of which, the Grand Casino has a dress code (coat and tie) and you have to pay to get in. I did step into one of the casual, ‘American’ casinos, but the 2 Euro slots frightened me and I left pretty fast.

We didn’t see any famous people, unless you count Princess Grace Kelly’s grave. We did see a lot of rich people though. At least, I assume the people in the Yachts and Bentleys were rich. I haven’t seen as many Ferraris in my entire life as I saw today. And Lamborghinis. I saw a Ford GT too. I think Rolls Royce, Mercedes, Porsche and BMW made up the remainder of cars in the city.

We didn’t fork out the bucks, but apparently it’s almost affordable to take a helicopter into Monaco from Nice. I guess because there isn’t an airport in Monaco. I’m sure it would be a really nice ride up the coast, only 300 Euros (yikes!).

That’s about it for now. All caught up. We’re heading West tomorrow to Aix-en-Provence. Good night!

The internet is finally working. I've been trying to upload a blog for days, but getting Quark connected was tough and I tried a memory stick in other computers, but they didn't have the right software and I didn't have Administrator access... And  then this hotel - which we picked because it had free WiFi, well the internet didn't work the first day and a half and now we need to catch a train in an hour so I can't write much more. But here is the original Venice blog that I should have posted days ago:

 

Fecal Matter and Flies

 

Yep, you guessed it! I’m talking about Venice, Italy. One of the most beautiful cities on Earth. Fortunately for us, it’s late autumn and it’s really, really cold in Venice. I think the high was 9 degrees celsius. We wore toques. That means almost no flies and nothing more than a slight odor. We only found one particularly smelly part of town which isn’t bad considering that most of the sewage goes straight into the canals without treatment. The water was still ugly though, very gray and cloudy.

There is a beach not too far from the city, but it was too cold to visit, not that I was all that eager to go for a swim.

The city is really quite nice and we loved the fact that there are no vehicles anywhere – not even bicycles! We walked all day and never had to watch out for anything more than a pile of dog poop.

We also discovered that parts of Venice flood frequently – some places are flooded half of the year!? There are planks and platforms stacked everywhere – they’re set up to create walkways when the water is high. We didn’t get to see them in use, but we can imagine that it would be quite an adventure, especially when you take into account all the tourists that were in town (and it’s the low season!).

We didn’t go on a gondola ride. We found out that it’s at least 80 Euros to rent a gondola for an hour. We just didn’t see the value in it. You can get anywhere you want in Venice by walking. Besides, the people in the gondolas looked really cold and possibly even bored. We never saw any of the gondoliers singing either. They looked bored too.

We had to wait ten minutes to get into the Basillica di San Marco and once inside there were so many tourists around me that I didn’t really enjoy it. Apparently, in the high season, the wait time to get in can be around 4 hours. It’s nice, but not that nice.

Perhaps the most interesting thing we saw in Venice was the pigeon flock in the Piazza San Marco. The pigeons are fat and hungry and very, very tame. They landed on us a few times and we each managed to pick one up. We didn’t get pooped on, which was a stroke of good luck! The bird seed vendors were really funny, plucking pigeons from their carts every three seconds, and with a smile too!

Oh yeah, and did you know that the Venice airport has the only floating runway for commercial jets? They can adjust the direction too, based on the wind. Of course it would be really cool if it were true, but I just made it up. Venice does have a floating pedestrian bridge though.

 

By the way, we didn’t actually stay in Venice, we stayed in Traviso, which is just a half hour away by train. It’s a lovely town, complete with a moat, wall and petting zoo. We saw a lot of it on our walk to our Bed and Breakfast which was 5 kms from the train station. It was a little further than we were expecting to walk, but the weather was nice and it was rather enjoyable. But when we got to the B&B, there was a sign on the gate saying that the door bell was broken and we were given a phone number to call. Sure, that could work, IF WE HAD A PHONE! We maybe could have flagged down somebody in a passing car and asked to borrow one, but neither of us were in the mood to try to talk Italian, so we started walking back into town to find a phone. We stopped at another hotel to enquire about rooms, but the price of 200 Euros a night stopped our hearts. We think maybe we were just quoted that rate so we’d leave. We asked if there was a phone we could use, the hostess told us there was a payphone a few blocks away. How thoughtful.

We did find the pay phone, and Rich called. No answer.

We set our packs down and had a coffee. We asked the café staff about cheap hotels, but they only knew about the Hotel where Oprah and Donald Trump stay when they’re in town.

We decided to call again and this time there was an answer. So we walked back to the B&B with the sun setting on our backs and when we arrived the second time the gate was ajar.  What should have taken 45 minutes ended up taking nearly 3 hours.

As it turns out, the B&B was really nice and the owner was apologetic. He also drove us to the train station each morning so that we didn’t have to walk so much for the rest of our stay. I guess we’ll probably call from the train station before walking to our next B&B.

 

 

 

We’ve been doing the Italy thing for a couple of weeks now.  As usual there are good things and bad things.  For example, a couple of the bad things have been traffic and smoking.  There are a lot of cars here as well as motorbikes and they don’t necessarily follow the traffic rules, actually I’m not sure there are traffic rules sometimes.  The procedure for crossing the street is to just start walking and the traffic will generally stop or more likely dodge you.  If you try to wait for a gap you’ll be waiting a long time.  As far as smoking is concerned, I think everyone does it; the men, the women, the teenagers.  And they do it just about everywhere, except for restaurants and trains, and they do it all the time.  It doesn’t bother me too much but it really bothers Bry…and we know what Bry can be like when she’s bothered!

 

There are also a lot of good things here, mostly in the way of food.  This is definitely my favorite food country.  There is pizza and pasta everywhere and it’s really good and sometimes almost cheap.  They have pizza bars with about a dozen varieties of pizza sold by the gram.  This means you can try a whole bunch of different varieties of pizza.  I haven’t done this however, I’m still satisfied with pizza of the margarita variety but Bry likes to experiment.  Her favorite kind so far was the potato pizza (I liked it too).  Something else we’ve come to appreciate are the bars.  Unlike a bar at home, a bar here sells coffee.  And of course it’s not coffee like at home but the cappuccino/espresso kind of coffee.  My first cup I found somewhat appalling for a couple of reasons.  First of all it cost about $1.50 which doesn’t sound like much but when I saw the size!  It was literally about 5 thimbles of coffee.  And then there’s the taste.  It was the strongest coffee I’ve ever had, hence the small amount.  Anyways, I’ve gotten over the size and taste and now I’m addicted.  I think we’ll have to buy a cappuccino machine when we get home to sustain my addiction.

 

After Naples we headed to Rome.  Rome is of course a big obnoxious city.  But besides being full of pollution it’s also full of Roman ruins and churches.  I thought we’d go see the Colosseum and maybe a few other sets of ruins but they are literally all over the city.  I think it must be really hard to be a city developer in Rome because every time you’d dig a hole you’d hit more priceless ruins and have to call in a team of archeologists to painstakingly excavate them while your project gets put on hold.  The coliseum was very spectacular, like I had expected.  Imagine a Saddledome like building but instead of holding 17000 people it can hold 50000 people.  Also imagine it was built almost 2000 years ago out of really big stones.  Besides the Colosseum I also really liked the Pantheon.  The Pantheon is a really big dome.  And of course that doesn’t sound that interesting and you’ve got to see it to appreciate it.  Here are a couple of facts:  it’s almost 2000 years old, it’s 142 feet to the top of the interior of the dome, the inner diameter of the dome is also 142 feet, and it still holds the record for the largest unreinforced concrete dome in the world.  In the top of the Pantheon there is a large hole.  As wind passes over the hole it draws air in through the entrance thus ventilating the building (rain of course falls through the hole but the floor is designed to handle that).  I found it to be a very impressive building.

 

Besides the ruins and churches spread all over Rome the other place you have to go is the Vatican.  The three things to see at the Vatican is the square (where the pope address the crowd), the museum and St Peters Basillica.  We only managed to see the square.  We decided to skip the museum because it was expensive, there was a long line up and we’re kind of bored with museums.  We tried to see the basillica but they wouldn’t let us in.  You see at the Vatican they are quite sticky on security.  This means that you have to go through airport style metal detectors and x-ray machines.  As we were standing in line we noticed a sign saying you couldn’t bring in Swiss Army knives.  We didn’t have one of those but we did have a cheese knife (you always have to be prepared when a fine piece of gouda comes your way).  We waited in line thinking the worst thing that would happen would be that we’d have to check our bag (and we confirmed that they did have lockers).  When we went through security they did find our knife and when we suggested that we would check our bag they said that we could check our bag but only if we threw out our knife (apparently it was too dangerous).  Now it’s not that it’s a really great knife or that it was really expensive.  But do you know how hard it can be to find a cheese knife when you’re constantly in strange cities?  And conversly do you know how easy it is to find a basillica in Rome?  We asked where the exit was and left.  We probably should have just thrown out the knife so that we could have seen the basillica but as our travels continue I find that I have very little tolerance for stupid rules.  I understand that my knife could endanger people, of course only in the hands of a derranged psycho killer, but why is it more dangerous in the Vatican than any other place in Rome or Italy for that matter?  One of the hardest things about being in a new place all of the time is learning the arbitrary rules that people in the area take for granted as making sense when they really don’t.  I’m sensing some ranting for an upcoming blog…

 

We’re currently in Treviso which is very close to Venice and we’re looking forward to a city with no cars!

So far we’re enjoying Italy. It’s better than Greece; still dirty, loud and smoky, but the trains are a little nicer and the people are very friendly (bordering on polite).

Our first real sightseeing adventure in Italy was the city of Pompeii. I’d always wanted to see it – to be honest, I knew very little about it, but the idea of a city frozen in time was very intriguing. I still know very little, but here are the highlights:

 

• The first people of Pompeii started building walls around 2700 years ago
• The original population was Greek, Native and Etruscan (You’ll have to look that one up)
• The Romans took control a couple hundred years BC (around the time the city started to look attractive, by my estimates)
• Pompeii was something like a resort town for a time
• The city had gladiators, theaters, swimming pools, parks, snack bars, plumbing and brothels. Yeah, like I said, resort town.
• By the way, Pompeii is huge. – 66 ha – we walked around for 6 hours and saw just some of it
• The city is built on Vesuvian lava rock (you’d think that would be a warning)
• There was an earthquake in 62 AD which caused a great deal of damage. Repairs were underway when the city was destroyed and the damage is still apparent.
• There is Roman graffiti on some of the walls – “Celadus the Thracian gladiator is the delight of all the girls”, “Phileros is a eunuch!” - You get the idea.
• Pompeii was covered by ash and rock when Vesuvius erupted on August 24^th, 79 AD.
• Naples was closer to Vesuvius but was not destroyed because the wind was blowing south.
• Another city, Ercolano, was also destroyed that day and is apparently really well preserved, but we ran out of time and didn’t visit.
• The ruins of Pompeii were discovered in the 16^th century but exploration didn’t begin until 1748. Excavations are still underway. About 1/3 of the city is still buried.
• Many of the structures are in great condition, some take a bit of imagination, and other parts of the city have been restored.
• There are paintings and intricate tile work everywhere.
• A few bodies were found (skeletal remains), the rest were more or less incinerated. In a few instances, people shaped cavities were found in the ash during excavation and plaster molds were made. The casts are fascinating and slightly traumatic, but they are poorly displayed and none are in their original locations.

 

We had a really great time and would put Pompeii near the top of our favorite’s list for the year.

 

By the way, I just found out how helpful Microsoft Word can be – when I typed August 24^th, 79 AD, Word wanted to help me check my calendar and schedule a meeting.

We were on the train bound for Kalambaka.  Why Kalambaka you may ask…why not.  We’ve been deciding largely where to go based on where our eurail pass will take us.  Greece doesn’t have a very extensive rail system so our choices have been limited.  The plan was to go to Kalmambaka to see the monasteries which are perched high on the tops of mountains…sounded good.  We had a guest house booked and were planning to walk the 15 minutes from the train to our accommodations.  Unfortunately when we got to Kalambaka it was raining like crazy.  No problem we thought, we’d just grab a taxi, it was only supposed to be a couple of euros.  Ironically, unlike Asia, there aren’t thousands of taxis hounding you for your business as you’re walking off the train.  Instead there were only two cabs and they both seemed to have passengers.  As we were wandering around the station in our post 8 hour train ride daze, a cabby came up to us asking if we needed a ride.  We were moderately convinced he knew how to get to our guest house and we were willing to pay the outrageous price of 5 euros.  When we got to his car however we noticed that there were other people already in the cab.   This is where we had to draw the line.  If you think about it, the people in the cab probably thought they were being ripped off too never mind having to share limited taxi space with two back packers and all of their crap.  So we told the driver no and decided to walk in the rain…and the dark.  The experience was quite liberating (kind of like telling your boss where he can shove your job) until we realized all we had to find our place was a badly drawn dissolvable map.

We did up our rain gear and pack covers making sure the computer, camera and passports would stay moderately dry and were off to find our guest house.  We didn’t go very far when we saw the cliffs.  They were spectacular.  They went straight up to the clouds.  I think they seemed especially big because we were so close to them.  To add to their splendor was the lighting.  You know how they light up really big buildings at night?  Well they lit up the cliffs the same way.  And if all that wasn’t enough there was lightning.  When the lightning would strike it would illuminate the cliffs passed where the lights did.  We kept walking and sort of darted from building to building trying to not get too wet.  We managed to find the street our guest house was on and soon found a sign pointing the way.  After following the sign and a few more, we arrived to a warm fire and a greek lady showing us our room.  It was quite lovely.

The next morning the rain had been replaced by sun and we set out to see the monasteries.  Most people take a tour bus to go up the cliffs and then to visit the monasteries…but not us.  Like usual, we didn’t really know where we were going but we had heard that there were paths up the cliffs.  We started walking through the maze of deserted streets towards the cliffs but weren’t really sure where to go.  We thought we found a path but weren’t too sure.  Fortunately there was a guy who, speaking greek, seemed to be quite confident that that was the path up.  And it was and it was a very good path.

After quite a lot of huffing and puffing we were nearly at the top and we saw the first indication of human intervention on one of the cliffs.  Just for clarification the cliffs aren’t really on the sides of mountains like one might expect.  Instead the mountains are more like pinnacles with cliffs all the way around.  Generally speaking one would have an extremely difficult time ascending a pinnacle never mind putting a building on top.  As we got closer we could see that around the pinnacle was sort of a crack and in the crack you could see what looked like a brick wall.  We had heard that some of the monasteries are essentially impossible to reach unless you have climbing gear.  I figured this must be one of those.  As we got even closer we were able to see that the brick wall was only a small portion of a stairway allowing you to go from the bottom of the pinnacle all the way to the top.  Once we got to the top the monastery itself  was very good but not spectacular.  What was spectacular, besides the amazing stairway up, was the view.  It was from this pinnacle that we got our first glimpse of all of the other monasteries perched on other pinnacles as well as the crazy staircases, bridges, ladders and cable cars to access them.The monasteries were built between three and five hundred years ago.  Apparently there are 24 pinnacles and at one point there was a monastery on each one.  Today they are in various states ranging from ruins to the six that are currently frequented by tourists.  One of them was even used in a James Bond movie.  We managed to see four of the monasteries.  Some were certainly larger and more elaborate than the others but each one was unique and you certainly couldn’t beat the view.

We left Switzerland with a kilogram of chocolate. Seriously. Actually, it was slightly more than a kilogram. Why? You’d have to ask Rich. It’s okay chocolate, but it’s not that cheap and it’s not as good as the French or Belgium stuff.

Switzerland was remarkably scenic. The mountains, the lakes, the villages – all nice. We really liked Bern, where we stayed for a couple of nights.  It was as nice as a city can get, really.

But it’s an expensive place. It’s not much better than Japan or Norway, but we didn’t have to spend any money to enjoy ourselves, our train pass was valid on most routes and nearly every route is scenic. So we spent some time on the train, just gawking at the scenery. I would have liked to do a bit of hiking, but I really need a pair of warm shoes with treads.

The train from Switzerland did not disappoint.  Alps on all sides for hours and hours.  And then as a special treat, we had a passport check. This confused us at first, because we’ve been through a dozen countries without ever being checked, but then a Swiss couple told us we were passing through Liechtenstein. Kind of neat, but it looks exactly like Switzerland.

And now Quark’s battery is completely useless. The most frustrating thing is that not all trains have power outlets, and that’s the place we like to use Quark most often. And, even worse than that, when the trains do have power outlets, the power is somewhat intermittent. It goes out for a minute every now and then and the battery doesn’t even attempt to keep the computer going during that time. So, even though I’ve been saving every few sentences, I’ve had to retype a lot of this blog more than once. And I really don’t think we’re going to find a Gateway battery in Europe.

Anyway, it’s been a rather uneventful couple of days, so I’ve got nothing else to write, but some of the pictures are good ;)