Last time we spoke we were in Florence (with free internet). Italy was amazing, although the towns seemed smaller as we got through everything we wanted to see much faster than previously (possibly because we'd had enough of museums, art galleries and chateaux).
We finished in Florence with a visit to the Uffizi Gallery, which was quite fantastic, the Ponte Vecchio, more pizza, visits to a few closed churches that I've studied over the years and a walk in the heat of the day up the hill to Piazza Michaelangelo where there was yet another copy of the David, this time in bronze. I enjoyed Florence, and was a little disappointed that we didn't get time to climb to the top of the Duomo.
We took a day trip since we'd pretty well covered Florence. We took the bus down to a crazy little place called San Gimignano. It was an old walled town that used to have lots of towers (they've fallen down with time). It was a sign of wealth to build a tower so they tried to build them as tall as possible. There are only about 14 left from about 100 (it's a really small place, would have been absolutely nuts in the 14th century with all those towers). There wasn't really much to do there so we went to the cathedral and the Museum of Torture, which really just made me even more sceptical of religion (most instruments of torture in the museum were designed and utilised by Christians in the middle ages up until today). We had pizza (again) for lunch in the square with a caraffe of Chiante (as you do in summer in Tuscany). Very nice.
Once we'd finished in San G...o we took the bus down to Siena. Unfortunately we missed the horses by a couple of days, but the clean up was mostly done (they have a huge bare back horse race around the square twice a year - pretty huge festival, but really dangerous - mainly for the riders). We waited in a short line for an hour to climb the Torre del Mangia (you had to wait for the groups of 25 people to both climb and descend the tower before the next group could access it - about 20 mins per group, excruciating with lots of over-excited, yelling, running children around). We just wandered around for a bit, had a local dinner at an Osteria, with another caraffe of wine from a traditional cask (the wooden kind), then took the train back to Florence.
Rome was slightly disappointing after the beautiful cities we'd already visited (Paris, Vienna, Venice...). There were heaps of cool ruins to see and cathedrals on every corner (built with stone pilaged from the non-Christain Roman ruins). The colosseum was awesome. It came complete with an Eros exhibition full of very explicit pottery. You've got to see a photo of this (click on the photo to see the full size):
We managed to go to an ehibition of Santiago Calatrava's work in Rome. It was pretty fantastic. His sculptures were just exquisite. Little architectural and structural masterpieces.
We had accomodation woes in Rome. Firstly our guesthouse double booked us, so they organised an apartment for us at no extra cost. The apartment was in the roof space of a building right by the Pantheon (very central, but 104 stairs, no lift). Firstly we had issues with the pop up waste in the shower that wouldn't pop up, which meant I had the joyous job of bucketing the water out and pouring it down the toilet. Then we had a wee issue with power. I plugged in the cell phone to charge it which just happened to blow out the fuses for all the power outlets and most of the lights in the apartment (while cooking dinner), so no stove, no hot water, no air con... We tried to fix them but the switches in the fuse box wouldn't work. I then tried to call the apartment owner, but the phone went dead (of course), so we spent ages finding a pay phone, then a phone card, then waiting for her to arrive. However we were kind of lucky as the Indian family that was booked for the adjacent apartment had decided not to stay there (due to the number of stairs and small children) so we were once again up graded to a larger apartment with a balcony for no extra cost than the room in the guest house with a shared bathroom.
We did most of the major touristly things in Rome. We spent a couple of hours in the line for the Cistine Chapel, saw the Vatican and St Peters, the Pantheon (of course), Spanish Steps, Roman Forum and Palatine...
So, we decided to head off down to Pompeii for a day. The day we went was the 1928th anniversary of the eruption of Mt Vesuvius. We went on a bus tour, which was probably a mistake. I just couldn't be bothered working out all the public transport to get there and back. We spent 16 hours on this tour for 3 hours at Pompeii and a three hour drive each way, but of course you have to go to the jewellery shop (selling cameos made from Conches shells and coral jewellery - neither of which I would buy out of principle - though I think it's illegal to bring coral into NZ anyway), the lunch thing, the "tour" of Naples, which involved dropping the other (Capri) tour off at the port and driving along the water's edge for 20 mins, and last but not least being the first to be picked up and the ast to be dropped off at the hotel at the end... Anyway, after all that Pompeii was pretty fantastic. They're still digging up new bits. The frescoes are still on the walls and the tiles on the floors. They make plaster moulds of the gaps left by bodies in the ash, so we saw the impressions (including bones) of some of those who lost their lives in the eruption. It's a weird place, but well worth a visit. It was at least 35 degrees and felt particularly hot in the ruins. There were some very burnt people (you don't tend to burn further north). After the tour but still in Pompeii, Braedon purchased an orange from the guys making fresh orange juice. He broke it open and gave me half. I split a piece off and inside were a few happy maggots. He took it back and after some persuasion they accepted that it wasn't good to eat and gave the money back. I got put off both oranges and juice for the rest of the trip... The bus on the way back must have taken a bit of a short cut getting into Rome as we did about a 30 point turn around this tight corner, denting at least one car, the bus itself and bending a bollard. All the car owners seemed to be at the adjacent restaurant, first they were laughing, but soon they started moving their cars...
We hired a car from Rome and Braedon drove us down to Puglia. We stayed in Alberobello, this tine little place south of Bari near the east coast (top of the "heel"). There were very cute houses called Trulli all around. We did some scenic Sunday driving around the area, taking in Cisternino and the beach at Torre Santa Sabina (but it was pretty windy).
We drove over to the West coast via Matera, which is a cute little place. The house are a mixture of caves and buildings and it's a world heritage site. I could have spent much longer exploring there. It was really cute. But we had to head off to Ascea, which is right on the coast south of Salerno. There were a lot of fires burning everywhere. At one point we stopped by a lake for a drink and it was the lake that the helicopters where filling up there water, then flying off to dump it all on local fires. We took the scenic route around the coast (I think it took twice as long (about 6 hours) and made it much harder to find our hotel). We didn't get in until quite late, but managed to have dinner at the hotel and then went for a quick dip in the sea under the moon light.
Unfortunately we had to head back to Rome early the next day to catch our flight home. :(
We stopped for a couple of days in Singapore where we stayed with Tom (from Freyberg spa pool) and his partner Chris. They were great hosts, they showed us around a bit and fed us well. They had a huge apartment and a beautiful 50m x 25m swimming pool in their complex, which we made good use of in the evenings. We didn't really get up to a lot. A bit more shopping, Mt Faber views, Little India, drinks at Boat Quay and a few more malls.
Now we're home and I'm a bit jet lagged. :(
The exciting news that I got when I arrived was that Ang already gave birth to her son Connor with the greatest of ease, 5 weeks premature.
I promise I'll sort out some trip photos soon (they just take soooo long to upload that I need to have my patient hat on...).
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