Things you're not told

Here’s that quick recap I promised you in the last blog, but if you did bother to read the wife’s, it kind of irrelevant.  Hers is much more detailed & descriptive, I get bored with all that so I’ll skip over the details & try to point out the things a guide book, or a wife, forgets to mention.

I can’t remember the last place I told you about, what with all the fucking weather we had then all the moving about.  I cant be bothered to read my other blogs, it was painful enough the 1^st time so I’ll start with when we left Sestrie Levantie, the place of trains & rains.

We boarded the train & just a few hours later we were in the small city of Pisa.  It was a little stroll to our hotel then we was straight out to see the sights, or as we are led to believe, the sight.  Pisa is a very small place & we had walked the whole perimeter & criss-crossed the middle by the end of the 1^st day but it was a very pleasant place to be.  It’s a big university town so we were never far from a few decent bars & the food was good.  The big surprise was, as well as being the home of a badly engineered tower its is also the birth place of the camp statue (& I don’t mean university rules).  1^st one I saw I dismissed as my immature mind (I know you all think I’m a deep serious person but yes, I do find farts funny!) the next couple drew a more curious look but then the 4^th statue I see I couldn’t ignore.  It was a big stone carving of a man in a loin cloth adopting the typical ‘I’m a little tea pot’ pose with his hips pushed dramatically to 1 side & a very obvious limp wrist.  He had a naked & very busty wench at his knee, which he was ignoring (?) & gazing off into the distance (no doubt where his servant was ploughing the fields & getting all sweaty in the sun.  It wouldn’t of looked more camp if the Family Guy crew had drawn him for 1 of Peters cut aways to describe a camp man.   It wasn’t just me, even the wife agreed.  So there we have it, the camp statues of Pisa.

The next stop was Bologna.  This is famed for its amazing food markets & fountain of Neptune with his dozen sirens spraying water from their nipples.  What they don’t tell you is that its full of wrong-uns that wouldn’t be out of place in Chatham. 

Modena is a city that was shut.  Marrinello was a town that was shit (even with the beautiful cars surrounding you).  So onto Florence!  Everybody loves Florence & I can see why but for me it was just far too hot & far too busy to be loved.  It was more like that women from accounts, good to look but far too many people have been in & out of her Doumo!  We stayed there for a week & it was the only way I could of got round the place.  It was so hot we could only manage a few hours a day before we had to retreat to the comfort of our apartment or, as was more likely, an air-conditioned bar.  The thing about Florence that nobody tells you is they are sneaky.  It is famous for all the Art its acquired, but the sneaky basterds spread it out into all the hundreds of museums in the city so each place has 1 painting you would recognise & the rest is filled with crappy religious art that has been plundered from some tiny church in the middle of nowhere.

From Florence we moved to Rome.  I love Rome, it is an incredible place.  So does the wife & she cant see how anybody wouldn’t.  I’m not going to do a Venice & tell you you really must go.  Rome is a massive, busy working Capital & it was very very hot.  No matter how good Rome is you still have to like Massive busy capitals.  But Rome is like no other; it is steeped in History & intrigue.  Its Architecture is spectacular & the grandeur is monumental, but it’s even more than that.  You can kind of feel the hum of the place.  When your at the Coliseum, St Peters Basilica, Pantheon or any of the thousand other Fountains, statues or monuments you can imagine how people would of felt when they were new, the awe, the inspiration & the fear.  And as many tourists as there are, & there is millions, the place is still dominated by the locals & the locals love a good time.  Around every corner is a bar all the squares are filled with restaurants & at Mid-night the place is just as busy as at mid-day.  There are very few places I would want to visit again & again & again but on that very short list; probably at the top it would be Rome.

Which brings us to now.  I sit here in my little terraced garden next to my lemon tree, looking out on the steep sides of the cliff face that makes up Positano on the Amalfi coast.  We liked it so much we decided to spend another week here, but I think you need 2 weeks after the journey from Rome.  We’ve done the journey before, we knew what to expect but it is the worst journey we’ve ever had to do.  Even worse that the 3 straight days without sleep, shower or even bed it took us to get from Toronto to Fiji, even worse that the death ride we took to get to Istanbul & even worse (I never thought I would say it) than the shear hell & filth that was a tuk-tuk across Bangkok.  The train to Naples is no real hardship even if you take the slow cheap train, as we did.  You don’t have to see much of actual Naples so that is lucky but from then on its filth, heat, crowds & bad bad bad.  You have to get on a local train from Naples to Sorrento.  This is like a very old fashioned underground train except its almost entirely over ground.  It is slow & boiling hot, you melt into the plastic chairs & you sweat like a fat pig on slaughter day.  You are surrounded by the criminals from Naples all trying to part you from you luggage or wallet.  Its 50 degrees & your crammed into fat people.  Your like this for about 2 hours.  Then you have a 40min wait in the scorching Sorrento sun for the bus.  By this time there are a far more people than seats so it’s a full out scrum to get on board, if your lucky enough you then have to stand on a packed bus with people trying to squeeze past you to find seats that are already full.  Then the bus goes for 20 min in completely the opposite direction you need, does a big circle & goes back the way it came.  It makes no stops; no one gets on or off.  Then after another hour we arrive in Positano.  There are 4 stops but nobody knows which one they need so everybody’s on & of, pushing & squeezing there sweat drenched body’s it is truly disgusting.  We made it though & we needed the extra week, we deserve I think after all that! 

The important things

I nearly gave up the blogging.   It feels a bit like being in the pub with my mates but I am the only 1 buying the rounds.  But then I got to thinking, you don’t miss your rounds there must be a reason & I know that reason.  It would be the same reason I wouldn’t bother emailing or commenting.  Laziness.  I just wouldn’t be bothered & you lot are no different & there is nothing wrong with that.  So after my little sulk I’m back to bore you with some more shit.

Since my last blog we have moved around a lot.  Going from Setrie Levantie to Pisa, Bologna, Modena, Marrinello, Florence, Tuscan Hills, Rome & now we are in a lovely little apartment in Positano on the Amalfi coast.  Lots of things have happened but I’m not going into that here, if you’re desperate to know the details go to the wife’s blog www.snowystylista.blogspot.com I might fill you in a bit later but for now I’m going to, as my good friend reminded me to do, keep it real & tell you about the important things in life.

BBF, I’ve heard the youth mention this & I have no idea what they are on about but for me it’s for the 3 most important things in this world.  Beer, Boobs & football, so I thought I would share the things I have learned about the Italian versions.  Now I kind of remember doing a similar blog about the time I spent in France so I think I can compare to both the Dirty French & the English.  So lets start with where all the great conversations do, with Beer.  I love beer; there is nothing better than getting into the shade after a hard day at the golf, under blistering sun & taking a big few gulps of ice-cold lager.  It surprises me that wine is still drunk so often in these temperatures there is never an exclamations as apt as ‘Ahhhhh that hits the spot’ as a good beer in boiling weather.  I’m partial to a drop of the old Vino every now & again but its just not the same.  Hot weather needs beer & over here just lately it’s been hot, very hot.  I’m not complaining, it beats the rain we’d been having earlier but it does make everyday life just that little bit more difficult & our old friend beer is a necessity.  Luckily the Italians do like a good lager, much better than that French piss water & (unlike the French) they serve it in pints, not those pathetic demi’s.  They even have Beer bars where they sell there own brew.  One we went to in Genoa was full with mostly Lagers (they haven’t quit grasped a good Ale yet) but they were good.  They had beer shooters, beer cocktails (for the girls & gays) beer tasters, beer in 2ltr jars & bought to your table with its own pump & just straightforward beer.  The biggest down side of the beer over here is the price, on average its about €5 a pint, they do happy hour (aparativo) but instead of getting cheap drinks you get buffet food & nibbles, as good as this is we know that eating is cheating & what we really want is cheaper booze not garlic & pesto bruschetta.  Also the locals are so much better at drinking than the French.  They are more like us, they are social, like a chat & a laugh & they go out most nights, unlike us they don’t get shit faced, they are sensible with there drink.  Weird!

With beer the conversation inevitably gets round to boobs.  Before I came away one of the boys said that the only reason I’m going to Italy is because its full of ‘my types’.  As I have mentioned before I am happily married (who’s wife reads this) so my type is the wife, but to explain what he meant, it was women with long dark hair & big boobs.  That had nothing to do with it but there are a lot of dark haired women out here & a lot of them have boobs.  It could be just because its warmer out here so everybody wears just a bit less, it could be that they are a very vain nation & show off anything & everything available to them or it could just be that Italy loves boobs.  I think all of the above.  All the adverts, TV, magazines everything has, almost solely, scantily clad women on it.  It is helped by being led from the top, good old Berlusconi is like a dog on heat drooling over everything, he even found time to Perv up the rescue crew after an earthquake.  There is even footage of him on Youtube dry humping a police women as she was writing out parking ticket, that is the role model for Italians!

Finally football.  Italian football has always been the most difficult for me to watch.  There is no denying the skill of the National team but their leagues are filled with cheating, acting, whinging & (even after the massive point deduction scandal) corruption.  Obviously you can’t see the corruption so it makes no difference to me but the rest just makes for painful viewing.  As with everywhere else in Europe the season is over but football is still on all the time it is just as big as at home but without the football shirts being worn all the time.

Are You All Dead?

I've been away for a month now & I've put the effort in & blog what I'm up to fairly frequently.  To date I have had emails & comments from just 1 person.  If your not dead are you reading this?  I can only assume your not.  If you are let me know whats going on, what your up too or even how much your glad I'm not there.  Its not as if any of you do any work when in front of the computer is it.  Strange as it is; I do miss you all!

Fucking, fucking Weather

In the haste of my self-indulgent hard done by weather rant I neglected to tell you the worst of it all.  During the terrific storms, the torrential rain, the gale force winds that can even ground a ferry on a lake, we had snow.  Yes, snow.  We have spent 6 months at 3000m in the heart of the French Alps desperate for the stuff but whilst we are staying by 1 of the prettiest lakes in the world & our own private swimming pool, not 100m meters above us it snowed almost every evening.  Now I’m no meteorologist & I don’t quite know how these things work but even though it was somewhere between 20-30 degrees every day (even in the rain) we was surrounded by snow capped peaks.  They wasn’t quite the mountains that we were used to seeing but from my extensive engineering & surveying background the lake was about 700m above sea level, our apartment was about 500m above that & within a good pissing distance was snow.  Every fucking night.  What the fuck is all that about? 

Now all this is, for us at least, a bit annoying but let’s get serious about our luck for a moment.  It rained in a desert for 45min whilst we were there for 45 minutes when it hadn’t rained for 4 YEARS, it rained for a week in a place that boasts an average of 360 days a year of sun, we arrived in Sydney in the heart of the worst forest fires NSW has ever experience – not long after that the rain had put them out, we spent our 1^st & only week of our camping experience in the middle of a freak cyclone & now?  We are about to visit a place that is prone to volcanic activity & is over due an eruption by 14 years!!  We all know in geological terms 14 years is barely a blink of the eye but consider the fact that Vesuvius (of the Pompei killing fame) has been spunking its load into the Nepalese sunset on a constant 30 year cycle, a cycle that has never had its wheels buckled & has plodded along its merry Volcanic path since the Romans invented the gorgonian calendar.  Being so regular the little fella’s out here have got quite good at dealing with the molten laver that threatens their pasta trees but this additional time is a worry, an extra 50% load on top of the usual money shot.  Imagine you’re a regular once an hour farter, then imagine going to a crowded cinema with a hot new date & having to hold onto last nights curry, just in case, then on the way out discussing how that little that Cruise fellow must really be a gay you let it out.  Its going kill the people in the immediate vicinity instantly, then it going to set fire to the metal escalators which will then explode sending cogs into the surrounding restaurants which will ignite all the gas sending a gigantic fire ball into the nearby substation which will then have catastrophic power surge magnetising the power station which will suck all the planes out of the sky & the resulting mushroom cloud will be potent enough to go out on dates with its friend from Chernobyl.  That’s why we don’t hold in the fart.  That’s just our fat arses; imagine what’s going to happen when it’s a giant mountain!  That’s what’s going to happen when we get down to the Amalfi coast.  It’s just our luck!

On the plus side, we have bought an internet key (formally known as a dongal) & it works.  We have the web at last!

Fucking Weather

By now you all know of our luck when it comes to weather.  After spending our 1^st & only season in the worst conditions for 35 years but it continues.  Whilst we were in the lakes in rained most nights & we had some spectacular storms.  It only really effected us 2 days making us change plans, in the main it was quite pleasant sitting on our massive balcony watching the storms exploding all round the lake getting merrily pissed.  It’s getting beyond a joke now.  When we checked the weather Friday night for our return to the coast there was an Italian shaped rain cloud over Italy, the only cloud in Europe.  It rained the whole way down here.  Sunday Rain, Monday rain, Tuesday (today) rain.  We did go to Genoa yesterday & managed to stay dry but today was to be spent on beaches & boats.  That’s not going to happen.  This is, again, unseasonal weather.  They think it’s going to continue for the next few days as well.  It’s just not cricket.  Or perhaps it is!

Can you see the rain?  We couldn't miss it!

More lakes

We finished our stint at the lakes & the northern end of Italy.  From Garda we spent a few days out travelling the sights & our 1^st destination was Verona.  Verona was a weird place, where as in Milan I was pleasantly surprised; here I was a little disappointed.  Not to say it was horrible or any thing it just didn’t live up to the expectations.  But then where are they from?   The city is famous almost entirely from an ancient English Author who wrote a fictional play that just happened to be set there, a place (I’m pretty sure) he never even visited.  1 of the most visited tourist spots is Juliette’s balcony, which is place from the mind of a dead play-write about a person who never existed?  The whole place has an air of Disney about it not helped by the thousands of yanks waddling about.  It is also the home of the most complete Roman arena in the world which is still used today, not for the joy of killing Christians (mores the pity) but for fat Italians singing stories or in the case when we were there, a little gay pop stars putting on a concert.  We didn’t bother with Ricky Martin but we did go in & I suppose even I could see how good a night at the opera might be there, shame it didn’t start till July.  Dam it we couldn’t possibly come back!

Where for art thou

Two years ago, on our 1^st wedding anniversary, we spent 5 days in Venice.  We loved it, it is a spectacular place.  As we were so close to it again we couldn’t miss the opportunity to see it again so we popped back for a day trip.  It was every bit as amazing.  I’m not 1 to tell anybody to visit a place, we’re all different & we all know what we like & where we want to go but if you haven’t already been, GO TO VENICE.  There really is no place like it, or even close to it anywhere else in the world.  You don’t need me to tell you what its all about, you already know but seeing it as often as we have on TV, even being there before it is still an incredible place.  We had done all the sights before & didn’t need to go into any of the palaces or cue for the regular sights; we just spent the day ambling about finding the quieter (no such thing as ‘of the beaten track‘ here) parts.  We Kris crossed the labyrinth of streets & canals & must of walked a good few miles but it is well worth it.  We would still go back.

We spent a few more days visiting the lake side towns that surround Garda, got out on the water, took a few thousand more photo’s & drunk lots more booze before we set off for Bergamo.  This is an old town right in the middle of the thigh of Italy.  It’s more medieval than other places in Italy & totally different from the Milan, Verona et al that we’d been to previously.  Built on the top of a big hill it is an ancient collection of streets built behind a 5km wall.  You’re probably getting bored with reading it, I’m certainly getting a bit bored with saying it but it was great.  We had a bit of scare on the way back though.  We were in dire need of fuel & the whole city seemed devoid of petrol.  We did just about cough & splutter into the 1^st & only open garage we see.

On Saturday we drove all the way back to Milan, dropped off our little car, got the bus & then train down to the beach side town of Sesetri Levante.  We are back on the med.  All the towns surrounding Genoa (top left of Italy) kind of merge into 1 making a massive sprawling town built around a road & a train track.  It could be beautiful but its not.  Some of the coves & bays are stunning but the town is never ending & it seems all a bit tainted with commercialism.  It’s going to happen, I know that, but it’s a bit of a pity.  It’s a bit like Italy’s version of the Costa del Sol.  We haven’t been to Portofino or Santa Margareta yet & they are the jewels of the crown of this coast so my opinion may yet change.  Also from here we’re going to visit the Cinque Terre which is another UNESCO world heritage sight made up of 5 little fishing villages built into the mountains perched over the Med.  It’s supposed to be lovely, at the moment we cant see a thing for all the rain!

Lakes

Lets waste another 5 minutes of your life.  Where were we, Milan.  I must be honest I wasn’t looking forward to Milan.  I heard it was congested, busy, full of smog & expensive but I was pleasantly surprised.  It was expensive but we’d spent the last 6 months in Val, which is 1 of the dearest places on earth, so it wasn’t shocking, but the rest turned out to be false rumours.  For a city, it wasn’t especially congested, it was very clean, quite open & a near on relaxed feel to it.  The 1^st night we got the metro down to the Duomo (Cathedral) & it is a mighty spectacular building, even the wife (who is used to impressive sights) let out an involuntary ‘wow’. 

We spent a couple of days doing the sights and enjoying the Milan invention of Apperitevo.  They do this in all the bars & its great when you get used to it.  You buy an alcoholic drink for a set price (between 7-10 euros) then help yourself to an all you can eat anti-pasti buffet type thing.  We had a couple of drinks each & gauged ourselves on Italian food in a funky bar for a total of €30.  Blinding. 

The fresco of Leonardo Da Vinci’s ‘The Last Supper’ is in Milan.  We went but it’s a 2-week waiting list to see it, that’s a cue too much for me so, unfortunately, we missed it.  We all know what it looks like though don’t we; Jesus & his whore girlfriend getting pissed with his mates with 1 Judas threatening to slit her throat unless he gets a blowjob!  That’s how I see it anyway.  Indecently, was Judas named after Sol Campbell?  You wouldn’t want to be spending more than a couple of days in Milan though unless you wanted to spend your life savings on expensive shoes (& the wife was sorely tempted) so we got back on the train to the airport to pick up our car.  We saved €200 going back out of the city well worth trek round the underground with our luggage.  We picked up our Italian 2 seater, a beautiful silver 1.2L Lancia Y.  Technically it was a 4 seater but there is no way in this earth that you would fit 4 people in it but it was ideal for the tiny little lanes of our next destination.

The Italian lakes & more precisely, Lake Garda.  This is the biggest & most commercial of the lakes & that’s why we choose it.  We intended to look for a job here working with all the English & Yank tourist that plague the place.  It is simply stunning.  There is an element of over development about it but that doesn’t stop it being a picture of lake elegance & beauty.  Round every single of the many corners is another postcard vista & I’m truly grateful for the digital era, if I had to develop my camera-film like back in the day I would have sell my good kidney!  It’s a shame I can only put a few photo’s on for you but our luck with the Internet continues.  We booked a place specifically with Internet access, it turned out that this meant via a mobile O2 dongle, but it doesn’t work so it’s back to the good old Wi-Fi cafes.  Cant really complain though, the view is incredible. 

Our View from the Balcony