(Here’s an entry that we forgot to post in Italy!) It’s impossible to get a ‘normal’ coffee in Italy. Ask for ‘coffee’ and you get espresso. Ask for ‘coffee with milk’ and you get an espresso with a dash of milk. Requesting a ‘latte’ gets you a glass of hot milk with no coffee. The […]

We had planned to drive like nutters from the Amalfi Coast to a known-good (i.e. clean) camp site so that we could freshen-up and do our great lump of pent-up clothes washing. Oh, and do some food-shopping too, as we’ve only got Cup of Soups left. The next day, we would get the nineteen hour […]

We stopped on the Amalfi coast for a spot of lunch. The setting was so nice that we decided to push-the-boat-out and go for a main course at a restaurant (a real treat for us, nowadays). Two fair pastas, two waters, two coffees and–infuriatingly–two cover charges later; the bill came to a hefty €30 (the […]

We talked to three people about seeing the Amalfi Coast and they all said the same thing: “Don’t drive it yourself!” Seriously, it’s not as bad as the Internet/SQ’s Mum/My Mum makes out. True, the road is really bendy and, true, it does get too narrow for two vehicles to pass each other in many […]

Here’s a potted history of Pompeii: The city was partly destroyed by an earthquake in 62 AD. Rebuilding started immediately. Seventeen years later, nearby Mount Vesuvius erupted and covered the city in really, really hot ash, taking its residents with it. The city remained buried until the 16th century, excavation began in the 19th and […]

Rome is mostly magnificent, but in-line with the rest of the Italy that we’ve seen, this place is expensive. I’ll surely write another post on the cost of travelling this country, but in the meantime here’s an example for you: We climbed the national monument to get the best views over the city. About two-thirds […]

People queue for half their day to get into the Vatican museum; we didn’t. People queue for the other half of their day to get into the Sistine Chapel; we didn’t. We did go into the Vatican City piazza. We did queue-up and walk through the corridors of the tombs of the Popes of the […]

Squiffy was rather pleased when I intercepted a couple of queue-jumpers at the Colosseum in Rome. In my best projected theatre-voice, I asked them whether they were comfortable jumping ahead of all of the other good people who were waiting patiently in that queue. With the unwanted attention of all eyes around them, the queue-jumpers […]

It wasn’t built in a day and it shall not be blogged in a day, either. Rome is the biggest city to which we’ve travelled, thus far. The closest campsite is big too. We were sharing the site with a few other campers and seventeen hundred blonde, German girls who were enjoying the most enormous […]

We went into an Italian Cybercafe to use the Internet today. Here’s their price list: 15 minutes 1.50 Euro 30 minutes 2.50 Euro 1 hour 3 Euro 2 hours 5 Euro and so forth…   We used the connection for 1 hour and 20 minutes. I approached the counter to pay. “You’ve been one and […]