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Disrespect
Posted by daveb on October 24th, 2007
This picture is of a statue, taken inside the Duomo of Florence. Click on it and look closely at it.
I often appreciate graffiti in its various forms, in fact I came really close to buying Banksy’s coffee-table book just before we left for our trip.
However, I cannot understand what drives people to believe that defacing a priceless historical statue is acceptable behaviour.
When to draw the line?
I guess everybody’s got a different line and maybe it’s only society that decides where the big one is drawn.
Filed under Italy, Thoughts • 2 comments »
So many names for the same place
Posted by daveb on October 23rd, 2007
I understand why there are so many languages in the world (Esperanto, anyone?) but I don’t understand why the same place has a different name in so many languages. I had no idea that what we know as Florence, is natively called Firenze, for example.
And for that matter, why do we call Germany, Germany? It’s Deutschland.
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Florence: Tears in the dome
Posted by daveb on October 23rd, 2007
There’s a lot to do in Florence, if you into art, sculpture, churches, food or even just mooching*. We’re into the latter two.
We spent a couple of days walking the streets sucking-in the sights, sounds, smells, tastes and feelings of the city instead of bouncing from queue to queue for the main attractions. (No kidding here: If you catch a top-tier venue at the wrong time, you’ll be queuing for six hours — no thanks!)
In-between spreading gelatti around my face, we did manage to drop 12 Euros (for both of us) for the privilege of climbing 463 steps to the top of the beautiful Duomo dome with assurances of wonderment at the fresco paintings and jaw-dropping views over the city from the roof.
Neither of us knew that Squiffy was claustrophobic. Now we do. In fairness, our Rough Guide to Tuscany & Umbria does note:
“Claustrophobics should note that the climb involves some very confined spaces.”
So here’s my advice to any claustrophobics wanting to climb the Duomo in Florence:
Please note that the climb involves some very confined spaces, so don’t do it.
On a separate note, when I was younger and needed the money, I posed nude for an college art class. I was a little embarrased to see that one of the students, called Michaelangelo, was displaying his Statues of David around town. *blush*
* Mooching: The fine-art of immersing oneself into an environment without necessarily participating in anything more than wandering round looking up and down and around to take-in one’s surroundings.
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Pisa: The leaning tower, thereof
Posted by daveb on October 22nd, 2007
Let’s be clear about this upfront: Pisa is not a small town. We only saw a corner of it, you know the one with the leaning tower and the tat stalls which pedal all things leaning. I’m certain that there is way more to Pisa, however along with the million other foreign tourists in the famous square, I cannot cannot tell you about any of it.
I was hoping to tell you about how the tower came to lean but curiously, the ‘free’ brochure I got after paying an extortionate 15 Euros to go up it, makes no mention of its lean — “A large portion of denial, please?”
Seriously though, in any other country if a tower was known to be flawed from early-on in the building phase it’d be bulldozed, redesigned and restarted. In Italy, however, it’d be turned into one of the most popular tourist attractions and I for one am glad that they finished it as is.
It turns out that my tour guide was little more than a shepherd to herd us up and down the few hundred stairs in synchronicity with the other ‘tours’ who were coming the opposite way. Still, it’s not everyday that you get to experience one of the Wonders of the World. Walking around the penultimate cake layer, I could really feel the lean–which is both weird and a little scary. (For reasons unbeknown to me, the very top layer didn’t appear to lean as much.)
The human body is an amazing thing you know, I could really feel my internal gyroscope keeping me dead straight as I climbed the spial staircase. Inside the tower, there were infrequent windows–and thus no horizon to use–I was fascinated at how I could work out in which ‘side’ of the tower I was walking without external references (although you could argue that I had no way of confirming or disproving my theory).
Other highlights included eavesdropping on the many discussions on “how pooped” our fellow English-speaking friends really were after the climb and “why don’t they just fit an elevator?”. Also fun was sneakily taking photos of the general public performing silly “look, I’m holding-up/pushing-down [or variation thereof] the tower!”.
(And yes, we struck those same poses too…)
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Hawkers: Bad or sad?
Posted by daveb on October 20th, 2007
Hawkers; the looky-looky men illegally pedalling fake designer handbags and sunglasses in a very affrontish manner to tourists as they attempt to pass-by unscathed.
“Look, look. I give you good price.”
Frustrating?
Annoying?
Aggravating?
Or human beings struggling to make a living to support their family, just like everybody else?
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And he said “let there be light!”
Posted by daveb on October 19th, 2007
Today, is a happy day.
For a month now, we’ve been pootling around in Yoko, our [somewhat] trusty VW camper van. It’s got a solid roof and, throughout the rain, we’ve remained dry. It’s got a gas cooker and so we’ve not gone hungry. It’s not got much insulation and no heater too and so we have gotten cold–sometimes so cold that we can see our breath–but we have fleeces. Woolly hats too. Missing however, is the ability to harness the campsite energy source that our motorhome peers have all enjoyed: hook-up Electricity.
In the month, we’ve nervously conserved our vehicle battery power by only allowing the internal 12V strip-light to be on whilst cooking. All other activities have been carried-out under torch-light. I dare you to go a week at home in the evening under only torch-light — it’ll drive you nuts. Our day basically comes to and end when the sun goes down.
No more! For today is the day we installed the gift of electricity, and I feel like Thomas Edison.
Using some bits and bobs that we’ve picked up along the way in France, Switzerland and Italy–with copious amounts of British duct tape–we now have a 10 metre campsite electricity hookup cable, complete with 8 watt mechanic’s strip-light and a spare socket for our euro adapters to fill. No more do we have to fumble around in darkness! No more do we have to worry about how long we’ve got left to craft a blog entry before the laptop battery dies! No more do we have to leech electricity from restaurants and coffee-houses to recharge our cameras and mobiles!
We are celebrating by playing some MP3’s though the laptop. Sweet music! (Again this is a first, as the car stereo has never worked.)
Now if we could only get satellite internet installed…
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Modena & Maranello: The Italian Stalian
Posted by daveb on October 18th, 2007
If I said the word “Maranello”, my betting is that it means exactly one of two things to you:
a) Nothing
-or-
b) Ferrari
Maranello, the home of Ferrari, is a village just outside of the main city of Modena, around which a number villages playing home to Italian marques orbit: Lamborghini, Pagani, Ducati, they’re all here.
We went to the Ferrari museum and Lamborghini (my preferred Italian marque) too. I’d love to tell you about my tour around the Pagani factory (no museum, too small a marque) but unfortunately they picked-up and immediately replaced the phone handset when I called them to arrange!
I’m pleased to tell you that Squiffy had a good day at Ferrari too, although I could see her thinking:
“Red car. Red car. Another red car. Red car. Red car. Oh look, a silver car. Then a red car. Red car…”
At Lamborghini, rather than follow me round the museum she headed straight for the business reception’s hot-chocolate machine and, along with the female receptionist, looked pathetically on at her boyfriend and eight other adolescent thirty-year olds cheering at a works technician revving the b’locks off the engine of a bright orange Murcielago.
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Venice: Blowing our travel budget
Posted by Squiffy on October 16th, 2007
Wow. What a lovely place Venice is and what an amazing day we had.
As Venice is a car free place we found a small campsite about 12km outside the city which, very conveniently, had a bus stop right outside to take us onto the island. We awoke early and set off eagerly to explore the sights. Dave had been before but I hadn’t and it’s somewhere I’ve ‘always’ wanted to go.
After a false start with the buses (we took the wrong one which took us way off our route), we arrived at the Vaporetti terminal. Here you can catch boats, the equivalent of London buses, which take you to many parts of the island. Although I’d seen many pictures of Venice and knew it was a maze of waterways, I was still surprised to see the canals really were their equivalent or our roads, even down to the parking and two way traffic signs. And I hadn’t realised it was quite so beautiful.
We boarded a boat, more crowded and pushy than any tube carriage, and headed for St Mark’s Square. On arrival, Dave purchased the official (and almost obligatory) pigeon food and fed the birds, which perched on his arms and head! We spent most of the day wandering the narrow backstreets, crossing little bridges and just soaking up the atmosphere and the October sunshine. One of my favourite spots was the Rialto bridge, where we sat and watched the gondalas go by whilst eating our packed lunch of cheese cobs. How British.
Although we had agreed we wouldn’t take a gondala ride due to the rip-off prices, we felt we were missing out somewhat on the whole Venice experience. After a lot of umming and ahhing about the cost we decided in a you-only-live-once moment that we should make the most of the unseasonal weather and experience these Venetian boats. Of course we did negotiate a lower price for a slighty shorter trip :o) We’re so glad we went as it was a unique and relaxing experience. We asked our guide to take us off the main Grand Canal to the smaller waterways and found a very different Venice, one which was a lot quieter and not full of tourists. In fact, we didn’t see a single person or boat. As you will see in our pictures, most people have the standard tour of the Grand Canal and it can get very congested with traffic jams to rival those on the M1.
After buying some Murano glass jewellery, our day ended with a drink in a piano bar followed by the boat and bus home. It as great.
TIP: If you fancy a coffee in St Mark’s Square I recommend the take away shop. As you will see, I’m sipping a lovely latte for 2.50 euros, slightly more realistic than the 8-10 euros per cup you will pay to sit at one of the restaurants!
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Malcesine, Lake Garda: On the water
Posted by Squiffy on October 15th, 2007
Leaving an alpine Switzerland behind, we drove over the border into northern Italy, and at once the scenery changed. The vistas still included lakes and mountains, but palm trees and holiday makers created a more Mediterranean feel. Our first stop was at Malcesine on Lake Garda, a small town recommended by my parents (ta mum and dad).
We found a little campsite right by the old town and stayed for 3 nights: We have vowed to ‘do’ Italy at at slower pace than we did Switzerland. At first we were delighted to have a pitch among the shady fruit trees, but it soon became apparent that this was not such a good place for Yoko to be parked when the rotten fruit fell from the trees, landing and exploding on Dave’s towel and Yoko’s roof – see pics! Also, whatever they are, they are not good to eat. We tried and they tasted gross.
Malcesine is a maze of cobbled streets, with a waterfront, castle and lots of ice cream shops to keep Dave happy. On the first day we mooched, before having a picnic tea by the water as we watched the sun go down (much to the other holiday makers amusement). On the second day, as the wind was up, I took Dave out in a sailing dinghy. It was a really tippy thing, especially in the strong wind, and Dave did a fine job of rolling around in the bottom of the boat to balance it. I’ve re-named him ‘ballast Bartlett’. All was going well until about 40 mins in, when after several near misses and water pouring over the side, we capsized. No problem. I clambered onto the centreboard to right it, fell off, clambered on again, and got the boat upright. However, as ballast Bartlett climbed back in, the thing went over again. Doh! Eventually, after a lot of fun, we got it back to shore safe and sound.
Other highlights included a boat trip across the lake to Limone which is also a pretty town with good ice cream, and doing our washing in an easyjet-coloured, computerised laundrette.
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What’s on the menu?
Posted by daveb on October 12th, 2007
With the rumble of hunger in our bellies, I agreed with SQ that we should stop at the next place we see to get some food and a hot drink too. We have only one heat setting in our bus, you see; it’s cold and it’s always on. To combat this air stream, we were wearing multiple fleeces, gloves and woolly hats.
“This place looks nice.” said SQ, pointing towards the pink illuminated restaurant/motel signage a little way up the road. I pulled over and we entered the nearest door to be met in the hall by a skeleton hanging over the next door along. Oops, wrong door maybe. We stepped back outside and tried another, which happily opened into a bar.
A quiet bar at that: Soft maroon lighting cast over a moustached barman sucking back on a cigarette. We shuffled up to his bar, woolly hats and all. Squiffy ordered two lattes. With furrowed ‘brows, the barman presented us with two espressos and the bill. Something lost in translation, I assumed.
Sipping my espresso, I noticed that the other patrons were dressed a little differently than we had seen elsewhere in Switzerland. We were close to the Italian border, which might have explained why the ladies were displaying a little, well quite a lot, more than they did in the cold mountains. My ex-workmate, Carl, had mentioned that Italian women like to dress well. And the men here, well, there were no men. Oh, erm, wait a minute.
“Do you want to eat here?” asked Squiffy earnestly, as she scanned the room for a menu.
I whispered back, “I’m not convinced that we’re not in a brothel…”
My penny had dropped, Squiffy’s took a little longer.
“Nah, really? How do you know?” she said, bemused.
“Look at the girls. Look at what they are wearing. And where are the men?” I reasoned.
Just as I finished my sentence, a bloke–alone–walked in.
“There. There’s a man! Hah!”, a delighted Squiffy countered, “and, and… he’s walking into the corridor with the skeleton in it… with that girl.”, she paused, “Do you really think…?”
We finished our coffees, paid-up and set-off towards the door. Claire still couldn’t quite believe it and only understood the situation as it really was when another man entered–again alone–and immediately had his bottom pinched by one of the snappily-dressed ladies…
Outside, we burst-out laughing and drove on.
“I take you to all the classy joints, love.”
[Squiffy adds: Even though he knew it was a brothel, daveb still left me alone to go to the toilet. Well, he says he went to the toilet…]
[daveb adds: I’d been driving for ages and needed to answer a call of nature. As happens with men, my bladder had put itself into “ready mode” as we pulled-up outside the place. Really, there was nothing I could do by then.]
[daveb further adds: And the lights in the far-away basement toilet cut-out whilst I was in there and I had to navigate myself back to the bar with only Nokia phone light. It was really scary.]
[Squiffy further adds: Yeah, but at least you didn’t have to play evil-girl-stare-eyes with a prostitute whilst wearing a bobble hat.]
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