25 May 2010

Sorrento

We took a train from Rome to Naples and then a smaller train from a different company(Circumvesuviana) south to Sorrento.


Day 1 was spent wandering the narrow streets of the old town. We discovered Sorrento is named after the mythical Sirens (cute chicks in the water who lure sailors to their death). It is famous for inlaid woodwork.



Day2.


We went to Pompeii. I never imagined just how big it is. We spent hours wandering through the ruins. Some bits are amazingly preserved. There is even a brothel with an illustrated menu.





Day3. We took a bus to Amalfi and wandered around. The mountainous setting is spectacular, but the beach is made of rough brown sand like on a river bank. We then went to Positano. The area is a hangout for the rich an famous. There was a massive yacht just offshore with not just one helicopter but two. While we were there, one helicopter headed off (perhaps junior wanted some Maccas). They then had to shuffle th other helicopter around like we might move cars in the driveway. Its a tough life for some.

Tomorrow we will be off to Croatia, starting at the crack of dawn.

21 May 2010

Rome

We took the train from Florence to Rome this morning.


In Rome, we're staying at a place called Fawlty Towers. They slightly messed up our booking, so I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. On the plus side, they are cheap in a very expensive city. They also provide internet access and some basic breakfast.



















We spent a day doing what the Romans do and wandering around ruins, drinking coffee and beer.

18 May 2010

Italy

Venice
We arrived in Venice railway station at 9:50 in the evening wondering if we would be able to get any food. We checked in to Hotel Adriatico which is less than ten minutes from the train. Even though it was mid-week and late at night, the place was buzzing. It was easy to sit down at one of dozens of restaurants. We had a delicious meal of lasagne and pizza with wine of course.






Venice is such a beautiful city. We started our new day with a trip on the water bus to Piazza San Marco. The architecture is spectacular.






Ingrid also loved the shopping. Venice is supposed to be an expensive town, but some things - handbags, linen etc is cheaper than Australia. Ingrid bought a handbag for 35 euros and a hat for 10.






We spent the whole day wandering around the lanes and streets. Sometimes a pokey little alley turns out to be the main thoroughfare between important points. Other times it's a wide path. It all seems to be thrown together randomly. There are over a hundred islands and four hundred bridges. We got lost a few times but didn't really mind. It is a beautiful place.




Breakfast:
The Italians don't get the concept of breakfast. A few places have included breakfast, but its just some sweet sticky bun. I suggest you skip the hotel breakfast and buy something elsewhere.







Florence


We took a train to Florence. Even from the Florence station we could see the dome of the massive cathedral - the Duomo. It was a useful landmark to find our hotel.

We picked our hotel from the Lonely Planet guide. It was the Hotel Dali unfortunately it was full, but the owners put us up in an apartment that was located just a block from Leonardo Da Vinci's house.


On our way to the hotel, we happened on the leather market. It was a lane, several hundred metres long jam-packed with thousands of handbags in numerous stalls. Ingrid seemed to be in heaven.

Our apartment was small and basic, but met our needs for one night. The next night, we stayed at a place named Hotel Bodoni. It was centrally located and a pleasant place to stay. We packed a box of goodies for dispatch to Australia. We were able to send up to 10kg for 50 euros.

Our hotel manager recommended a particular resturant which turned out to be excellent. It was named Risterante Il Teatro located at Via Ghibellina, 128. The food was great and the staff, warm and friendly.

France

We drove through Geneva into France. We had moments of confusion as the GPS wanted us to go one way while the signs pointed the opposite. The main highways in France are toll roads, with toll gates at regular intervals. On one day of driving, we spent close to 30 Euros on tolls.

Annecy is a beautiful small town about an hour inside France. We did as advised and went directly to the tourist information centre. Unfortunately it was closed due to a public holliday. Eventually we succeeded in booking a suburban hotel for a reasonble price. The challenge was finding our way to it. With a GPS that should be easy, but for some reason, it regularly lost satellite reception as we were approaching an intersection. Apparently the location was on the edge of one of the GPS maps, so if you approached from Annecy, it would go into a recalculating loop and send us away form our destination when we were just kilometres away. Our hotel turned out to be very nice, and not far from town.

The next day we drove back to town and spent hours in he old town. It sits on the edge of a lake that feeds a small fast flowing river. It is very picturesque, with several bridges linking cobbled streets and medieval stone buildings. Swans swam around in the river.


We drove onto our B and B near Avignon (the heart of Provence). It was a beautiful old stone mill ( Le Moulin de Souchieres ) that had been converted to a cosy place to stay. Breakfasts were very good. It was very well fitted out, with a washing machine for guests. We bought local food and cooked dinners for ourselves in the well equiped kitchen.




Avignon has a massive old town centre surrounded an intact stone wall. Inside, it is a bit run-down with many empty shops. Despite that, it is a fascinating place to spend a day. On arrival, there was a huge potters market overflowing with colourful creations.






Using our bed and breakfast as a centrepoint, we travelled around Provence, visiting numerous spectacular villages. Each had its own distinctive character, some coloured with red ochre and others made of stone.

Driving around was however very stressful. Numerous times, I slowly approached intersections to ensure I found the correct exit. Instead of showing any patience, French drivers would overtake on any side then duck across to the opposite side in front. On one occassion, I was driving down a windy road of hairpin bends. A car actually overtook on one of these blind bends. They must have a massive road toll.

We drove through Saint Tropez and onto Nice where we handed in our hire car. Driving in Nice was a harrowing experience. I was happy to hand in the keys and get on the train to Venice.

Switzerland

Our flight got into Geneva an hour late. The airport is divided into a French side and a Swiss side. You can access your luggage from either side. We first enquired about hiring a car on the Swiss side, but were told it would probably be cheaper to hire it on the French side (as we planned to return it in France). We were already a bit stressed by the late flight. The hire car cost considerably more than anticipated, but eventually we got to the car only to find that the GPS was setup in French - another delay. An additional cost of car hire was a fee of 40 euros to cover tolls on expressways.

When the time came, I drove out very tentively (on the wrong side of the road by my way of thinking). We had to drive a short while through Geneva suburbs before getting to the wide-open road.


After that the going got easier. Our stop was at the town of Vevey, on the shores of Lake Geneva. The view of snow-capped peaks behind the lake was spectacular.

We parked the car and wen't straight to the first hotel we could find but it was full. It was getting late, so we had to take the first one with a vacancy. It was a place called Hotel Les Negotiants and it was very ordinary. For the huge sum of 170 Swiss francs per night (about $170aud) it claimed to be a four star hotel, but it was inferior to the one star place in Paris. There was only one pillow. The doonah gave the choice of covering toes or shoulders but never both. We were glad to depart it the next day but sad about how much lighter our wallet was.

The next day, the Tourist information office was open. They suggested the drive to Gruyere. It was well worthwhile. The countryside was classic "sound of music" stuff.

There are several Bed & Breakfasts in the old town at reasonable prices. We hoped to stay in one, but unfortunately they were booked out. Instead we stayed at a nearby farmstay. The hosts didn't speak English, but it was a pleasant and cheap place to stay. The next morning, we drove to France.

Paris

Because of the train delays, we arrived at Paris two hours late. We disembarked at the main northern hub - Gare du Nord. It looked a bit like Soweto. It was very crowded, noisy and unfriendly. It was also raining which didn't help matters. We had never used a subway before so it was all a bit new, while waiting to buy our tickets an American in queue told us that all subways were the same in that once you knew where you were going you needed to follow the colour to get to where you wanted to be. This was an excellent tip and made our trip easier, but the Paris subways were very very crowded, dirty and a bit frightening.

We took the metro to the Eiffel tower. The first thing we noticed were thousands of people in queues to go up into the tower.

At regular intervals we were approached by gypsies holding a scrawled note saying "excuse me you speak english". They must have all gone to the same begging school as they all had the same piece of paper and dress.

From there, we walked to the Trogadera and onto the Arc de Triumph and Champs Elysees. We didnt see Elle Macpherson there. But we did see some shoes that cost 6000 euros.


We were stretched for time and had planned to skip the Louvre, however as we passed, admission was only 11 euros so we decided to do a whirlwind tour. We were very glad we did. The place is spectacular.









Even without the paintings, the building is very grand. The only let-down was the Mona Lisa. In a gallery of thousands of amazing paintings, it seems a bit ordinary.












We went on to the Notre Dame. I was amazed at the scale of that building. How did they get such massive slabs of rock eight stories high without modern technology?









We had dinner in the Latin Quarter with our friends Rob and Alexander in a French style resturant. We had snails. It was fantastic.











Our hotel was called the PortRoyal. It was n the Latin Quarter, excellent value, clean and with friendly staff. It was hundreds of years old and in the Latin Quarter - just a short walk from Rue Moffatard. Thats a lane lined with resturants and coffee shops that leads towards the Notre Dame.





The next day we had planned to go to the artist district Montemarte, but it was raining, so we just wasted time around our hotel until time to take a train to Orly airport for our flight to Geneva. Just up the road from our hotel is a prison. In the past, when executions were scheduled, a gullotine would be erected on a street corner. The priest and executioneer would stay at our hotel, so it would be a short walk to be sure they could be in place by 5am, the scheduled time for public executions.


Comment
At any time there must be tens of thousands of tourists pouring money into the economy. Despite that, the French make hardly any concessions at all. Would it hurt to have translations at points of interest? Other countries have information in a few languages.

We took the train to Orly airport. As airports go, its just a huge shed for moving masses of people with no style or grace. Our flight was listed on the departure board without any gate number, til way past the departure time. We were more than a bit concerned. It was difficult to find anybody from Easy Jet to get an explanation. We found out later that the previous flight out of the UK was delayed by volcanic ash. This had a flow on effect to us.

16 May 2010

Travel sans laptop

We had great plans of keeping our blog up to date and booking all future travel through our laptop. Unfortunately it is kaput. We considered buying a replacement in France. They had a very similar model to ours, but with a French keyboard. They tried to configure Windows to the English language version, but alas it wouldnt work. It seems well have to wing it from here;

Will post more if we get access to reliable internet.