To be completely honest with you, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as I was expecting.  It wasn’t great either, but still not too bad.  That being said, we didn’t REALLY go camping.  We camped in a caravan park / campsite at Gold Coast’s Main Beach which is surrounded by high-rises. The park had a swimming pool, a little shop for grocery items, wi-fi internet access, public showers/toilets, a playground and if you couldn’t get all the stuff you needed at the park, it was only a short walk to other shops… and the beach was literally across the road.

So when I think of camping, I think of being in the middle of nowhere, no facilities and all you have to survive on is what you’ve brought with you or can find/construct/kill using MacGyver-style equipment such as a coathanger, some gum and a pocket knife.

Funnily enough, when I mention such things to people who enjoy camping, they tell me I have it all wrong.  They explain that you can get camping fridges that are powered by your car battery or a generator, you can take bbq’s, ovens and cooking equipment that is more advanced than what I have at home, comfortable beds that inflate by themselves, bug zappers and other anti-pest items, lights, music and the list goes on and on. The thing that puzzles me is that if you’re going to go to all the effort of packing-up a 4×4 and a trailer with all these items to make the bush/mountains/outback seem more like home, why not just stay at home, or save yourself the effort of packing a truckload of stuff when you could just find a hotel that has all these facilities.

Anyways, but we didn’t have many of those camping mod-cons, which is why it was good that we chose to go faux-camping in suburbia.

The first night was brilliant.  I was crapping myself wondering how on earth we were going to put up a tent because prior to this trip the only things I’ve put-up are bookshelves from Ikea.  The tent’s instructions were in broken-English, the diagrams were crap, but surprisingly, it all seem to fit together reasonably intuitively and we had the tent errected in about 30 mins.

We then pulled-out our $12 gas camping hotplate thingie that we picked-up on sale from K-Mart the day prier, and cooked ourselves some rissoles for dinner and then proceeded to sit on our little beach chairs drinking and chatting until we decided to call it a night.

The following morning we awoke at about 5am to howling winds and rain.  After resecuring the tent and checking everything (not that I knew exactly what we were supposed to be checking) everything looked fine, so we went back to bed until about 7am when it was so windy we thought we were going to get blown away.  So we got-up, had some baked-beans for breakfast (because that seemed like the thing to do when camping) and then packed away the tent and sat in the car wondering what we were going to do for the next 5 hours until the dance music festival (Summerfieldayze) was set to start.  So like all mature responsible adults stuck with a boot-full of alcohol and plenty of time to kill, we decided to start drinking again.

This filled the time nicely.

We then walked to the parkland where the festival was, listened to dance music mixed by the likes of Ferry Corsten, Armin van Buuren, Calvin Harris, Digitalism, Underworld (and the list goes on) for about 6 hours before walking back to the campsite and picking-up some pizza for dinner.  This time it only took us about 10mins to re-erect the tent and we were in bed and snoozing within no time.

The next day there was no rain, no wind or anything other than the sun, heat and sound of kids from the surrounding campsites to wake us.  Left-over pizza for breakfast before being joined for lunch by Kristy’s Mum, her partner Pete and Caleb.  After spending the afternoon chilling with them, Kristy’s Mum and Pete went home and Caleb camped with us for the remaining couple of nights.

The next couple of days were filled with long walks on the beach, building sand castles, playing in the sand dunes, salad sandwiches on the beach watching the waves roll-by, swimming, card-games by torchlight and more beans for breakfast.

All of the above activities were great.  What wasn’t so great is that although we had a 3-man tent (and Caleb technically only takes-up the space of half-a-man), it was incredibly squishy and by the final night, I couldn’t handle it and decided to sleep in the car.  We had a little camping mattress thingie, but it’s only a few inches thick and although it was fine for the first couple of nights, the rest of the time it’s just painful and feels like you’re sleeping on rocks.

Then there’s the shared showers that are great for washing-off the sand, but I like a nice hot relaxing shower and you just don’t get that same sense of comfort when you’re washing in a little public cubicle in your thongs (or flip-flops / jandals / slappers etc. to my international readers).

The only reading I do is of blogs and I usually spend most of my spare time bumming around on the internet or playing computer games.  I tried doing this via my mobile phone but it’s just not the same on a slow 3G internet connection and a 2-inch screen… plus after a few hours of work, the thing needs charging again.  And I’m not the only one that needs digital entertainment -  it should be noted that kids (and my friend Con) require constant amusement, so in between all the little activities above, we were constantly nagged with “I’m bored”… “what can I do now”.  Thankfully he bought his Nintendo DS which helped fill some of the boring bits.

So by the end of the 4th night, I was ready for home.  I hadn’t slept well or showered properly for days, all my clothing seemed to have sand in it, I was sunburnt, my lips constantly tasted like I’d been making-out with a salt shaker, I was crankey, fidgety and generally suffering from technology withdrawal… and all of this was from a few days sleeping in a tent in suburbia.  I’d hate to see what I’d be like if I had no facilities, no technology and couldn’t buy take-out for dinner every second night.

Would I go camping again? Sure… but only for short weekend trips, otherwise I’d need a bigger tent, a better mattress, some power for my laptop so I could remain geeky while in the wilderness and lots more alcohol.  But really, I’d rather save myself the time and effort and just find a nice hotel/motel.  Yes it would cost a lot more, but it would also mean a lot less stress, hard work and would be a lot more comfortable – after all, isn’t that why people go on holidays in the first place – to have a relaxing break.

After a 6-pack of Italian beer, a couple of cigars and losing all my chips (because apparently a cheesy grin and an oversized novelty tinted green poker visor doesn’t help when trying to maintain a rock-solid poker face)… my well rested body is now once again fatigued. The good news is that unlike jetlag, this weariness is quickly rectified with a very healthy fry-up of greasy foods, a nice strong cup of coffee, a Berocca and copious amounts of water.

But enough about lastnight, lets get onto the topic of this post – the remaining photos from our trip (and my apologies for taking so long to get these online).

During the week, Optus had a huge outage that slowed things down a little. While we don’t use Optus for much, when a major telecommunications provider goes down (and it went down harder than a 600lb sumo wrestler slipping on a banana peel) it still usually affects a lot of other ISPs, web hosts and IT companies.

So add that to the already busy week of catching-up with everything, I didn’t have as much time to blog as I would have like.  But without any further ado, here are the rest of our pics.

The last post left us at Pisa where we spent a day before heading down to Rome.

We spent 3 days in Rome where we saw a lot of amazing buildings, monuments, churches, statues, sculptures, fountains (including Kristy’s favourite place in Rome – the Trevi Fountain) and even caught-up with the Pope at Vatican City.

After leaving Rome we went back up to Paris for a day (and a night) before proceeding to the port at Calais where we ferried it across to the white cliffs of Dover.  The total trip from Paris up to Calais, then from Dover down to London took a little longer than we expected, but it was really relaxing, quite scenic and something a bit different than a lot of the other overland travel we had spent the last couple of weeks doing.  Nothing amazing, but here’s a few pics of the Calais – Dover journey.

Then we spent the last few days back in the UK relaxing with friends… then it was time to come home.

It’s taken a lot longer to get these organised than I ever expected, but without any further ado, here are the photo’s from our trip (click on the links to view the corresponding gallery):

Before we went anywhere, we were In Transit

Then we arrived in London for a few days

After leaving the UK we headed down to Paris (which wasn’t a huge success the first time, but as we always try to make different mistakes… and sometimes we even learn a thing or two from them, things were much better the second-time round)

From Paris we trekked down to Milan

Then onto Venice (which was the highlight of our trip)

From there it was over to Florence

And now I’m buggered and need to go to sleep (even if it will only be for a few hours before my confused anatomical clock decides I should be awake again).

I will hopefully have the photos from Pisa (where I wish I had of worn my brown undies because I almost crapped myself), Rome, Vatican City and the cliffs of Dover tomorrow night.

Talking about ‘undies’ … did you know that the Brit’s refer to the traditional male undergarment simply as ‘pants’ instead of underpants, undies, dacks etc. So to avoid an awkward silence in a crowded pub, make sure you steer clear of comments like “nice pants” when one of your mates arrives wearing a new pair of trousers.

To make matters worse, the term ‘thong’ is used exclusively to describe a G-string and not the casual footwear that you or I may be familiar with… so to avoid an even more uncomfortable silence don’t ever say “It was far too hot for pants today so I decided to go out wearing thongs”.

Funnily enough, that seemingly harmless statement was made by one of our friends we were staying with and she still hasn’t quite lived it down amongst her British friends.

As boring as it may seem, here’s a run-down of our dining experiences whilst away.

When we first arrived in London, after dropping our bags off, having a shower and figuring-out what day and time it was (because our bodies sure hadn’t worked this out yet) we went for a wander around Putney (the suburb where we were staying) and then proceeded into the West End part of London.

As I enjoy the occasional drink, one of the great things about London is that there is almost a pub on every corner (and in some cases, two or three in between if it’s a long street) so every time we passed what looked like an alright place for a weary traveller to take a break, we stopped and had a beer. Replacing the feeling of jet lag with a hang-over is one of many ways of dealing with a change in time-zones.

With each place that we went to and each warm beer we drank, we gained a greater appreciation of what it would be like to be an alcoholic Londoner.

For lunch that day I enjoyed a steak and Guinness pie and it was great.

The next day we dined at a lovely little Italian restaurant on the waterfront near the London Eye and that too was really tasty. That evening we ordered take-out from the local curry place which was also quite nice and finished off the day with a bottle of wine and Guitar Hero on the Play Station – p.s. I Rock!

Our final night in the UK (at least for the first leg of our journey) we had a less traditional meal from the local pub / Thai restaurant. The food there was ok and on par with what you’d expected to get from a London pub that also served Thai food.

The next day we were off to Paris. We only stayed a night and whipped-up a self-catered meal after stopping in to a supermarket on our way back from booking the tickets to the Moulin Rouge. The next day (when we couldn’t find the Eiffel Tower), we ended-up having a burger at their equivalent of Burger King / Hungry Jacks and then grabbed some baguettes and a couple of bottles of wine which we consumed on the train down to Milan. (I love the fact that you can eat and drink on trains all over Europe).

From Milan we went to Venice and had some of the nicest Pizza we’ve ever had. It was served from a tiny little take-away style restaurant just around the corner from where we were staying. The slices of pizza were bigger than my head and we ended-up eating there a couple of times while we were away. It was here that I first tried the large Italian beer – Beer Moretti and the local delicacy of crepes with Nutella. Very rich and tasty if you like Nutella (which I do) but even with my mouth full of sweet teeth, I struggled to get through it.

We picked-up some local ingredients from the Venice markets and on the second night of our stay, Kristy whipped-up an incredible pasta dish.

It was then down to Florence and Pisa. In Pisa we dined at a little place down the road from the leaning tower. Please note, this was before I climbed half-way up it, as I doubt I would have been able to stomach food from the nerves and adrenalin flowing through my body after my feeble attempt at conquering everything large that got in my way.

It was then down to Rome. Here we had some very very tasty Gelati’s (they have mastered the art of getting the fruit flavours absolutely perfect and I’ve never thought an ice cream could be so refreshing). If ice cream isn’t you thing, you can order cups of fresh fruit salad. If our fruit tasted even half as good over here as it does there, I’d eat a hell of a lot more of it (oh, and don’t get me started on how orgasmic the strawberries are in the UK).

Even though we had some great food in Rome, we also had a few shoddy food experiences.

From the restaurant that was as classy as Brittan’s best selling newspaper – The Sun to our daily breakfasts of sweet rolls. Just to see if I could find a concise way of explaining exactly what a sweet roll is, I did a Google search and it came back with a site about “Mouthwatering Breads Sweet Rolls recipes from bed and breakfasts around the world”. Let me just tell you, there was nothing mouthwatering about the sweet rolls we had (unless you count the way your mouth starts to water right before you vomit ).

I’m surprised how fortunate we were with food as a prime example of what happens when you put me in charge or ordering a meal in a foreign country was when we were grabbing a bite to eat at the international train station in Rome before returning to Paris. I perused the menu and liked the look of the gnocchi, went to the counter to order it and they didn’t have any. So I glanced at what they did have and ordered what I thought was chicken, which turned-out to be fish… and on top of that I managed to choose the one item in the whole place that came with a promotional large ceramic pasta dish. When lugging around a backpack that weighs about 15kg the last thing you want is a big pasta dish that you didn’t even know you were going to get. But on the plus side, the fish was really nice and I’m not a huge fan of sea food.

Also, on an interesting side-note (and this is only from our brief observations), but it doesn’t appear that the Italian people can successfully master any other foods that aren’t traditionally Italian. In Australia some of my favourite cuisines and restaurants are Indian, Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Lebanese, Mongolian and the list goes on. However in most of the Italian city’s we visited, we didn’t see a single international restaurant.

When trying a couple of the non-traditional Italian places we did find (such as a noodle place in a dodgy little food court) it left a lot to be desired. Now, a lot of the food found in food courts all around the world is certainly never 5 star, but the lack of proper restaurants offering other cuisines suggests (to me) that it isn’t one of their strengths.

Then it was back to Paris for a second take on the land of love. This time it was much better and we made friends with the local kebab shop owner (down the road from our hotel). I think the guy who owned the place was Lebanese or Turkish and from our experience, was the nicest man in the whole of Paris. You have to worry, when the nicest person you meet in a particular city isn’t traditionally from that city in the first place.

While waiting for our train to take us up to the ferry crossing to Dover, we decided to see if the French were any better at international cuisine than the Italian’s and popped across the road to a BBQ American Steakhouse and Grill. I ordered a steak which turned-out to be a mince patty and the service was terrible. If it weren’t for the kebab shop, I’d say the French suck when it comes to more worldly foods too.

The final leg of our trip was back in the UK. Over the 4 days there we had some fantastic meals. We made sure to try the very tasty (and incredibly unhealthy) traditional English breakfasts from a couple of pubs (as well as having a few other non-breakfast pub meals that were as delicious as they were cheap). Made friends with a guy at a local sandwich bar who provided much the same affordable yet delicious food we had come to enjoy from London food outlets, but was also super nice. After chatting with him for a bit and giving him a good tip because we liked the food and his service so much, he was so flattered that he gave us some home-cooked brownies to take with us (which were also superb).

I know I’ve been prattling on about food for a while now and I promise I’ll stop (soon… but not just yet as it’s currently 5am, my brain is functioning while the rest of me just wants to sleep, but because I’ve got so much stuff going through my head, sleep just isn’t happening… I think my head believes that it’s sometime yesterday afternoon and somehow has convinced the rest of my body that 5am is a reasonable time to be sitting blog posting). So as a byproduct of my sleepless agony, you have to endure posts such as this…

So what was the culinary highlight of our trip I hear you asking? (or perhaps that’s just the jetlag going to a whole new level with voices in my head). Well it would have to be an Italian restaurant at Putney (the have locations all over London, but we went to the one down the road from where we were staying) called Frankie’s.

Frankie’s is an Italian bar and grill that is styled like a 1930′s New York gangster club with dim lights, huge gold tinged mirrors that span from the black-and-white checkered floor (past the beautifully brown leather upholster dinning chairs and couches) up to the golden ceiling from which hang the largest mirror balls I’ve ever seen (seriously – these were about the size of those fitness balls that we’ve all bought thinking we’ll sit in front of the TV and lose weight but end-up sitting in the corner collecting dust). The trim on the mirrors, tables and anything that wasn’t made from glass or gold had a very classy black trim. This description doesn’t do the place justice, so to see for yourselves, click here to check out the Gallery on the Frankie’s website.

The restaurant was the brainchild of one of the worlds most famous jockeys – Italian-born Lanfranco “Frankie” Dettori who teamed-up with internationally renowned chef Marco Pierre White (who is not only dubbed the ‘Godfather of modern cooking’ but also trained Gordon Ramsay how to cook).

The atmosphere, the decor, the food, the pricing – absolutely everything at Frankie’s was perfect. From the moment we were greeted by the maitre d’ (who treated every person in the place like they were his long-lost best friend who he hadn’t seen in years) to the appetising Polish Martini before diving into my main course of gnocchi, washed down with a bottle of Italian red wine and topping it all off with a suffle and espresso… it was all fabulous. To share an experience like this with your closest friends cannot be justly put into words.

Just when we thought the night couldn’t get any better, the maitre d’ came out and presented Kristy and I with a copy of Frankie Dettori’s Italian Family Cookbook… signed by none other than Marco Pierre White himself. The gift was the icing on the cake and a very special memento of our last night in the UK.

I’m going back to sleep for a while and when I get up I’ll finally get around to doing that recap blog post I’ve mentioned previously and finally get around to uploading all our photos.

A couple of days ago we jumped on a night train and trekked from Rome to Paris where we spent a couple of days.

My first impressions of Paris weren’t fantastic. I contribute this to:

• Being our first stop (so we didn’t really have much experience dealing with many different public transport networks, dealing with language differences… and let me tell you the French are not very willing to communicate with you unless you speak French even though many of them can speak better English than I do)
• We stayed closest to the first major attraction we wanted to see – the Moulin Rouge, which happens to be in the heart of the red light district (so everything in the area was a bit dodgy)

But on the second time round, we knew how busses and trains worked in the UK, Italy and also had some experience (from our first visit) with France, plus we know how difficult the French are to communicate with, so we were much more prepared which made our stay a little easier.

We pre-booked accomodation in a reasonable hotel and managed (after changin trains a few times) to navigate our way there and then to the major sites we wanted to see.

In the space of about 6-8 hours we managed to see the Lourve, then caught the Metro to the Arc de Triumph before jumping on another train to the Eifel Tower. After chilling-out for a while on the grassy area in front of the tower, we then cruised back to the cathedral at Notredam before heading back to our hotel.

Since we were staying in a slightly nicer area in Paris we found that it was a lot tidier than the red light district (what a surprise) although there was still the distinct smell of wee throughout many of the areas in Paris we visited.

All the sites mentioned above are big and very cool to see in person… we have lots of photos that I’ll upload once I’m back on my laptop and have uploaded them all, but until then, you’ll just have to take my word for it

The one thing I still dislike about France is that they really make it difficult for you to communicate. For instance, we were behind someone in a train ticket line and we clearly heard the guy in front of us chat with the teller in English. When we were served, we politely asked if they spoke English (knowing that they did since we just heard them) and they shook their head and said ‘no’.

In Italy, people were happy to communicate in English at train stations, bars, cafes, hotels etc. etc. but not in France. Despite the fact that we tried to talk to everyone in French (or at least with the little we knew), but it made no difference. In France they make it as hard as possible to communicate the simplest things and subsequently I’m sure we paid more, went the long way around and had to do things the hardest ways possible.

The day after seeing all the sites we jumped on a train up to Calais and caught the ferry across to Dover (saw the white cliffs) and then trained it back to London.

In a few days time we’ll be heading back home, so we’re planning on spending the next couple of days chilling-out and not doing much… maybe some shopping, perhaps catch a movie etc.

I don’t expect to have much to report between now and the end of the week when we head back home…. but maybe if you’re lucky I’ll get a chance to upload some photos.

Over the past few weeks I think that Kristy and I have become stronger as individuals… our levels of patience have increases substantially from having to spend hours on flight half-way around the world, waiting for trains (we spent about 6 hours in Rome waiting for our night train), plus all the other queues and line-ups that we’ve been in to see a lot of the sites. We now know that if we can order food, find accomodation and navigate our way across places that often won’t communicate with you in English, we can pretty-much do anything.

It’s been a great trip, but we’re looking forward to getting back home as living out of a backpacks, being in a different country every second day and sleeping in dodgy hotels, hostels and friends lounge rooms (although we’re eternally grateful to have a place to stay) isn’t quite the same as having your own comfy bed and your own space to walk around in your undies without offending anyone.

See you all back home soon!

Rome is an incredible place – they’ve managed to build a city around runes and monuments that are thousands of years old. Most of the roads are cobble-stone which make for a very bumpy bus ride from site-to-site and it doesn’t matter where you go, it’s impossible not to see something that is at least 10 times the age of anything we have in Australia.

Although the beauty of the city is only found within the main CBD (if you can call it that as it’s probably more accurately described as the Central Monument District as opposed to Business District). We are staying about 8k’s outside town (at Rebibia which is the last stop on the Metro train line).

Out here, it’s hard to find a wall, seat, tree, bin, train (or anything else that can be grafittied) that isn’t graced with some form of urban artwork. The locals look a lot more like the type of people you would find in the Ipswich (back at home, not over here in the UK) mall and when we went to a local pizzeria for dinner it was quite a cultural experience (and I don’t mean in a Gregory Peck / Audrey Hepburn ‘Roman Holiday’ way).

Yesterday we checked-out the Colosseum, the Roman Forums, the Pantheon (which took us a while to get to since we jumped on the right bus number, just going in the wrong direction, so we took the scenic route through via the outer suburbs and back again) and then we legged it over to the Trevi Fountain.

Today we got-up early to enjoy the breakfast provided by our dodgy hotel which consists of sweet rolls (basically supermarket packet croissants with lemon custard), or a small selection of other little cheap packet cakes and stale bread. I’m convinced our room shouldn’t even be a room and prior to us arriving they cleared-out a storage area and pushed a couple of single mattresses together to make a double-bed… but it’s still tidy and cheap, so I can’t complain too much.

Then we headed into Vatican City and saw St Peter’s Basilica, enjoyed the tail-end of a church service being conducted by the Pope himself (due to the crowds of people we couldn’t get inside the chruch, buy the whole thing was televised on huge monitors just outside, so we could see and hear everything that was going on) and then we headed into the Vatican Museum that leads onto the Sistine Chapel.

The Sistine Chapel is beatiful but you cannot see it unless you go through the whole museum first and the museum is rather large, has lots of stairs and takes a lot of winding through various coridors of old artwork (that in most cases is quite beautiful) but after a while looking at random pieces of religous art by artists I’m not familiar with gets a little tedious. That being said, there are some absolutely amazing corridors that lead to the chapel and some of the work is incredible… it’s just sad that there is so much (in my untrained artistic point-of-view) other boring stuff surrounding it.

We then cruised down to the EUR, Mussolini’s Fascist architecture suburb of Rome. The only problem was that I have no idea what Fascist architecture looks like, so we wandered around for a while and then came home again. Since being online back at the hotel, I’ve Googled ‘Fascist Architecture’ and found a few examples of what we should have seen, but must not have ventured far enough into the EUR, but no great loss… we’ve seen so many amazing things in the last couple of weeks that on Fascist building doesn’t even come close

Tomorrow night we’re catching the night train back up to Paris and will stay there for one night and catch-up on a few of the sites we missed the first time. Then it’s up to Calais to catch a ferry across to the Cliffs of Dover.

Will hopefully get a chance to do another update from France (most likely via the mobile phone on a train somewhere), but if not, you’ll hear from me again when I’m back in the UK.

On the train ride there we were entertained by a lady from Madrid who didn’t know much English but insisted on telling us about her travels and drama’s for most of the hour-and-a-half trip. Even though we only understood half of her stories, we did manage to decipher that a Roma Card is a good public transport cost-cutting measure when in Rome.

When we arrived, we walked from station to the tower. There is a bit of grafitti around the station and en route to the Leaning Tower, but there was still a very warm and pleasant aura about the place.

The Leaning Tower wasn’t as tall as I was expecting (at least when viewing from the ground) but once you start clmbing the stairs and walk out onto the first platform, it seems much higher.

The first landing is about half-way up the tower and is roughly a metre and a half wide with a temporary railing (not unlike what you would see at a music festival surrounding a mosh-pit… or what the council sometimes use to surround a manhole that they are working on). They prettied it up a bit, but effectively the temporary railing and a metre and a bit of marble were all that separated you from a 4 storey drop.

What made things even scarier was the fact that when walking around the tower, you really notice the lean and it feels as though you’re walking down a slight slope (which usually wouldn’t bother me if I were walking down a hill, but when you’re that high and there isn’t much between you and the birds, it’s pretty terrifying).

Since I find myself uncomfortable on a 3-foot step-ladder, I was shitting myself and couldn’t go any higher. Even though I didn’t reach the top I was still really pleased that I can say that I’ve stood on one of the biggest architecural cock-ups of all time. It was awesome.

Not long after reaching the bottom we jumped on a bus back to the station and came back to Florence.

Tomorrow we head off to Rome for 3 days then will most likely head back to Paris for a day before returning to the UK for the final days of our holiday.

It is the home to one of some of the most noted pieces of artwork ever created and architecturally it can hold its own with structures such as the Duomo… but as far as a city goes, it doesn’t seem to have any charisma left.

In its day I’m certain it would have been a place of awe and inspiration, but now with the hustle-and-bustle; the commercialism; pretentios fashion and dreary, dirty, run-down facades of every other building that isn’t the Duomo… it has certainly been a let-down.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m so glad I’ve come here and experienced this first-hand, it’s simply not quite how I imagined it.

So instead of exloring Florence further, we’ve decided to do a day-trip to Pisa to see a building that should have fallen-over years ago.

Kristy isn’t too keen to climb the leaning tower… Not sure if it s because it’s currently over 4m off its original axis or the fact that to get to the top you have to climb something like 400 stairs. But if we can squeeze it in, I’ll definitely be going to the top (even though I am scared shitless of heights).

Venice is one of the most beautiful cities i’ve ever seen. It has a personality and charisma like no other. The streets are a maze which we got lost in (more than once) but each turn brings an enchanting new surprise that makes you forget the fact you are still no closer to your destintion.

The market areas are bustling but it’s not an uncomfortable clostrophobic experience navigating your way through people and the market owners are polite and let you decide instead of putting the ‘hard sell’ on you.

We booked our accomodation online and selectd an appartment instead of a hotel as it was cheaper due to the last minute booking website we used. Normally the place would have cost a little over 350 Euro a night but it only cost us about 70 Euro a night… and it was incdible.

The place looked like an Ikea showroom with funky modern furniture, a super comfy bed, awesome shower, air conditioning, a fully functioning kitchen stocked with all utensils needed to prepare gourmet meals… All of which is a God-sent after some of the crappier places we’ve stayed.

So with a sad sigh, we now leave Venice and head to Florence.

On other observations… The trollies at the train stations have a break which is pemanently on unless to press down on the trolley handle to release it. This took us a good 5 seconds to figure out, but while sitting her at the station I’m amazed at how few people have accomlished this. Two girls struggled for at least 5 minutes before taking their luggage off the cart and carrying it because they couldn’t work it.

As far as I’m concerned, travelling is a challenging experience and when things don’t go according to plan, you need some smarts and patience – if you can’t figure out how to use a trolley, you’re not going to handle all that international trave throws at you.

I also don’t think I’ve mentioned how long the days are over this side of the world. The sun usually goes down at 10pm and is back up again at 4am. This is good for sightseeing but also screws with your head.

They also have siesta’s and shops close at about 1 or 2pm and re-open at 3pm and then remain open til about 8pm. During the siesta period, the streets are dead except for tourists.

Pizza slices here are bigger than my head.

You can drink beer anywhere and the beers are bigger and cheaper than at home.

The late night TV and commercials in general are a lot more risque than ours.

Frsh produce has amazing rich flavours as does the ice cream and gelato’s. Last night I tried what I think is a common dessert – crepes with Nutella. Not as good as the icecream but still an experince.

That’s it for now. Will hopefully send through another update from Florence or at Rome where we’ll be heading after that.

Fortunately we have been able to turn each of these incidents to positive adventures, but we thought it was finally time we made some official plans. So here we are sitting in an internet cafe in Milan booking our accomodation for Venice and Florence. Since the bookings have been last minute, we have scored some good deals which is very exciting. Also, the room we stayed in last night was the best we have had the whole trip (other than Con & Gerards of course ).

When we arrived in Milan it was fairly quiet and no one we asked knew where our Hotel (Albergo) was (even a couple of cops that we asked) but a taxi driver managed to get us to our destination which was about 15 minutes from the station – thats the last time I trust anyone from France… sorry all you Frenchies, but we were not overly impressed with our brief time in Paris and no one was particularly helpful no matter how hard we tried to talk in French (although perhaps my gruff HAW HAW HAW laughs as I wandered around saying Croissant and Sacred Bleu probably didnt help).

But all is looking good now. We are about to check out the Duomo and then we will be off to Venice.