Che Errore da Fare.....

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....or “what a mistake-a to make-a!”

NOT! Al's Top Travel Tip for Italy - GO! That's it. Nothing else. Well, maybe go in October or November. It's cooler, quieter and much more sensible. This is possibly one of the coolest countries to visit and it's cities, it's people and it's food make it worth it. I think it may have topped the list of countries to come back to. Well, we have to. I still haven't seen everything in the Vatican Museums. More on that later! Seriously though, we have both really loved being in Italy, it's a fabulous country to travel in and there's so much to see, do, drink and eat that it'll be a shame to leave really.

One quick note before we begin - if at any point below you read the words “New Pope” you can take that to refer to Benedict XVI. If I say “Old Pope” then that's John Paul II. If I say “Really Old Pope” then I'm referring to any one of the incumbents before JP II, most likely Paul VI, since he's probably the only other one any of you will remember! Now, on with the fun!

So Rome. The Eternal City. One doesn't feel a terribly warm welcome when one is charged a whopping 11 Euro to get from Leonardo da Vinci to Termini station, but once one sees Rome in the daylight, it's a hard town not to love. We were staying just a couple of blocks from the station in a really really nice hostel (Al's Top Travel Tip - the Alessandro Downtown is one of three Alessandro hostels in the area that are all pretty good) that served the best brekky ever. Funny what things you remember eh?

We decided that our first day in Rome would be a budget concious one so it was a day of piazza hopping. No, not pizza hopping, that would be silly, piazza - it's a square or plaza innit?! We mapped out a route that would pretty much take us right around the centre of Rome. A little ambitious perhaps, but it was a great way to see the many piazzas. I'm not going to go into the route in detail, square by square, but I'll rabbit on about some of the highlights. It went like this:

Piazza Barberini
Piazza di Spagna
Piazza di Popolo
The Villa Borghese Gardens
Piazza Navona
The Pantheon
The Trevi Fountain

This was one of those chances to see all those places in the flesh that you've always known about, but never had a chance to see in the flesh. The Piazza di Spagna is home to the famous Spanish Steps which, much to our chagrin, were made somewhat less picturesque by the addition of a large scaffold around the obelisk at the top. This wouldn't have been quite so bad if it hadn't obscured the church behind and had a whopping great ad for H&M on it. However, they are rather lovely and the fountain at the bottom, a Berlini creation, is very odd and worth looking at. After the steps we strolled down Via del Condotti, the most expensive shopping street in Rome, and boy oh boy is it expensive. 2000 Euros for shoes?!

The Piazza del Popolo was annoyingly obscured by an environmentally friendly car show but the sculpture work and the gate that dominate the square were worth the closer look as a result. We climbed the hill to get a birds-eye view and found ourselves strolling in the gardens around the Villa Borghese. They're a bit like Central Park in New York - a green haven away from the traffic and the insanity that is Rome. They weren't too spectacular given that it was past flower season, but being able to wander in the green spaces in the sunshine and check out some crazy statuary, Roman ruins, the Globe Theatre (don't ask me, I couldn't read the sign!) and the cutest buses you've ever seen. We strolled over the hill and down to the Tiber to walk down to the Piazza Navona and marvelled at the sight of the Palace of Justice, the Castel Sant' Angelo and the magnificent Brunelleschi dome of St Peters. It's a great walk along one of the most famous rivers anywhere. We found the Piazza Navona after some faffing around getting lost and a brief stop at the Cloister of Brunelleschi and, well, it was chock full of people! The main fountain was covered in scaffolding as well (one begins to accept this in Italy after a while!) but it's quite a lovely piazza dominated by the church and dotted with it's heinously expensive restaurants. Having said that, we had our first meal out in Rome at the Piazza Navona. Have a look around the back streets and find one with lots of Italians in it! I read somewhere that wine is often cheaper than water in restaurants in Italy. It's true and it's fabulous! The house reds in Italian restaurants (served in 250, 500 or 1,000 ml carafes) is really rather good and ordering bottles and individual glasses is really for chumps!

Ah the Pantheon. It's very big you know? You don't? Take my word for it. It's really quite a lot bigger than I thought. It's a shame that it was used as a quarry for marble and a certain Pope had the gall to strip it of it's roofing. (to make the cap for the altar in St Peters and sixty cannon for the Castel Sant' Angelo! What business does a Pope have stealing bronze to make cannon I ask you?) On the plus side, the front is still intact and the rest, while only of brick, gives a phenomenal insight into Roman engineering techniques. Geniuses they were. The interior is just so empty and the ceiling is indescribable. Concrete roofs aren't that exciting, but this one is pretty special. It is nearly 2,000 years old after all. The hole in the centre is much bigger than I thought too. See, it's all bigger. We stopped to see the tombs of Raphael and of Vittorio Emanuelle II and muck around taking photos of the hole before stepping back out into the square and heading back towards the hostel via that most Roman of icons - the Trevi Fountain. It was wholly rammed with tourists, but still quite a site. The square is really rather small and the fountain takes up an awful lot of it. We found it down a random back street and actually rather a little by accident. That happens to us a lot though.

Al's Top Travel tip for the Vatican Museums - go on a weekend. Even better, go on Christmas Day. Then it's free (not 13 bloody Euros!) and open from 10:00 to 16:30! The museum keeps the most ridiculous hours during the week (10:00 - 13:30!) that one would have to move at a run and not stop and see anything to actually get around the whole thing. Fortunately for us we decided on the Sistine Chapel route (as opposed to the Roman and Egyptian museums route) and managed to get through the Vatican Stanzae, the Map Gallery, the Tapestry Gallery, the Borgia Apartments, the modern art collection and the Sistine Chapel. Anyway, that's my rant about that. Now I'm actually going to tell you why you absolutely HAVE TO GO TO THE VATICAN.

First off, we rolled up a few minutes before the Papal Address! Now this would be the sort of thing that you'd probably plan right, except that we managed it by sheer good luck. So now on this trip we've seen five famous people. Three comedians, one Star Trek actor and the Pope. Not bad. We watched him cruise around St Peters Square in the Pope-mobile and then watched the start of the address before bolting for the museum! Apparently all the other non-Catholics had the same idea though, so that didn't go quite according to plan.

The museum has an outstanding collection of artworks throughout and that makes the whole thing that much easier. The guidebook advises going straight onto the Sistine Chapel route and I quite agree. Just wandering through the long galleries and the apartments could take hours and frequently does in the high season! We saw row upon row of classical statuary, a whole gallery of maps showing the Papal territories, a whole gallery of miniature mosaics, one enormous wall fresco of the Battle of Milvian Bridge (it's a common theme in Rome - 314AD soon to be Emperor Constantine defeats his rivals and adopts Christianity upon coming to the throne and then dividing the Empire, sending Rome into it's irreversible decline.) and then the bits I really wanted to see. Raphael was commissioned by Leo IX to paint the inside of some of the apartments of the Vatican and his frescoes there are some of his most famous works. The School of Athens, the Parnassus, the Mass at Bolsena (thought to be the first depiction of Michelangelo's Swiss Guard uniforms) and more, but those three are my favourites. It was lovely just to stand in there and see them first hand, despite having pored over them in detail for Bursary Art History. I was rather chuffed and still annoyed that one of the following popes cut windows into the bottoms of some of them!

After strolling through something in the region of 50 rooms of modern art, some of which was very very good (there was even a Dali!) we made it to the Sistine Chapel. Again, like the Vatican Stanzae of Raphael, I've studied that ceiling in great detail, but there is nothing like seeing it in the flesh. The colours are more vivid, the detail is breathtaking and if there hadn't been 500 other people in there I would have happily laid down on the floor and taken it all in slowly. As it was, I think I did myself an injury instead craning my neck. Okay, not really, but hey. It's amazing. So much attention is focussed on a couple of panels, it's really lovely to be able to look at all of them one by one, to examine all the sibyls and prophets and really take in the huge painting of the Final Judgement on the front wall. Now we have no pictures, they seem unnecessary, but amazingly lots of people were just happy snapping away. People were posing for goodness sake, not even trying to hide from the guards. Admittedly, the guards were just sitting and yakking and ignoring them all anyway so maybe we should have shot off a couple.....

Shortly afterward we attempted to enter the classical sculpture gallery and were told that the museum was closing. Odd, we thought, being that it's only 1pm. But it was true. Most expensive museum we've set foot in and not even allowed enough time to see it all. By the time we'd recovered from the shock of our ejection (pizza al taglio helps a lot) we wandered back to the square intending to visit St Peters (and at least see some of the statuary that the Vatican has been hoarding over the years!) and discovered the enormous queue of people left over from the Papal Address. That's Al's second Top Travel Tip for the Vatican - unless you REALLY want to see the Pope, don't go on a Wednesday. If you do go on a Wednesday, get tickets for the address, sit through it and make sure you're on the right hand side of the square at the end of the collonade, since that's where the entrance to St Peter's is! Having abandoned St Peter's till Friday, we wandered back up the Tiber to the Ponte Sant' Angelo and admired the really stunning angels that line the bridge before heading off to the Cloister of Brunelleschi to the only Wifi cafe we could find in Rome to sort out the next step in our trip. Having spent two hours mulling over one cup of coffee and managing to successfully book nothing we decided to reevaluate the Italian journey and the result is what you see here. Read on to discover what we did.

The next day in Rome was old stuff day. Well, pretty much. It also turned out to be see how far we can hike in the pursuit of something daft day. First stop was beating the tourists to San Pietro in Vincoli - St Peter in Chains. This church has two real attractions. The first are the chains used to bind St Peter and the second is the tomb of Pope Julius II. Julius II had all sorts of grand plans for his tomb, designed by Michelangelo. Well, Leo IX, who came after him, scotched most of these plans (the results are in the Galleria dell' Academia in Florence!) and the only sculpture that was finished was the Moses. Renowned for the horns on his forehead, this was my first Michelangelo and it really was quite spectacular. The realism in that lump of marble is simply amazing. It's hard to describe, it has to be seen in person.

We turned back time a lot further and headed down to that most Roman of monuments, the Colosseum. Much like the Pantheon, it's one of those things that I knew was big, but I don't think I realised just how big it was. It's a marvel of Roman engineering just to sit and look at. The arches are stunning, the stonework magnificent and the whole edifice just something that has to be seen to be believed. We skipped the interior as the queues were slow and long and frankly 10 Euros seemed a little steep, especially given that most other things in Rome are free! At the base of the Colosseum sits the Arch of Constantine, erected by the Senate after Constantine's victory at the Battle of Milvian Bridge in 312 over his rival Maxentius. It's really quite spectacular and stands a great sentinel at the Arena. By all accounts most of the sculpture was pillaged from other monuments and I've begun to wonder if that's what happened to the statues on the front of the Pantheon. I'm honestly not sure, and I don't think anyone else is either. From the Arch we wandered around the base of the Palatine Hill along the Via Sacra (Sacred Way) amongst the ruins of the Roman Forum. It's an impressive collection of temple ruins, basilica ruins and the ruins of the buildings in which Romans originally conducted their business.

We strolled along the Via Fora Romana and looked at the remains of the Fora of Caesar, Trajan and Nerva as well as the monstrous column of Trajan that sits at the end of the road across from the Vittorio Emanuelle monument. I'd had a really good look at it in the V&A Plaster gallery and since this one was mostly covered in scaffolding around the bottom, I was glad to have done so. There's not much left of these three Fora and they're currently undergoing some pretty heavy duty repair work so we admired from a distance and then carried on across to the most ridiculous monument in Italy.

The Vittorio Emanuelle II monument is a whopping marble edifice on a roundabout behind the Forum and serves as Italy's war memorial and national museum of the Risorgimiento, the brief period in the late 1800s when Giuseppe Garibaldi made a name for himself as the man who created a united Italy and went to war with the Pope. Didn't know that did you? All of Italy except Rome was united and the Pope wasn't giving that up. The brief siege is what ultimately led to Mussolini signing the Lateran Treaty in 1929 and creating Vatican City as it's own independent state. It's worth visiting for the imposing sculpture work lining the main staircase, it's all very symbolic and serious and quite spectacular. Well, anything that big is I suppose! The museum is small and entirely in Italian but still a series of interesting little exhibits on the creation of modern Italy.

Following our quite enlightening visit to the Vittorio Emanuelle monument, we wandered down to the Isola Tiberina now, as it was 2000 years ago, a shrine to Aesculapius (Look it up, I'm not going through the Roman pantheon for you...!) and crossed into Trastevere. Mostly we came because Jen had looked up a list of good eateries in Rome and one was around these parts. We'd singlehandedly failed to find the ones around the Piazza Navona and so this looked like our best bet to at least visit one of them. It's called La Renella and even though it's mentioned in the Lonely Planet, I expect few tourists make the pilgrimage. It's worth the trip as it serves up some of the best pizza al taglio anywhere in Rome. It's not the cheapest, but it's really really good. I had potatoes on pizza (carbo-licious!) for the first time and it was really really good. So I looked at the map over lunch and had this overwhelming urge to see the Appian Way. If you ever feel like walking from Trastevere to the southern parts of Rome's city walls, don't. It's a bloody long way. We didn't even get to the Appian Way but instead found the Pyramid of whats his handle and the Baths of Caracalla. They had, unfortunately, closed for the day, but they were simply enormous. I can only imagine the streams of Romans who would have poured in there day in, day out, for their bathing needs. Just up the road from the Baths are the remains of the Circus Maximus, the famous chariot track from Ben Hur (and history, but mostly Ben Hur.) Very little remains of the track, just a small piece of the corner grandstand and one of the towers at the end of the island in the centre, but one can still gauge the enormous size of this arena from the hole in the ground. Part of it even looked like it was still used as a bit of a racetrack for scooter hoons (if such a thing really exists!)

St Peters served as an excellent reminder of a little lesson we'd forgotten since we'd been in Egypt - some tourists are really really stupid. They do things that really just make you want to throttle them. Like people taking pictures of the tomb of Old Pope despite the nice security man saying “No Photos” and the little voice over saying “This is a sacred place, please respect the rules.” People were praying for goodness sake! There was one family who just kept on stopping and taking photos of themselves, every 10 metres or so. It's like they'd never had a camera and wanted to be reminded of their step by step walk through the Vatican catacombs. We're pretty sure they were Russian and it seems that in the post-Communist era that they are rapidly becoming one of the most disliked groups of tourists anywhere in the world. We were both of the opinion that these tombs are the sort of thing that should only be open to tourists on application to the Vatican. Unfair perhaps, but it really was quite off-putting even for areligious gawkers like us.

The catacombs are interesting and worth a trip but try and get in with a bunch of religious people. Each of the tombs tells you a little bit about each of the Popes (with the exception of Old Pope of course!), where they came from and what they did during their Papacy. There is also the spectacle that is the tomb of St Peter. In a catacomb of understated remembrance it is frankly the most garish and hideous thing. Pretty amazing none the less! It's quite an enlightening walk but well, I won't start that again. Suffice to say we were happy to be out and into the big church.

St Peter's is an amazing building, religious gratuitousness (if that's a word - the spellcheck says it is!) at it's very best! It's big. I mean really big. It's a difficult place to describe, it's everything one expects from a Roman Catholic church, on the biggest scale. I guess it is THE Roman Catholic church after all. It has fabulous doors, Michelangelo's amazing Pieta, still magnificent despite the glass screen and the tourists, the tombs of umpteen Gregories, each of whom tried to outdo the others in terms of gaudy and inappropriate monuments to themselves and so much more. The amount of gold is simply staggering and the altar, yeesh. It's enormous! Quite magnificent and very much in keeping with the theme. We saw the Swiss Guards in their silly uniforms and umpteen nuns, all looking terribly cross with all of the tourists taking photos in what is deemed to be a “sacred place.” I know because they tell you. A lot. Not the nuns, the Vatican. It's quite entertaining being told that on a loop while standing in line. Anyway, after we left the Vatican we strolled down the Tiber to the Ponte Sant' Angelo and looked at the castle and the amazing statues on the bridge. I completed my set of photographs as I am rather fond of that bridge.

Our last stop was the Chiese Santa Maria degli Angeli, or Our Lady of Angels and Martyrs. Nearly wrote Angles there. That could have been embarrassing. The church was initially designed by the great Michelangelo (I'll try not to go on about him, but if you're not a fan, you may want to skim the bit about Florence....) to fit into the walls of the Baths of Domitian. There's not much left of his original design, but it's a really nice church just to pop into. It's much more....used than any of the other ones we visited and a bit more real when there aren't hordes of tourists tramping in and out. There's a lovely little cloister out the back where you can actually see how the church was built into the baths and how they're sort of keeping each other up! Oh, it has outstanding doors. Outstanding.

We took the long train to Firenze (it was half the price of the Eurostar!) and actually had a jolly good ride out of it. The scenery through that part of Tuscany is quite beautiful. There were lots of little towns with little hilltop castles, monasteries and old towns. It was quite beautiful. We discovered, to our delight, that the museums in Florence keep much more sensible hours than the ones in Rome and we were able to adjourn to the Galleria Dell' Accademia that same evening to check out that most famous statue, Michelangelo's Dave. It's not the only thing in the Accademia, by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the centrepiece. You all know how it looks and what an amazing piece of sculpture it is, but until you've seen it in the flesh, you cannot know quite what an artistic genius he was. It's an amazing piece of work and the detail is simply astonishing. The other real gem in the gallery is a collection of five unfinished marbles that were supposed to adorn the tomb of a Really Old Pope (Julius II) along with the Moses from San Pietro in Vincoli. The “Escaping Slaves” are all in various stages of completion and it's quite nice to see these figures almost freeing themselves from single blocks of stone. (I've now seen the finished two in the Louvre!)

We also saw the best of their collection of Florentine Painters that have all been recently restored. It was quite an education in the process and improvement that restoration gives a painting. Alessandro Alloni seemed to be the dominant artist in the collection but his work was definitely worth the close inspection. There's also a really neat little gallery of plaster models made by Bartolini and Pompelli for various works of theirs dotted around Florence and it's quite interesting to see how they could get from one to the other.

Al's Top Travel Tip for Florence: (there are quite a few for Italy aren't there?) If in Florence in November, don't bother booking for the Uffizi. Just get up and get there for opening at 8:15 and the queue is pretty short. It was a Sunday as well, which may have helped. But worth remembering. Don't go on a Monday. It's closed. Everything in Florence is closed. Heck, every museum in Europe is closed on a Monday!

However before we crossed the Piazza San Giovanni to the gallery we stopped to admire the Duomo in the morning sun. The white, pink and green stone used to construct the statue give it an
almost candy-like quality and at that time of the morning with no-one around, we were able to really stop and appreciate the stunning beauty of the building. Anyway, on with the Uffizi. It is one of the greatest art galleries in the world. It's collection of Italian art is second only to the Louvre and even that's debatable. So, what were the highlights you ask? Well, let me see. There was a fabulous round Madonna by Leonardo, his unfinished Adoration of the Magi, a couple of brilliant Raphael portraits, the two greatest works Botticelli ever did (La Primavera and the Birth of Venus), some fantastic medieval altar work by Cimabue and my personal favourite - the portrait of Frederico da Montefeltro and his wife, the Duke and Duchess of Urbino. It's a Piero della Francesca portrait and if the pair of them weren't so ugly, and the paintings so spectacular, they wouldn't be half as exciting. I was quite chuffed to get a chance to see the back of them - I knew the reverses were painted, just not with what! The happy couple riding in carriages to meet in the middle, escorted by angels, putti, musicians and so on.

Anyway, we returned to the Duomo in the afternoon, just in time to see the Carabiniere race through the piazza and all the hawkers whip up their fake handbags and cheap prints and bolt before they realised the cops weren't stopping. It's really funny. Serious, since the fine for buying one is 10,000 Euros and I cannot imagine what punishment the seller gets, but still. You've got to laugh. The church interior is as impressive as the exterior, the fresco on the dome is beyond belief. You're not really allowed to go close enough to look at it from underneath, but even the view from the naves is amazing. The other real gem is a portrait by Giotto of the English mercenary Sir John Hawkwood. He led the Florentine army to victory in the late 1300s and the town wanted to put up an equestrian statue when he died, but no one wanted to pay for it, so they settled for a painting in the Duomo instead. Gratitude?! Our last stop for the day was a little church we found by accident called Orsanmichele. We only stopped in because the organist was playing and it was nice to sit in the quiet church without tourists and flash photography and all that and just listen. A very pleasant way to end a very very good day.

We got up the following morning and wandered through the town chuckling quietly at the large groups of cruise ship tourists who had come to see the great galleries and were told they couldn't since it was Monday. Teehee. We first visited Santa Croce, final resting place of two of Florences favourite sons (amongst many other illustrious types) - Dante and Macchiavelli. As well as their interesting tombs we had a chance to see the inspiration for the Statue of Liberty, an original Donatello tabernacle (of which my picture is fuzzy. Bother.) and stroll through the refectory of the old monastery to admire the collection of art that the church has amassed. Much of it was damaged in floods in the 1970s and has been carefully restored in recent years. This has enabled the museum at Santa Croce to put together a fascinating little exhibit on the art and technique of restoration. The pride of their collection, a decorative crucifix by Cimabue was heavily damaged and it was interesting to see what the limits of restoration are.
We left Santa Croce and crossed the river to climb up to the Piazza Michelangelo atop the hill over the Arno. We wandered across the Ponte Vecchio and looked in the many goldsmiths shops and rolled our eyes at the outrageous prices before stopping by the Pitti Palace to have a wee look see, despite the fact that we couldn't go in since it was Monday. We walked along the river a little and admired the last gate and tower still standing of the Florentine city walls, complete with interior fresco of the Madonna, before tramping up to the Piazza for some spectacular views of the city. It's an amazing spot and a fitting place to end our stay in my favourite city in Italy. I've popped one photo on here, but there are more. I'll torment you with them another time....!

And so to Venice. Venice is like Camelot - it's a silly place. Al's Top Travel Tip for Venice is that it's really really expensive. It's one of those places that really show the bad side of tourism - where one is charged 12 Euro for a ticket on the vaporetti to travel a distance one could walk if one could find ones way across Venice without the map that the tourist office charges 2 Euro for! St Marks is the same - it's free to go into the church but if you want to see or do anything more than the short walk around the nave then it's some Euros to climb the tower, some more for the horses, some more for the treasury and some more for the altarscreen. Churches in England show off altarpieces by Rubens for free! Good grief!

However as if fortune smiled upon our disgust of the outlandish cost of visiting Venice, our hostel upgraded us to a private room at their sister hotel for nothing and the hotel is a mere 2 minute walk from St Marks Square. Lucky? Perhaps. We still went badly over budget that day. So it was perhaps fortuitous that we spent most of the day walking around. St Marks Square is rather pretty, if overrun with tourists and pigeons (why do people feed the sky rats??) which people seem to be rather fond of having land on them. I don't know. The square is dominated by the Church and Doge's Palace on one side and the enormous clock tower on the other and in the late afternoon sun it all looked stunning. The church itself is worth the brief visit just to walk on the floor. Venice is sinking and nowhere is it more obvious than St Marks. The floor feels like....a wobbling jelly frozen in time. So many parts of it have sagged to different levels that it's a bit of an odd feeling to walk around. It's a truly beautiful church and I'm sorry not to have a single photo of the interior as, lo and behold, you have to buy the postcards.

The Bridge of Sighs is funny - every other copy of the Bridge doesn't look a thing like the original. Anyone who's seen the one in Oxford will be able to look at the photos and wonder where the resemblance is. Well, I can tell you since I finally worked it out when we left. It's not the Bridge of Sighs at all, it's the Ponte Rialto! Shall I talk about the Bridge of Sighs? Why not, it's not that interesting, but it's nice to waffle. The Bridge was built between the Doge's Palace (that's the Duke!) and the prison across the canal. It was so named for the sighs of prisoners going back from an audience with His Grace to their damp, dark, miserable cells. Lovely eh? And people think it's so romantic. HA!

Much of the rest of the afternoon was spent wandering, as Venice is a great city for wandering, provided you have a map. We wound our way through the centre of the island to the Grand Canal and admired the Ponte Rialto and watched the Gondoliers before crossing into the western suburbs in search of a supermarket. Having found that and deciding not to go back the way we came we got hopelessly lost and wound up on the lagoon and so we just ambled along and watched the sun go down. We crossed the Ponte dell' Accademia and admired the Chiesa della Santa Maria del Salute, well the bits that weren't covered in scaffolding, before retiring cold and exhausted for the night!

The following day dawned dull and blimming cold so what did we do? We took a boat ride! We rode the vaporetto out to the island of Murano. Murano is famous for it's glassblowing and we had a pretty cunning plan that involved hiding out in a glass blowing factory where it was really really warm. To no avail however as with the off season there isn't any! We did check out some of the glass shops and there were some outstanding pieces that were phenomenally expensive, but it was worth the trip for the look around. The highlight of the day, as it turned out, was lunch in a cramped little restaurant full almost entirely with Italians and a wait staff who spoke no English. The food was fantastic and the wine warmed more than just us two very cold travellers!

On the way back to Venice proper we stopped off at the San Michele graveyard, a random little island between Murano and the city and just wandered around in the shelter of the walls frankly marvelling at some of the most incredible funerary monuments that we've ever seen. The Venetians really go in for proper burial and memorials. It was eerily quiet but really very interesting, it's something of a unique place, there are no churchyards in Venice for obvious reasons! We even saw a monk. A proper dyed in the wool monk, a Franciscan, if his robes were anything to go by. Wearing sandals too. Brave brave man.

Our final trip in Venice was the boat ride back to the train station up the Grand Canal. If you're ever in Venice, this is the trip to do. It's worth it just to sit back and watch the buildings go by. There are some beautiful structures along the canal, some fantastic mosaics, frescoes, sculpture and architecture. I won't talk about it at length, just enjoy the piccies!

We decided to stop in Verona only to avoid a really really long train trip to Milan. We arrived late in the afternoon and headed out into the city to see the sights. There aren't many, but if you're in the neighbourhood, I'd certainly recommend the stop. Verona has long been stuck with it's Shakespearean connection but it does have a couple of other things to recommend it!

On the Piazza Bra in the centre of the city sits the third largest Roman amphitheatre in the world. It's beautifully preserved and while entrance is limited to performances - it's now the home of Verona's opera company - it's really very impressive. We walked across the Piazza and had a quiet chuckle at some of the public art on display as it was rather childlike and cutesy up the Via Mazzini to see “that” balcony, as it is described in Lonely Planet. Now according to the guidebooks, the Capulets (apparently a real family) never lived there, but somehow that courtyard and it's balcony have become famous. There is a statue of Giulietta in the courtyard which people seem to grope as it brings luck in love or some such thing. There's something quite amusing about watching Japanese tourists enthusiastically draping themselves over a statue and then grabbing at one of the breasts and trying not to slide off! Just up the road from the Casa Giulietta is the Piazza delle Erbe, once home to Verona's movers and shakers. The houses date from early in the Renaissance and most have their upper walls still covered in original frescoes! It's quite a sight and quite unusual, even after the gaudy wealth of Venice's Grand Canal!

The other thing about Verona that came as something of a surprise was the deliberate banning of hawking. Well, actually, that's not quite true. Selling counterfeit goods in Italy is illegal, but seems to be tolerated everywhere, except Verona. So no friendship bracelets, no fake Gucci and Rolex, no random crap that I don't want to buy! Sightseeing in peace. Not a soul bothered us in our afternoon in Verona and for that the city will always be held in high regard!

So we were only there for a few hours, but like I said, worth it for a brief overnight stop. Glad we did to, since arriving in Milan is probably the most difficult thing we've had to do in Italy. The train station is most frustrating and after the hassle-free stop in Verona it was a minefield. We got hit up for money buying our tickets to Geneva (for 110 euros!) by a guy who claimed to be recently out of prison and living in the train station, then by random people selling knock offs and then twice by the same girl who wanted to know if we wanted to take out 35 kilograms of baggage to the blimming Duomo. TWICE! Jen was very short with her the second time and she was lucky methinks to escape a proper yelling at! The directions to the hostel were rubbish as the metro line they are on doesn't actually pass through the train station and on top of that, a decent legible metro map at the train station is impossible to find. Along with the tourist office. That's invisible.

When we finally found where we were going and actually got there, the hostel is even harder to find. Hostel located, we discovered that it's not the nicest hostel in the world and not really cheap enough to justify staying in it. However, we were there, it was booked so on we went. We explored the surrounding area and had a look around QT8, the suburb where the hostel is. Shall I explain QT8? Just a little. It was built in the 50s for the Fourth Milan Triennialle (Q - quarto, T - Triennialle) as an example of an ideal suburb that could solve Italy's post-war housing problems. It has all those nice things - a school, lots of green space, the youth hostel(?) and sports fields, as well as room for 9,000 people in not too large modern apartments. It's still quite a wealthy and trendy area of Milan but has definitely lost some of it's shine over the years.

We crashed early that day as we were quite exhausted and set out the next day for downtown Milano and it's sights and sounds. If you're ever in the city, make sure you take the underground to Duomo. When one leaves the station, the Duomo is behind you and turning around to see one of the most spectacular churches in Italy is a real pleasure. Built over a ridiculously long period and worked on by many illustrious personages including Napoleon, the Duomo took six hundred years to complete and somehow manages to remain a stunning building that could be the poster child for High Gothic architecture. It's probably my favourite church so far and it will be really quite lovely in about 6 months time when the last of the cleaning and restoration is complete and the scaffolds finally come down!

Just across from the Duomo is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuelle, an odd little mall of sorts open at the exits but still covered in an arched glass roof. Home to some of Milan's finer shopping establishments (and McDonalds) it represents a little of the hope that went through Italy after the Risorgimiento. It's really rather stunning and although I remain slightly confused by the subject matter of the mosaics over the central square (it seemed to me to be a woman representing Italy being waited on by various native peoples from different continents!) it is quite a spectacular construction and an interesting little aside, even if Jen couldn't shop as it was all prohibitively expense!

Having left the Galleria we crossed over a couple more blocks and found the famous Teatro La Scala, the second most famous opera house in the world. It's really quite dull on the outside and while the interior is really spectacular, it's only visitable on tours during non-rehearsal times. Minor technical hitch that. So we looked at the outside, decided the one in Sydney looks better and headed for the Via Dante. Jen had read somewhere that there was a public art exhibition on of 100 of the best photos from National Geographic. It's a bit like that one that was around Waitangi Park the summer before last and it's really really good. There was some silly text about equilibria all through it, but the pictures really spoke mostly for themselves. There are some really talented photographers out there. At the top end of the Via Dante is the Castelo Sforza, home to one of Italy's other infamous families. It's a pretty spectacular, if relatively small, castle and it sounds a bit like the kind of place where one went in and didn't come out, especially under the rule of some of the more.....enthusiastic Sforzas. It also signalled the return of the bane of the Italian tourist, the crazy people selling knock off handbags and handing out friendship bracelets (for free? Nothing is for free when you're a tourist!) despite the really bitey cold and indifferent tourist horde. It was something of a shame after the peace and quiet of Verona!

The next day, we crawled out of bed at some stupid hour and headed for the train station in the blistering cold anticipating what was waiting for us in Switzerland! It's a really nice trip up from Milan but I'll talk about that next time since this one is already quite long....so that, ladles and jellyspoons, was our trip to Italy. It really was a whistlestop tour but I'm glad we changed our itinerary and took in Verona and Milan on the way to Switzerland. They're both interesting towns and worth visiting. Verona is very pretty and Milan, while more challenging that most of Italy, brings it's own rewards. The trip over the mountains was fabulous, even with all the tunnels spoiling the view and I should recommend it to you all, so I will. I think this was probably my favourite part of the trip so far - I've been able to see and do so many things that I've always wanted to see and do. Raphael's Vatican paintings, Michelangelo's Dave, the Pope and the Duomo in Milan are some of the most amazing things to set eyes on anywhere in the world and they all have to be seen to be believed. We talked to Anna while we were in Switzerland about Dave and you might think you know what it looks like but we all agreed that it's totally different to actually stand under it and look up at the most famous sculpture anywhere.

Anyway, the Swiss blog won't be far behind this one, so you can enjoy that one too - it's really short. Four weeks or so and we'll be leaving Europe so I shall torment you with all of this again soon!

Hope everyone is well and you're all enjoying the warm weather. Well, at least you lot in the south. For the poor people in the north, we share your pain! (But not for long!!!)
Talk soon,
Al and Jen

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Photos

Jen....
and our first encounter with Roman statuary!

Spanish Steps
Note the annoying H&M banner. *Scowl*

Piazza del Popolo
from the Borghese Gardens.

Temple of Augustus and Faustina
in the Villa Borghese Gardens.

St Peter's
lording over the Tiber.

Castel Sant' Angelo
and the Ponte Sant' Angelo.

Piazza Navona
Note hideous fountain.

It might be ugly....
but it's a Bernini!

The Vittorio Emmanuelle Monument
to the Italian war dead and their hero Garibaldi.

St Peter's Square
pre-Pope.

The POPE!
Note sure how this will come out, digital zoom being what it is.

Rome at sunset
Just cause I could.

Michelangelo's Moses
before the horde descended!

The Arch of Constantine
and us, but it's bigger.

The Roman Forum
Note Colosseum in the background.

The Pantheon
From the second time we saw it, with rain and without tourists!

Swiss Guards
Silly!

Michelangelo's Pieta
Possibly his best work. Probably his best work. His best work.

The Nave at St Peters
More gold than....a golden thing!

The Duomo of Firenze
Big and stripey!

The Town Hall of Firenze
Best views in the city...apparently.

The Tomb of Dante
in Santa Croce. Always the same face. Boy was he grumpy!

Us again
in the cloister at Santa Croce.

The Arno
Heart of Firenze.

Silliest Car EVER!
But Florence has electric car charging points!

Florence in all her glory
Just that really.

The church at Piazza Michelangelo
which I cannot remember the name of!

St Marks Cathedral
complete with Byzantine horses.

St Marks Gate
under which was our hotel...nice eh?

Sky Rats
in their daily melee in St Marks Square.

The Bridge of Sighs
Famous but not at all romantic. Why do couples take pictures here?

The Ponte Rialto
Lovely bit of architecture. I'd have one.

The Arsenale
Venice's once mighty fleet sailed from here.

Venezia in the sunshine
with Gondolas! Sadly we couldn't take one. At 75 Euros+ it's a bit steep....

The Grand Canal
Who wouldn't want to live here?

The Grand Canal 2
Note leisurely Italian lifestyle - window at the upper left.

Two Gentlemen of Verona
Just because I could. No other reason!

Public art in Verona
See why we chuckled?!

The Arena at Verona
Not quite the Colosseum but in lovely shape.

THAT balcony.
Except not. I don't know.

Strange tourists
Again, I don't know...