Jun 2006

We had a one day stop over in Milan, in order to see our good friend Audrey. Milan is an interesting city, and pretty expensive to boot. So expensive in fact, pubs in Milan provide free food when you buy a drink, in order to encourage people to drink in town. When I say free food, I do not mean peanuts or similar, I mean salads, chargrilled vegetables, pizza and pasta dishes. May be it's just me, but if they lowered their drink prices, they may not have to spend so much on food... I am always up for a free feed though

It was good to catch up with Auds again. Will have to do Milan again when not a budget though (maybe if Farnborough Town get in to the Champions League against AC Milan?)

After our all too brief stay in Germany, we caught an express through to Paris. Although this was not originally in our plans, a good friend of ours had a business trip there and it seemed like a good chance to get to catch up and watch a couple of world cup matches.

At this point, let me be frank: France is the capital of love and a cultural & fashion centre etc, however Heather and I had both been there before and really there are only so many times you can look at the Eiffel Tower before you long for fish & chips, sticks of rock and seagulls flying overhead. As such, when we were not in the pub watching football matches, we were catching up on sleep or in transit to the pub. As such, our activities in Paris were a bit limited - even more so once we realised that a beer weighed in at €7.50 per pint. It was a bit of a shock after the cheap beer in Bratislava, Prague and Cologne.

One of the most important games that we saw while in Paris was the final group game for Australia. I had two very happy Australians with me after that match, however it was nothing compared to the French game played after that. Once France won the game, the Parisiens went nuts - more than nuts, stark raving bonkers as if they had won the World Cup. After the match, the Champs Elysee was chock-a-block with cars blaring their horns, people leaning out the car windows and everyone hugging each other. If they win the damn thing, it's going end up in a mass orgy - or maybe a riot, as that's what the French are more famous for

Following our all too brief stay in Rome, we caught a train to the Southern Italian city of Naples (Napoli to the Italians). For the train, ride we were in first class compartments (I had bought the Eurail pass before finishing work) and each compartment had took six occupants. A requirement of inter-city trains is that seats must be reserved, so it came as a bit of a suprise to us for our entire compartment to be fully occupied with travellers with no room for luggage. Even more of a suprise, when 2 compartments along the rest of the 1st class was empty.

We eventually arrived at Napoli and headed to the hotel we were booked in to. It was on a tiny street, and overlooked an even tinier courtyard. After relaxing, we headed out to a pizzeria and had dinner (travelling seemed to have taken most of the day). End of day one.

Day two was spent wandering around the old town of Napoli, checking out the beach, a couple of churches and a couple of castles. Napoli has a totally different vibe to it than Rome, being much more laid back. One thing we did notice was that the people were just as friendly.

Day 3 should have been spent on an island such as Capris, however the night beforehand we had a few too much beer & wine and spent the morning recovering from hangovers. I don't know, it seemed like a good idea at the time but Italian wine does give pretty good hangovers.

Day 4 was the one I was most looking forward to. The original plan was to travel to Herculaneum, then Pompeii before finally climbing Vesuvious. A quick look at the map revealed that doing Pompeii first would be the best option, then Herculaneum and Vesuvious.

We caught the metro to Pompeii, bought the entry tickets (€18 for joint Pompeii and Herculaneum ones) and hired an audio guide. Walking in to Pompeii, was interesting as initially it looks quite small - however, like the Taris it seems to go on for miles. The map we got with the audio guide had buildings numbered starting at 1 up to about 50, so we started working through each. It was after about an hour, I glanced at the map and it said that the entire walk would take 6 hours to complete. After a quick chat, we decided to limit the number we would visit as we had to fit Herculaneum in. It was a pretty amazing place to visit and well worth your time, if you are in to Roman history.

Herculaneum is much smaller, and in places better preserved. The frescos and mosaics in particular were really beautiful to see. One thing I noticed that did disgust me was the amount of graffiti written by cretins scratching their names in to 2000 year old frescos; some of these had been done as recently as 1999. It astonishes me the behaviour of some people.

After Herculaneum, our feet were pretty tired so any ideas of climbing Vesuvious were cast aside. A beer or 3 would be much better...