Round the World

After Pisa, we boarded another train (there's going to be a lot of train travel during this holiday) and headed to the Cinque Terre (or Chinky Terry as I christened it, to Heather's disgust). These consist of 5 villages built along the Tuscan coastline that have been UNESCO listed as they use agricultural methods that were being lost over time; getting the UNESCO status gave them the motivation to keep them.

The apartment that we stayed in was located in the Riomaggiore and had splendid views over the natural harbour. Being in an apartment, it gave us the opportunity to cook our own meals at night rather than going out to restaurants - although we only did that the one night out of 4.

On our first full day, we did the 8km coastline walk stopping off at the odd cafe to add to increase our caffeine/blood ratios. Fortunately the weather was nice and sunny, so we were able to get ourselves a decent tan in the process.

It was while in the CT, that England played a football friendly against Hungary. Fortunately our apartment had a tv with access to Eurosport, so come kick off we were esconced on the bed with a beer or two for the game to kick off.

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...

After the cruise along the Yangtze, we overnighted in Shanghai and caught a train the following morning to Nanjing. This place is a bit (actually a lot) off the beaten trail, and the only real reason we were visting it was to visit an English friend of ours (Pete), who was teaching English at a Police College there.

Having spent several months in dorms and budget hotels, Pete had booked us in to a budget apartment, which gave us the opportunity to feel as if we were in a home (albeit only for a week). As Nanjing has so little to do, we spent the time lazing in our apartment watching DVDs that we had bought for a $1 each and avoiding the seemingly constant rain.

We did venture out in the evenings, going for dinner to a Korean restaurant with Pete. Unfortunately, none of us could read the Chinese characters, so Pete had to call his Chinese girlfriend who was ill in bed and ask for help. We decided to leave the ordering up to her, and fortunately didn't end up with stewed dog, newts eyes or whatever. We also hit an expat pub to watch the FA Cup Final - it was good to see none of the England squad get injured in that match for a change...