Rest of 6/11/2010 - home

We went for dinner early because we wanted an early night but unfortunately like the rest of Europe they don’t start to serve dinner till 7.30, so found a bar.

When we did eventually find a restaurant only 200 metres around the corner from our rooms, we had the best meal we had in Rome – stuffed grilled yellow capsicum, an unusual red salad leaf thing grilled with herbs, salad with squid & calamari, grilled zucchini & eggplant, bread & of course a litre of vino. This we had to follow up with tiramisu.

We were planning an early night as we had a very early start in the morning but Basil had other ideas. He was there when we got back to our room & stayed & talked with us for a couple of hours. He really was a lovely guy & we really enjoyed his B&B, except for the breakfast.  We promised to send him some vegemite as he said peanut butter was horrible, so we thought we would send him something we were sure he would find even worse.

7/11/2010

We had a shocking nights sleep, probably because we were concerned about getting up in time for the pre booked cab to the airport. But we left the rooms at 6.15am and made it to the airport with ample time, as the flight didn’t leave till 9.30am. We just checked in, went through customs & then found our boarding gate & sat for an hour or so waiting for our flight. We slept a little on the short 2-½ hr trip and found ourselves once again in London but this time Heathrow airport. We caught the Heathrow express to Paddington; our old haunt, checked our luggage in to the luggage hold and found a pub to park in for lunch. While there we met a couple from Canada & Marty chatted to them, I got on the net & checked the train travel options etc for Liverpool & Stansted. There were quite a bit of disruptions on the lines due to either engineering work or the fact that somewhere a cement truck had fallen onto a train and the line was completely blocked. Once I had found alternative travel arrangements I ordered lunch of British Beef & Ale pie with mash for me & chips for Marty. After 2 weeks of either Italian food or croissants with ham & cheese, it was lovely to have something resembling Aussie food.

We settled into the pub for a while but were getting too comfortable so headed off  to Liverpool St. Collected our luggage & jumped on a bus to the station, this was so much better than the underground as we got a whole tour all over again of the sights we had seen when first here. When we arrived at Liverpool St, we found another pub & went in for a drink and it was full of locals watching their favourite team (Liverpool) play Chelsea, it felt so good to be part of an English tradition. Marty went outside for a smoke & stuck up a conversation with a gentleman outside, and when he come back in I asked ‘was that the guy with the Bentley’ and sure enough it was.

We got on the bus to Stansted & with 5 hours till our flight we settled in for another long, long haul to KL. We are so looking forward to the flight as it is a night-time flight & we were so tired, and also the time we will have in KL.

We had a great flight to KL. Slept most of the way and really didn’t notice it was a 12 ½ hour flight. This was the first time we had flown into KL at night so it was great to see the Twin Towers all lit up. We of course returned to the Dorsett & this time had a deluxe room, it was pretty late when we arrived but were keen to get out again. This time we went to Jalan Alor on Pete Toohey’s recommendation, but we must have picked the wrong restaurant because although cheap the food wasn’t very good. We returned to our room & finally made it to sleep at about 1am.

8/11/2010

We had breakfast then made our way to China Town to do some last minute shopping, including a bag to carry our luggage that wouldn’t fit in our back packs. We didn’t realise it but we were pretty jet lagged, so didn’t last long and went back to our room after only a couple of hours shopping. One highlight however was the fact that we ran into our toothless mate at the markets and had a chat with him, it was great to see him as we thought we would never see him again.

We spent the afternoon watching a movie, then headed off to the airport. The flight home was once again excellent, and Gambo was waiting for us when we arrived. We made it out of the airport within about 20 minutes of landing, thank god for premium seating. 

When we arrived home we realised that on Sunday we had breakfast in Rome, lunch in London & dinner in Kuala Lumpur, and we had virtually lost a whole day on the Monday by flying against the sun. But pretty awesome. 

Rest of 5/11/2010 + ½ 6/11/2010

While waiting for our washing we drank some of the vino & had lunch on our veranda, then returned to collect our washing. We then headed off to St Peter’s Basilica, and after no queues (we are lucky like that) once again were in awe of the grandeur & opulence. We even saw the window where le Pope comes out & talks to everyone, but couldn’t see the famous chimney. We were feeling sore & tired by this stage so made our way back to our rooms & had a chat to the family from Switzerland who were leaving to return home that afternoon. He was a paediatrician and so we talked about the different health systems throughout the world. We said goodbye to them the then back in our room we inadvertently fell asleep.

We woke to Ruggero (alias Basil, as he is just like Basil from Faulty Towers) bashing on our door again, of course we woke with a huge fright but glad we did as it was quite late & I wanted to ask him about where to go the next day for a trip to the country. He gave me all the info on where & how to get there, once again very loudly & very fast.

So off to dinner again, and we found a place that served chilli, for those that expect garlic & chilli in Italy, we must be in the wrong part as they just don’t have either in Rome.

6/11/2010

Once again we were up very early & gone by 7am. We found a café open & had a coffee (standing up of course as they charge more if you sit) then made our way to the Metro, We caught the A line to Termini, then the B line to Tiburtini, then got tickets to Tivoli, which was in the country & about an hours train ride away, easy as. We had quite a slow trip to Tivoli as it stopped at every station & unlike the other trains we have caught so far this one was an old rattler & smelled. Not to worry, we got to Tivoli, off the train & then no idea how to get to where we wanted to go, that is Villa d’Este.  So we just started walking, and walking & walking, but eventually found the place.

When we arrived it looked very ordinary & we wondered what we had got ourselves into, but once inside – OMG, this place was amazing. A huge Villa built into the side of the mountain in about 1500 with the most amazing gardens & waterfalls everywhere.  In fact the fountains were more impressive than the Trevi fountain. After a couple of hours wandering around the Villa, we left to find somewhere to have lunch but couldn’t find anywhere decent so headed to the train station, this time a much quicker route, over a bridge.

Once again we jagged it as we managed to catch the express train that went straight to Tiburtini with no stops. We hadn’t ticked all the boxes in Rome yet, so after catching the trains in reverse we got off at Spagna & found the Spanish Steps, most unimpressive as they were just a set of stairs and what we had seen earlier in the day was much more impressive. So we found somewhere here for lunch & met a waiter that spoke English really well so had a lovely chat to him.

Back to our rooms

The rest of 3/11 - half 5/11

3/11/2010

We were sad to say goodbye to Florence and to Elena, she was a very special host and helped us so much. She ordered our taxi for us & then gave us a bottle of wine as  a thank you. We will definitely come back to Florence one day & hope Elena is still running the B&B.

We had an unadventurous (by my standards) train ride to Rome, then followed our new host, Ruggero’s directions to get to our new B&B (AGV2001). I had checked tripadvisor before leaving Florence & this one was ranked 23 out of 1250, so was looking forward to something special.

We found the Metro (underground) in the Termini & found our way to the correct line, along with a million other people & crowded ourselves & our luggage onto the public train. Off at Cipro, then walked a few hundred metres till we found it.

Well it wasn’t quite what we expected, 3 rooms on the ground floor, but it was however on the first floor, with a small kitchen where breakfast was help yourself. It was the same size as an average motel room, with ensuite, but the other rooms that were occupied were very close. We met Barbara, Ruggero’s wife who gave us some tips, and then we did the usual, dropped bags & went looking for supplies. 

On our trek we stopped for a drink at a café & ended up having a light snack for lunch/afternoon tea – a plate of grilled vegetables & bruschetta. We then got back to our room to work out the TV & get a bit of rest. Marty fell asleep and then I heard the neighbours come home and my god what a racket, then suddenly there was a bash on our door, and we were greeted by Ruggero, very loud, very in your face & very very. He came into our room & talked non-stop loudly for the next 40 minutes about where to go & what to do & how to work the TV. He actually went into a lot of detail about how to work the TV & its hundreds of channels but when we asked how many were in English he smiled & said one, BBC news.

Because Marty had been woken so suddenly & loudly he was ready to kill him initially but after about 20 mins he settled & tried to look interested in Ruggero’s constant chatter.

Anyway after we he had left us with recommendations for restaurants etc we were ready to eat again, by now it was about 8.30pm. We found one of the restaurants recommended but found it too expensive so found our own & enjoyed some more pasta. We cant work out how these people eat the way they do & not get fat, there are hardly any over weight people here like in Australia, yet they live on pizza, pasta & olive oil & bread, heaps of bread.

4/11/2010

I woke at 6am (how unusual for me) & tried out the coffee machine, and it made a warm cup of mud, so gave up on that & tried the other treats which were just as inedible, so settled for yoghurt & juice. Showered & dressed & off by 8.30a.m.

We had tickets already booked for the Vatican, which was about 200 metres away & walked straight in, no waiting. We hired audio commentary for it, but words & pictures cannot describe it.  We also took in the Sistine Chapel, then after 2 ½ hrs we left feeling quite awestruck.

Where to next, I decided we needed to make our way to Trastevere, so we jumped on a number 23 bus, and guessed where to get off, fortunately at exactly the right place. We walked around the area for a while then found a ristorantte with a set menu. A lovely meal later & couple of glasses of vino & we were off again. Over the river, then decided if we went a little further we would find Trevi Fountain, but first we ran into the Pantheon, which amazingly is intact or has been restored.

A couple for Roman Soldiers hijacked us & took photos, and gave us a wonderful laugh talking about Australia & for some reason Tasmania & Perth. We then headed off again to find the Trevi Fountain but first ran into another massive huge building, the Vittorio Emanuele at Piazza Venezia with the Italian version of the Unknown Soldier.

We eventually found the Trevi Fountain, which was a little disappointing, as it is set among a number of huge buildings with thousands of people, and just doesn’t have the appeal that the photos give it because of that. 

We then had to make our way home, so found a bus stop for bus 492 and once again guessed where to get off. Made it home by about 5.30pm, so it really had been a long day for us, walking most places & using public transport to get around. It was a bit daunting when we first got to Europe but we didn’t take long to work out that the public transport system in all cities is far superior to anything we have in Aus & therefore there is no need to worry if you get lost or get on the wrong bus/tram/train, because everywhere you go has a return route & we have a couple of times just got off & got on the right one.

Once back at our room, we met the other family here, a lovely family from Switzerland and we had a very disjointed conversation with them, they were really lovely people. That wasn’t the end of our day though, we decided to see the Trevi Fountain at night to see if it was more attractive at night, so back on jumped on the Metro to Barberini Fontana di Trevi & walked down Via del Tritone. Marty was busting at this stage and thought that if he got to the fountain before a toilet he wouldn’t make it so we stopped and had another pasta dish for dinner. Then onto the Trevi fountain, which still didn’t have the attraction I expected. But hey, you have to see it.

On our way back we stopped for an ice cream, the second of the day, the ice cream here is delectable, then stopped at a shop & Marty got a little bottle of Lemincello, we once again had to try it. Then back on the train and home. By this stage (10pm) I was exhausted after a 14 hour day and fell straight into bed, Marty however decided to go for a smoke & ran into Rugello again. We had tried to avoid him cause he was so loud, and that hadn’t changed even at 10pm at night. We really felt sorry for the other family who were already asleep, but he did give Marty some good advice for the next day.

5/11/2010

We were up, dressed, breakfasted (we bought our own the night before) and out the door by 7.30am as we had 8.30am tickets for the Coliseum, and fought the early morning train ride to the station. Try & imaging hundreds of people all trying to get on a train that only accommodates less than 50 per carriage, well that was us, pushed, cramped, jostled onto the train, after walking several hundred metres to get to the right line. Then off that line (the A line) and onto the B line that took us to the Coliseum.

No queue once again & we spent some time wandering around the massive structure and enjoying it with very few other people. It seems the majority of people don’t get up here till much later in the day than we are used to in Aus. We could see the Forum from the coliseum so felt no need to see another bunch of old stones (we had really done a lifetime of that in Ankar Wat), so bought ourselves a coffee, and headed back to our room. We were in that situation again where we really needed to do some washing.

We walked around the block & found the Laundromat, and noticed that across the road was what appeared to be a market, of course we had to have a look. Well, wanna buy anything, you can get it here. So we did. A couple of Italian bread rolls, a slice of roast pork you couldn’t jump over, a tomatoe & onion – a cheap lunch. But the best was the shop with vats of vino, so we tried some and opted for the litre of bianco for 1.50 euro. Lunch made for a king.

We then returned to our rooms to collect our washing and dropped it at the Laundromat for them to wash for us at a significantly cheaper price of 7 euro than the 50 sfr we paid in Switzerland.

Just a little on the people here, there are millions of them, but they are polite, helpful, and surprisingly considerate. We notice that on the train the young men give up their seats for women, today we saw a middle age man go off at a young man that pushed his way onto the train before letting others off; it really is nothing like we expected, but as crowded if not more so than Asia.

1 - 3 Nov 2010

1/11/2010

I woke early again, but once we were showered & dressed we went up for breakfast, which was served in a beautiful little kitchen and we had cereal, yoghurt, cake???, bread, juice, coffee, ham & cheese, a most fitting start for the day. Elena sat with us with her little 5 year old son and we chatted to her while eating, her younger son was quite sick, so I talked to her about the antibiotics she was using & gave her some advice on whether it was the right one  & how long to wait till they took effect. It was fantastic to be able to help her.

For our first full day in we were unsure of what to do, as we knew it was a public holiday & also most Palaces/Churches/Museums are shut on Mondays anyway, so we just decided to head into the centre and see what we would find. So back on the Number 11 bus and off we went. Elena told us that we needed to but tickets for the bus at a bar up the road from our rooms, but it was shut, so when we got on the bus we asked to pay & got the reply “finish”, so rode the bus for free.

Now let me describe the bus rides here, the streets are very narrow, about the width of 1 ½ buses, but along one side of the street is parked cars & motorbikes, so that reduces the size of the street again, then there is the footpath about ½ metre wide, which is full of people. None of this however slows the bus down; they travel at anything up to about 80km hour along these streets.

We got off and dragged out the map & between that & following our noses we wandered around the gorgeous streets, with shops & shops & more shops. One in particular caught our attention as it had beautiful leather boots & bags for 20% off, probably because it was a public holiday, and to cut a long story short I bought myself a pair of boots & a handbag.

We made our way further in to the centre & ended up at the Duomo at the Cathedral of Santa Maria, after going through huge squares with glorious churches & huge, huge buildings. Once in the middle of the square we found many artists setting up to draw/paint/sculpt etc, so got a caricature of ourselves done to go in the bar. I think we ended up getting the guy a heap of business because lots of people stopped to watch us being drawn and were impressed so lined up to have theirs done too.

In this short period of time (about ½ hr) the place filled up with thousands of people, so we just kept wandering around and then found a heap of stalls set up selling everything imaginable, as we were walking along I pointed out a leather jacket to Marty as it looked just like him, and once again to cut a long story short, Marty now has a gorgeous deer skin jacket. Forgot to mention that it was raining the whole time, so we were concerned about getting everything wet, carrying our backpacks & umbrellas and trying to keep our purchases under the umbrellas as well, was getting difficult so we found a little bar & sat down for an Italian wine. I would never have thought that Italian wine was any good, but we had the local stuff and it was just as good as Aussie wine. After a while the owner then brought out pizza for us, for free, well there was lunch.

It was about 2 by this stage and still raining and there were even more people, so finding it all a bit too much with our unexpected purchases, we decided to head back to the room. We eventually found our stop & had yet another free, hair raising trip back.

The afternoon was pretty uneventful & we had dinner at the same restaurant that night. This time I chose the special, it was titled Spaghetti, but I had no idea what was in it when I ordered it cause it was in Italian, but I am always up for a surprise. It turned out to be Marinara, and really scrummy, with mussels, scampi & pipis. Along with the litre of wine & Marty’s pizza we had another delightful cheap dinner.

2/11/2010

Another beautiful breakfast with Elena, and some plans of what we wanted to do today, we headed off on another free bus ride into town. We found the Uffizi and queued for about an hour to see the oldest & most famous museum in Europe, (I thought they said that about the Louvre too). We saw some of the most famous drawings in the world, but unfortunately we were not overly impressed. We just can’t get interested in art.

We decided that as we had queued for so long to see the Uffizi that we weren’t that keen on doing it again to see David so opted to find the copy, which we did fairly easily. He sits in the place of the original sculpture but has a lot of company with many other statues in the square.

I then wanted to go to the Market Centrale, so with map in hand walked in the approximate direction, and where should we find ourselves but at the same little bar as yesterday. Fate had brought us here so we stopped in again for a wine. And once again we were given pizza but this one was twice as big and had anchovies & capers. We are not normally anchovy lovers, but these were beautiful. We also tried Chianti, which was also very good.

We found the market, which is a huge undercover produce market that had some of the best produce I have ever seen and none of it we could buy to bring home, except for a collection of olive oils including one with truffles.

Then back to the train station to buy our tickets for Rome the next day. We queued for quite a while & then got one of the rudest bitches we have encountered so far, she spent the whole time ignoring us while selling us tickets. I wanted to travel about 11 am but she said or more like grunted at us that there were no earlier trains than 4 pm. I then went to the toilet & was thinking that it was odd that we couldn’t get an earlier train as they run very frequently, so I checked the ticket & the dumb bitch had booked us on the train for that day. So I stormed back to the ticket office, ignored the queues and the fact that she had a closed sign up and very gruffly told her that she had booked the wrong day, she was rude back but changed the ticket to the next day for 11 am. I felt like I had had a win.

It was getting late so we decided to head back, found what we thought was the right number 11 bus but only to find after about 15 mins that we were headed in the wrong direction. We had a lovely tour of another part of Florence and then got off and changed to the right bus and another free ride home.

Back to the same restaurant that night, we figured if we were onto something brilliant why change. This time I ordered the 2^nd special, and once again had no idea what it was, and was pleasantly surprised again. Ricotta with spinach balls, covered in a mushroom & vegetable sauce. God I can pick em.

3/11/2010

We were sad to say goodbye to Florence and to Elena, she was a very special host and helped us so much. She ordered our taxi for us & then gave us a bottle of wine as  a thank you. We will definitely come back to Florence one day & hope Elena is still running the B&B.