Archive for the 'Travel' Category

Where does bolognese originate from? Bologna! Did we find somewhere to have bolognese? No. Today was a good chance to get off the feet for a while and let Trenitalia trains do some of the travelling for us.

Under 2 hours from Venice it was a direct train from Mestre to Bologna (around 18 Euro return each). On arrival the train station is huge and chaotic. Bologna is a main intersection point for trains across the country. It was a MAD rush in there!

We had decided to only stay for a couple of hours as we had already had 3 huge days in Venice and Mestre. Our holidays are never lazy ones that’s for sure. We tend to be exhausted by the end of them so today was a bit of a “down” day for us. Having said that we did put in quite a bit of walking yet again.

The highlights for Bologna would be the covered walkways. Apparently there are 40 kilometres of these. I could imagine during the intense heat of summer or the snowy days of winter these walkways would continue to ensure that Bologna keeps on shopping. Surely Bologna should be a key spot on your places to visit if you are after a shopping spree. Fashion is high on the list here. However, fashion at a much better price than Venice. Same stores just minus the tourist price.

Another highlight was the “Teatro Anatomico” that we came across in the university sector. Bologna is home to the worlds oldest university of the Western World founded in 1088. The anatomy theatre was incredible with rich wood sculptures, seating and with the marble autopsy table in the centre of the lecture theatre. The wooden stalls surround the tables where the students sat and the lecturers stall at the head of the room. The stall is flanked by incredible wooden carvings of two men. However the carving details a view of man without skin so you can see the muscle, ligatures, spine. This may sound perverse but it is indeed truly beautiful. The wooden ceiling is adorned with carvings of the star signs.

It has been very cold the last 3 days and today was no exception. There is a cold Arctic front pushing its way across Europe with snow falling in the alps and drops of 15 degree differences between last week and this week. Chilly!

We ended up staying about 3 hours here even so I would recommend it as a stop if you are into your shopping. You get a much better feel for what Italy is from a day to day point of view. Students are in vast numbers here, it is an affluent city that just ticks along. Cars, scooters, buses, trams, pedestrians and bicycles bustle for position in every direction. It is pure madness. I can only imagine what a really large city like Rome would be like. I was quite thankful to get back to Venice Island where cars are absent. Bliss.

Today we hung around Maestre to look through the malls. Found the local markets and generally hung out and did “as the Italians”. Ate pasta, drank espresso, machiatto and then went into Venice again. Haven’t found an affogata yet. Beginning to think this is an Aussie Italian thing although we did find one in London one time.
Feet are slowly dying and terribly dehydrated (nothing to do with the numerous espresso of course).

Woke up to gorgeous blue skies today. Bit nippy but this soon gave way to a warm day.
We chose to go via boat all day so got the 24 hour ACTV card for 18 euro each. Visited Saint Marks Square, Lido for a pizza lunch, Murano for glass ware. Had far too many espressos but don’t care!
Highlights for me were the blue dies, being on the water and a fab limoncello gelato.
Just realised I didn’t take one photo of St Marks Square. To be honest wasn’t that impressed by it.

We arrived at 9.30at night to a quiet airport. Marco Polo airport is nothing to write home about. However the air exiting the plane was warm and you could smell the sea. Lovely.
Within the first 10 minutes of leaving the terminal we had already been ripped off 5 euro when we purchased a ticket for the bus. Apparantly change is too hard to figure out?
Breakfast this morning was plentiful and good. Sleep was peaceful too.
After 30 minutes of figuring out the train we hit Venice proper. Beautiful if not still full of tourists. Thank goodness for McDonalds and free wifi.

That’s right, Robin Hood. We took a side trip home via Sherwood Forest today. We were up in Walsall for a mates wedding. Our first English/Welsh wedding. Well actually it was the evening reception after the actual ceremony and speeches. To us kiwis (or maybe it is just me) it is a strange concept going to the reception and not the ceremony. We would normally invite all and sundry to watch the ceremony and then just close family and friends to the reception. Still haven’t figured out the traditions and quirks of this country but it was a good night and really lovely to see P & H looking fabulously happy.

The next day we were planning to head to the Snow Centre for a ski in Tamworth. However when we got there we were rather surprised at the large numbers of birthday parties and kids. No way were we going on the slopes with them! So, we decided to take a trip to Nottingham and of course Sherwood Forest.

Nottingham as it turned out was a rather large city with a very nice river running through it. The traffic on the other hand was a huge wind up so we got out of there pretty quick. Quite a number of Art Deco buildings mixed in with everything else you can think of!

By chance Sherwood Forest had a re-enactment weekend on so this was a really exciting bonus for us. The forest is incredible with really easy walkways. The forest has many amazing twisted and gnarled Oak trees. These trees are classed as ancients. We are talking 700 years old. They look amazing and this is by far and away the most interesting forest I have visited to date in the UK. I think it was most likely due to the Oaks which just look so majestic. I was quite taken by them. Forests in the UK are definitely not like NZ. They are not as dense and as lush as what we are used to yet Sherwood was closer to a forest than anything else we have seen to date.

The re-enactments were really interesting to watch if not a bit scary. Lets just put it this way…always treat a gun as if it is loaded. Don’t EVER point the business end at me even if you are sure it isn’t loaded. I sure as heck didn’t want to find out the messy way if it was!

Other than that it was an incredibly interesting day passing by the time periods marked by the costumes and village scenes set up. From the Saxons and Normans, to the Victorians, WWI, WWII and even into the 80’s it was amazing to see the progression of weaponry and clothing across these periods. No surprise visits by Robin Hood or his merry men though. What a shame. We did see the ancient Major Oak though that legend says was where he used to meet his men before they went on their raids. You can see the Major Oak behind the musketeer in one of the following photos.

Opened in May of this year Steve recently found out about The Snow Centre and was keen to take a trip. I had some annual leave days up my sleeve, he had a day off and so today we took off for a day of skiing.

Our GPS, Susie, indicated it would take 2 hours but as we got nearer to London this became rather more like 3 hours. Oh well, thankfully we had the day all to ourselves.

The indoor center is lovely and new with a 30 metre width on the slope enabling more area to try some of those longer linked turns. What the heck am I talking about, I’m lucky to get to the bottom in one piece! We got a 2 hour ticket which comes at a reasonable price of 27 pound each as it is off peak. I needed about 1 hour of this to get my mojo happening.

Anyone who knows me well will know that I am rather risk adverse. Ok, so extremely risk adverse. Maybe this comes from my OHS background..this leads to that, which creates this = consequence. Manage the consequence by managing the risk. When you strap planks to your feet and point these downhill on a steep, slippery slope this would indicate a high probability of injury. Injury = pain, I dislike pain intensely…you see where I am going with this.

Maybe I continue to do it is because in my head I see a far more competent skier who can do amazing jumps, tight turns and laughs in the face of danger…then I wake up in a cold sweat and strap on the planks anyway!

So, here are some pics from today. Thankfully I made it home in one piece with thanks to my incredibly competent ski buddy who stuck with me, gave me advice and didn’t get too frustrated with me even when I finally listened to his advice at the very end and would have to agree that apparently going faster does make turning easier. Who knew! Maybe I should try this theory in the Rover.

After Paris the rest of our holiday was spent in Lille. We stayed at the SuiteHotel for a fab price (love the internet!!!). It suited us brilliantly as it was situated directly across the road from the train station and had movies on demand plus internet all included. The room was bigger than our bedroom at home with shower AND bath, bliss. It truly was a relaxing break in Lille as we wandered the streets and at night caught up with lots of movies we missed on the big screen!

We also caught up with our mate A and met his girlfriend who took us out to a fab restaurant (complete with some Moet) and a great day trip to De Panne in Belgium.

Steve even got some fillings attended to while we were there, thanks A. It was great to see A in action as a dentist!

Here are some pics of our time in Lille and Belgium.

We had a fabulous 8 days in France with perfect blue skies and up to 35 degrees (only a bit of rain one day when visiting De Panne in Belgium). It was our 6th wedding anniversary, which reminds me Happy Anniversary to mum & dad Sears. Happy Birthday to A-L and P.

Each time we go to Paris it is harder and harder to find a free Wifi connection besides going to McDonalds and buying a coke in order to use their service. Many people are more aware now of 1) protecting their connections and 2) businesses charging for connections instead of providing it as a free service to their customers. Get with it people, it is a necessity now! One hotel we stayed it was trying to charge 25 Euros for a 24 hour connection. I don’t think so mate! Hence I have to do the posts now, after the fact.

Anyway, last Thursday night took the bus down to London (see previous post) ready for our Eurostar journey early Friday morning. We arrived at Paris Gare du Nord around 10.30am in time for some breakfast. We decided to walk from Gare du Nord to our hotel in the Latin Quarter. A slight problem as I hadn’t thought to bring our Paris map. Generally you don’t need one as maps are often posted on bus shelters for tourists. However a back up is a good idea for one reason. If you walk in the totally wrong direction, leaving the tourist area, then you don’t get those maps as frequently! Guess what we did. Ah huh. Thankfully Steve had brought Susie (our GPS) with him. Thanks love, that got us back on track.

About 2 hours of strolling through the streets of Paris we arrived at our hotel to offload our bags and continue our journey. We stayed at the Hotel Observatoire Luxembourg as it was across the road from the gardens that I love. As our feet were rather sore we spent the rest of the afternoon visiting the gardens and watching the local businessmen playing Pentanque during their afternoon lunch break before returning to work (playing in suits and all!). That evening we visited Rue Mouffetard in the Latin Quarter to find something for dinner. Found a lovely Algerian restaurant where we had couscous and a chicken tagine. Yum. The restaurant owner was a rather keen man and gave us a free wine taster and a refreshing mint tea after dinner. I think he was trying to ensure we stayed a long time in order to pull in other diners as there were few other people in the restaurant.

On Saturday we visited the Petit Palais so I could see my favourite work of art (La Femme au singe) but it was closed! I was rather disappointed but you expect these things on occasion. Of course we then headed to our favourite restaurant near Abbesses metro (Le Relais Garcon) for our heart stopping salad. That evening we had a call from some friends that we had been trying to get in touch with. We met them at the Paris Plage for a picnic. Paris Plage (beach) happens ever August where areas along the Seine are turned into beach with sand, deck chairs, music, dancing, free games such as pentanque, fencing etc. Dancing areas operate throughout summer on the left bank and our friends N and C had a dance in the samba area. People just turn up with music and friends and specific areas are for specific styles of dance like samba, rock and roll, ballroom, country etc. It’s fabulous fun with a good vibe. About midnight we headed to N & C’s car and they took us on a tour of Paris by night. We took the Champs-Élysées but soon gave up as the traffic jams were incredible even at that hour of night. We went for a walk under the Eiffel Tower which was still heaving with tourists and even though it was midnight it remained very humid.

Sunday saw more walking and by this time I had developed some very nasty blisters on 4 of my toes. We went to dinner at N & C’s that night and had a wonderful evening catching up, talking to A-L in Australia on the phone, meeting new people and of course eating N’s wonderful cooking. Thanks so much guys for an awesome night and the lift back to our hotel!

As always Paris leaves us in awe of its beauty. Some observations this time around as our 5th stay here include locals speaking more English freely (possibly due to the height of the tourist season?), August means a number of shops are shut as the locals take their summer holidays, tourists are in astronomical abundance so don’t expect to get into any places without large queues and prices have definitely risen since we were last there in April. Next post will cover our other 4 days in Lille.

5.50am that’s what time! We got to London last night on the bus. Only 5 quid each. Underground was heaving with tourists! Got to our hotel near the Eurostar terminal at 10pm last night. Took a quick walk to get the lay of the land and then hit the sack. Leaving for the Eurostar soon. Here’s some pics from St Pancras station that we took last night . Gorgeous station.

I realised that I never actually posted some photos from Calais. From the ferry trip, to the Town Hall (Hotel DeVille), Calais beach and of course food!