Where have I been?

So, Gentle Readers, more than a year has passed since I posted my hack of Mr Golightly's jacket; much has happened.  We had a wonderful holiday in Europe, with quality time in Brighton, London, Siena, Florence and Rome.  I had the immense pleasure of meeting some instagram friends in the flesh, including the fabulous Betti, who is @bettisstitches on Instagram, and who writes here... the very lovely Cathy Ewbank, who is @cathyewbank on Instagram, and the wonderful @mrs_moog, who makes the most fabulous project bags and who blogs here- meeting these three fabulous like-minded women was one of the highlights of our holiday (the history of lingerie exhibition was a highlight of another kind...)

We had a few days in country England - visiting some friends in Gloucestershire, some nostalgic highlights for me, including a visit to the divine Gloucester Cathedral, which some of the younger people out there might recognise from Harry Potter...

before spending a few days in beautiful Brighton with our good friend Gill...  I love Brighton.  If I'm ever untimely widowed, I'm moving there... just watch me...

And then we went to the Continent, which is the old way of saying "Europe" - flew into Amsterdam where it was 5C with snow on the ground, Florence and then Siena by train, which was a lovely way to go, Italian trains being fabulous... Siena is magical.  This was our second visit, the first was in 2006 when Mr Golightly was having his epilepsy medication fiddled with, and he remembered practically nothing of the trip... this time was really fabulous, we just walked and walked and walked and walked...

oh and I took a few photos...

And then from there we went to Rome, where we were very lazy, apart from a trip to the Vatican Museum specifically to see the Brabante Staircase, which also let us see some wonderful Etruscan artifacts... and a mazillion tourists.  Even in February, it was ridiculously crowded, and I couldn't face the tour of St Peters which was the final part of our tour - we got outside and bolted... well, at least as fast as one person recovering from a total knee replacement could bolt... did I mention that?  Wanna see pics?  

Just kidding.  I wouldn't inflict that on you.  But here's the staircase:

And here's the hardware store that is our near neighbour, funnily enough a nearly identical photo appear on Instagram, from the account of '@anamericaninrome' who lives in Rome & takes fabulous photos... (hers is waaaaaaaaaaaaay better!)

And then we found Viterbo - about 80k from Rome by train, with an intact medieval heart - and almost empty.  

And the usual array of ritzy Italian shops up in the top part of the city - quite schizophrenic really, the Italian gold reserves are held here, so there's the usual multinational stores like Coach and Tiffany but also a nice selection of local shops:

including this one where I spent an easy E80 on buttons:

And we saw a nice souvenir of home in the Corso Di Fiore...

Ah... joy.

Peace, man

And then we came back to Rome, ate well, slept a bit and walked up to see the Ara Pacis, a piece of Roman history resurrected by Mussolini in the 1930's as a propaganda exercise - but originally created by the first emperor to be named "Augustus", over 2000 years ago as a monument to peace.

It was obviously fascinating:

 
But there was an exhibition of Impressionist art on in the lower gallery which might account for the levels of excitement... needless to say I didn't bother trying to get Mr Golightly to go along... it was enough of a strain for him to go to the Cheapside Hoard exhibition (which he amusingly kept referring to as the Cheapside Whore), and I didn't want to push it...

I thought it was extraordinarily beautiful:

and nearly best of all - it had seats!!

Afterwards we went for a wander through parts of Rome we hadn't seen before:

and I spotted my new winter coat (not!) in a window [excuse the blurry photo, I was trying to be discrete])...

I love Rome.

Crossing the Rubicon...

On the Sunday before the Calcio, Mr G and I wandered over to Trastavere (literally, "across the Tiber") for a quick squizzy... it's interesting, in a studied "we're so different to the other side of the river" kind of way:

 

 

Not so different, really.

Other days...

One of those things was the underground & top level tour of the Colosseum, bits that aren't accessible to mere mortals - plus you get the skip the depressingly long ticket queues (so worth the €23  each just for that (if you're wondering, the tour is €18 each plus €2 each booking fee, plus €3 each for the guide and you have to book - we did it by phone, even with my basic Italian it was easy - the phone operators speak excellent English))...

 

and most excitingly, I found out that the original use of the word 'vomit' was to describe the exits from the Colosseum - apparently it means "a speedy exit"...

Then we...

Well, bloody hell, where did that go?  Yep, we're back.  I can't believe three weeks went by just like ... that... but while we were living it, it seemed to last ages.  Lots of lazy days, not rising much before 0900, wandering down to the excellent Cafe Barnum (or is it Barnum Cafe?) for cornetti & cappuncini...

Then off to wander the streets, seeking out the weird, the wonderful, the very Roman (and in the interim, a change from Google Chrome as the Browser Of Choice to Mozilla, don't even ask why...):

We did a fair bit of travel, too - London, Brighton, Windsor (via Eton & Slough, courtesy of a whacked-out SatNav), Turin, Naples, and Pompeii... and we did some interesting things too..

Day One - the excitement!

Well, Gentle Readers, we survived 14 hours on a plane with a screaming toddler... just.  AsyouknowBob, I am not that fond of small children ("Anyone who hates children and small dogs isn't all bad" (widely attributed to W C Fields but open to discussion), but it's the parents who are usually to blame.  They had four kids, three of whom didn't make a peep the entire flight, and the screaming monster.  Did they give the kid a dummy?  Did they F**k.  They just let him scream and scream and scream and scream... OMG.  All I can say is thank the ghods for noise eliminating earphones and Emirates'* excellent inflight entertainment system.

I watched 3 movies in an attempt to drown out the little shit.  Elysium (not bad, a bit too much crash bang wallop, and not enough Elysium, but it was lovely to see the always gorgeous Jodie Foster in action), About Time, which is a nice (and very English) film from the clever Richard Curtis, which reduced me to tears (in a good way), and The Butler, which was an interesting take on two of the sides of the American Civil Rights movement, and which had quite a good performance from some woman called Oprah Winfrey - apparently she has a show on TV in America so maybe she needed the money?**

Anyway, the 6 hours from Dubai to Rome was blessedly silent, mostly because I was crammed into a 17" wide sardine tin of a seat, mouth open and a stream of drool issuing forth as I slept.  Or so Mr G tells me.

We arrived two hours (two whole hours!) early, and our driver was there to meet us.  Honestly, Gentle Readers, before you look askance at each other and ask "Driver? Oooh" in that snarkey tone, just be aware that for Eu37, you too can be met at the airport by a well dressed man holding a sign with your name on it, have your bags taken from you, be ushered into the back of a spotlessly clean Mercedes Benz and driven right to your door, where the bags are then taken back out of the car.  Having rung the doorbell, said spotlessly dressed man waits until the door is answered, shakes your hand, takes your money and drives off into the night.   Yes, it's (only slightly) more expensive than the train & a taxi, but really, on a cold wet Sunday night, who cares?

And then, this morning, breakfast:

Eu5.  That's $A7.70 for two excellent coffees and two fresh, delicious cornetti (mine was chocolate, his was poppy seed).  You can buy two coffees in Sydney for $7.00 - in fact, in 2011 in Perth, at a particular hospital, a very ordinary coffee in a paper cup with nasty plastic stirrer was $4.50... so you see, Gentle Readers, even with a truly crap exchange rate, Europe is mostly cheap.  

Also, I now know where those amazing men who sell umbrellas come from - they pop up out of Churches:

We were crossing Corso Vittorio Emmanuel II on the way home from an excellent lunch (two beers, a glass of wine, two pizzas, a bottle of sparkling water, Eu37/$A57) when I spotted these guys.  I love Rome.

*Not a sponsored plug, but if anyone from Emirates is reading this & wants to upgrade us, feel free.

**

Not so subtle...

Mr Golightly & I are about to set off, again, on a big adventure.  This picture may give you some clues as to where we're going... or this one:

Yep.  Rome... again.  I love Rome.  I'm pretty sure we're going to have an excellent time, and Mr G has finally caved in & agreed to visit the Vatican Museum - given that we went into St Peter's Basilica the last time we were in Rome & the world didn't come to an end, it should be fine.  We're using these guys, and doing this tour, which goes for four hours, and hopefully there'll be a bar nearby I can collapse into after four hours of standing up!

I will try to post some pics as we go along, especially if I come across something interesting like this again!

Ciao for now!!

Lazy Sunday Afternoon...

Actually, Gentle Readers, when I originally wrote this, it was Saturday at 09.49, and I was still in bed. Gasp!  I worked yesterday from 0730 until 1800,  which was extremely foolish for somebody still getting over the after-effects of several hours on a plane (in a plane?) and by the time I got home (1930), I was, to put it oh so bluntly, knackered.


Anyway, the lovely Mr Golightly not being one of those husbands who delight in masquerading as a martinent, I did not have to set to and make a gourmet dinner, but instead peeled off my work clothes, threw on my sloppy house clothes and flung myself, bodily, onto the sofa.  I did not move again until I staggered off to bed three hours later, having watched a repeated NCIS episode, an episode of something so deeply boring it's already gone from my memory, and an episode of "Person of Interest", which I am really enjoying, and I am grateful to those people at that awful television channel (which is so awful I won't even deign to name it) for putting on again.


I woke at 0630.  Typical, isn't it, that having no need to actually get up & go to work, I am wide awake, bright eyed and bushy tailed.  Ick.


That said, I do have some sewing chores to do, my lovely DSSIL Miss Mandy had a birthday on Wednesday, and Miss Emma, the mother-to-be of the incomparably named, but as yet unborn Linus Libbis, had hers on Thursday.  I know exactly what to make them both, but... time being somewhat scarce this week, I have done exactly zippo about it.  Ahem.  Amends to be made, stitches to be set.  Also, pictures to be taken and posted, but that's for after.


For now, some more holiday snaps - some of the things I love about contradictory Italy...


Ciao for now!

Sunday, too far away (Roma)

So, Gentle Readers, we're home.  We had a good flight from Rome to Hong Kong, and a great flight from Hong Kong to Sydney, especially after the 10 hour sleepover we had had in Hong Kong, which made a huge difference to our jetlag status - that is, none.

These photos were taken at various points over the holiday - the first one is a bunch of guys we came across round the corner from where we stayed the second time we holidayed in Rome - when we were there, this was a single table & two very dishevelled looking guys - now it's a whole community of, interestingly, only men.  The guy in the maroon scarf had a minder sitting on the scooter to the right, and was eyeing me as I was taking the pictures.  I didn't get too close.

This little number was by some guy called Michaelangelo.  He has a bit of a future, I think.

Part of the recovered items from the Roman Forum - absolutely gorgeous.

I didn't buy any fabric.  Can you believe that?  However, I did buy:

• Red handbag #7 (gift for my lovely Ma)
• Red handbag #8
• Mystery gift for MGF Kaz
• Red wallet
• Several leather key rings, from a fabulous shop where they were actually sewing the items on the premises, with the industrial sewing machine set up right there in the shop - my question "Fatto in casa?" was given an emphatic answer, "no, fatto qui!"
• A very cute little red leather coin purse (yes, for me)
• Some cosmetic specials for my SIL's
• A gorgeous set of three Furla leather pouches and keyring for my lovely MIL
• A red (yes, yes, I know) Furla keyring for me
• A beautiful surprise for Miss Nelly (because I know she reads this)
• A leather wallet and an ipod case for Master H
• Some fantastic handmade writing paper embossed with the letter 'D'
• Mini-calendars for 2013 for my team
• Absolutely no Pope fridge magnets - not one to be found in Rome.  And yes, I did look.

It's nice to be home.  

Ciao!

Saturday night (in Bologna) too tired

.

So, Gentle Readers, I have to confess that the previous post was largely written a week ago, when we were indeed on our way to the airport, edited during an incredibly boring transit in Hong Kong, where I tried and failed to finish the previous post, and we've finished our first amazing week in Roma, having succeeded in seeing things we did not see last time, but which I am confident were actually there, because they've been quietly sitting, waiting for Mr Golightly and me to come and see them, for 2,000 years.

I am having a few technical issues with the newest infernal machine to join the Golightly household, (and I'm blaming you, Miss Blue Lambb), because Blogspot has not yet come to grips with people who are trying to write posts using a tablet, so if you see a few more typos than normal, please be gentle with me :-P
More soon.. Ciao!

The Final Trip Tease

So... finally, the best bit of my Trip Tease...

I found the most amazing fabric shop in Rome.  I lucked into it, an aside in an old guide-book led me to think it might be worth checking out, and I saw this article when I did a bit of research on the Fancy Young People's Internet (thank you Tony Squires) - and OMG, was it ever amazing!

I have never seen so much fabric in one place in my life.  Honestly.  I've been to Liberty in London (mostly pretty but boring), fabric shops tucked away in the East End of London where I was studiously ignored because, the shop owners told me afterwards, they couldn't believe a white person would be interested in buying African fabric, shops where my Vietnamese friend helped me get the best cash-only deals, shops where every single fabric was made from some artificial fibre or other, shops where I couldn't afford to buy 20cm, let alone 3 metres, Spotlight, Lincraft, you name it.  I have never seen so much fabric in one place in my life.  Oh, did I already say that?  Yep.  But it was worth saying again:

So, I'm 168cm tall, that's 5'6" in old money.  This photo was taken at my eye level, and the rack goes all the way up to the ceiling - maybe 20'/3 metres?  

We must have wandered through 10 rooms, and apparently, there are two floors.  I must admit I didn't take pictures of the suiting, the sheeting, the linings, the Chanel-y type wools, the upholstery fabrics, the denims, the stretch fabrics, the knits, the damasks, the laces, the wedding fabrics, the sequinned masterpieces, the handpainted silks, the hand-embroidered silks and satins, the velvets, the really nasty shiny vinyls, the viscoses, polyesters and even nasty nylons, but I couldn't resist the shirting:

This rack also went up to the ceiling, and you must admit, my helper does have a great arse.  Oops.  That just slipped out, honest.  Can you believe how many different blue shirtings there are?  They had every colour you could think of - from white to black with every shade in between, pique, pin-striped, checked and spots.  Man, it was difficult to choose, but I did.  Trust me.

I also bought some beautiful lilac coloured silk jersey, don't ask me what I'm going to do with that, and some exquisite silk with a tiny tiny Houndstooth print, with fantastic drape, which would be perfect for a cowl neck blouse and I have just the pattern, Butterick B4132...

For the shirting, I'll probably use this pattern, or something similar. Ah, joy.  Nice to be able to feed the addiction...

And that's it for the holiday.  Admittedly there were other events, other venues, other meals and other locations, but I'm sure you're as sick of reading about it as I am of writing about it.  I'm going to bore you rigid now with planning my next one, in 2013, just in time for our 20th Wedding Anniversary.  Any suggestions?

Ciao!

   

The wheels on the holiday... come off

So, Gentle Readers, there we were in Milano (also known as Furniture World), contemplating our return to Water World, when the volcanic eruption causing havoc throughout places further west of us, hit.  Suddenly, in a flurry of activity (not necessarily volcanic), the airports started closing down one by one, and it looked like it might get a bit ugly.


Back to Venice we trotted, to wait it out.  The email from EasyJet was apologetic, but clear.  "Sorry, your flight is cancelled.  Click here for a refund".


Plans?  Well, I thought we'd be better off in Rome than Venice, trying to get out of the place, and as Mr G was thoroughly fed up with Water World, it seemed like a sensible plan.  Hmmmm... anyway, after seeing the queue to deal with a real person in Venice station, we managed to negotiate the vending machines and get tickets for the trip to Rome on the 19th.  We arrived in Rome in good time, though the train was a lot fuller than the first time we'd done the journey, and with a lively air of speculation - on a lot of topics - eating, sleeping, travelling - drifting up and down the carriage.


Rome Termini was a zoo.  We hadn't needed to brave the ticket office before because we'd ordered our initial journey tickets on the internet, and so were able to go straight to the platform and on to the train.  This time, there was a lone woman standing in front of a barrier, with a sign on a piece of A4 paper (297X210mm), saying in Italian that "all trains to Northern Europe are full until 23 April 2010".  


This poor woman did not speak any English.  I speak enough Italian to buy food, wine, bus and train tickets and fabric, the essentials of life, really.  Not enough to negotiate the 20 other angry, tired, frustrated, foreign, people surrounding this woman bombarding her with questions, and certainly not enough to deal with the incredible Italian talent for getting your face in front of whoever you want attention from.  Whoever said "Italians don't like to queue" was exactly right.  Except for train tickets, apparently.  There must have been 1000 people in that queue.


Anyway, we made a reverse call to the "Don't leave home without us" people, who found us a hotel in Rome.  They couldn't get us any train tickets, though, because, like anybody who buys them 'not in Italy' has to get them from an agency, and they were just as stuck as we were.  Interestingly, the nice chap we spoke to was very keen to help us with a hotel but didn't want us to talk to the local "DLHWU" office.  Not sure why...


So, after the thunder and hailstorm, and after a very nasty previously frozen Panini, we got a taxi to our station, round and round the one-way streets of Rome.  Taxis are amazingly cheap in Italy, and the (woman) driver helped us with our bags and avoided collisions, crazy tourists and other taxis, all for E10.00.  Bargain.  


So, we spent a fabulous, but frustrating additional five days in Rome, explicitly not going to the Vatican Museum, but doing other things, like spending E41.00 on two Gins & Tonic in the hotel's fabulous bar:

And finding this just round the corner:

  
And on our last day in Rome, going for lunch at the fabulous place where we'd had this the first time:

Yum.  And I had one mouthful of this:

before Mr G had his wallet stolen by a very clever young man who slid into the seat behind him, reached round into his jacket's secret pocket, and helped himself.  I can't quite understand why he didn't also take Mr G's passport, but, thank the Absent Gods that he didn't.  

It was quite irritating enough to spend the rest of the afternoon going from the restaurant to the Hotel (room key?  In the wallet!) to the Carabinieri, to the hotel Bar, where even the E41.00 Gin & Tonics were not enough to assuage Mr Golightly's extreme irritation with himself for being so careless, and for that very clever young man, for being so clever.

So, the next day, we got on the train!