And the answer is...

In no particular order, Milano, Beachy Head and Hove.


We took a side trip to Milano because Mr G got a bit bored with Water World after 4 days of 'sameness', as he refers to Venice.  Unbeknown to us, the world's largest Furniture Trade Fair was on at the same time, which explained why our fairly ordinary 3-star hotel in Milano cost at much as a 5-star hotel in Rome.  


The train was (as usual) clean, fast and on time, and the railway station at Milano is an incredible building, inaugurated in 1931, but begun (officially) in 1906.  It was easy to find the Metro lines, easy to buy a local 48 hour ticket (without the assistance of the helpful girl standing next to the machine who wanted me to give her E2.00 for showing me the button that said 'change language' (in English) and who didn't particularly like being told to "bugger off"), but remarkably hard to find our hotel.  


We got to the proper station (Repubblica), but the map was a bit vague, so we stopped a couple of locals and attempted to find the street.  One very helpful man told we needed to get on the #12 Tram and go about 5 miles in that direction, so we wandered up to a taxi rank and asked the drivers, who were doing the typical Italian thing of chatting over a fag*.  They all turned and looked at us as if we were foreigners (oh yes, so we were!), and one of them jokingly said "Hop on my back".  Turns out it was on the street (round the corner) where we'd asked the other man for directions.  Ah well.  At least it was close.


We wandered the streets, which, despite the Trade Fair, were not that crowded, stopped for coffee, and took lots of photos in some of the richly decorated churches:

Oh yes, and we had Pizza for lunch:

Then, we climbed the Duomo:

The roof of the Milano Duomo is made of slabs of stone, nice and flat and easy to walk on,

 and there are some incredible examples of the stonemasons art:

And we found the Museo Nazionale della Scienza e della Tecnologia "Leonardo Da Vinci", where they had working scale models of Leonardo Da Vinci's drawings, as well as about 10,000 other things, all housed here:

And we spent a highly amusing evening at "La Tana del Lupo", but more on that later, the washing calls!

Ciao! 

Where's that then?

There's a blog I regularly read called "Unmitigated England", which I quite like, I might add, as he has the occasional post entitled "Where's That Then, No. xx", and invites his readers to guess where the black & white photo from 60 or 70 years ago actually is.  I got one, once.


Anyway, in case you were getting bored with the travelogue, I thought we'd have a similar quizzy type thing, with a few random shots from our holiday, just so you can stretch your brain a bit.


Here goes:

Answers, later.  Ciao!

Then what?

So, where do all the Gondolas go at night? Well, they go to the Gondola Parking Lot:

There's a small dog-leg in this canal, which allows a number of gondolas to be parked there safely overnight.


We didn't go on a gondola ride this time, but probably my all-time favourite photograph came from our visit in 2006, when we went round the back-streets of Venice with Guido (and he didn't sing, but he did tell us that there is a gondolieri for every bridge in Venice, so that's about 400 guys (but no women, apparently).

What else?  We went to Torcello, an almost empty island with two restaurants and a magnificent church, with 12th Century mosaics, and signs of the original roman flooring clearly visible for those with eyes to see.


No photos allowed inside, however, but you can see them here, a bit. 


On separate days we went to what Mr Golightly caustically refers to "Lace World" and "Glass World", where we had two fabulous lunches, the Burano lunch was in a scruffy looking diner with no outside tables, no tout and no multi-lingual menus.  The only clue that the food might be OK was a hand-written sign saying "Lasagne Al Forno", which literally means "to the furnace", but actually means "cooked in the oven", or, made here.  And it was, because when I asked her "fatto in casa?", she gave me a look and said "Si, certo!!".  It was about the best lasagne I've ever eaten, with a slice of proscuitto between two of the pasta layers - fabulous.  


About half way through, a woman came in with an empty plate, had a quick chat to the restaurant owner and popped back to her shop next door.  Talking to her later when I was stocking up on lace-trimmed hankies for gifts, she told us that all the locals eat there, and that it's the best food on the island, but the tourists don't go there because it looks a bit shabby.  And it was fabulous, as was the artisanal gelato we had near the boat stop - three magnificent flavours, including dark chocolate, which I smeared all over my face and didn't realise until we'd walked all the way home from the Vaporetto.


How old is this?

The Murano lunch was equally fabulous, at a restaurant we'd read about in a book called "Chow Venice" called Busa Alla Torre, where they had a fabulous Menu Turistica, for about E15.00 - I had spaghetti with clams, and a fabulous whole sea bass, which I was quite happy to fillet myself (I was well brung up, y'know...)

Mr G had a fabulous smelling bucatini with smokey pancetta, and then something that escapes me, but he assures me it too was fabulous, then I made a complete pig of myself with a piece of their homemade strawberry tart, which was fantastic, all custardy and crumbly... yum.  We walked it all off, later, by trying to find souvenirs that didn't appear in every single shop we looked at.  That was hard work, let me tell you.


Then we got the boat back to Venice and had a long nap.  

The wheels on the train go round and round

Italian trains are fabulous, y'know?  They're clean, they leave on time (Thanks, Benito) and the seat numbers you have so carefully reserved when you bought your tickets online only 3 months before are clearly indicated overhead.  The window seats have their numbers next to a little window symbol, and the aisle seats are next to them.  Simple, really.


Well, Mr G & I thought so, but the rather large couple from a country where a form of English is spoken, which isn't Australia*, didn't get it.  Even after the extremely nice, fluently-English speaking conductor-guy pointed to their tickets, our tickets, the window, the aisle, god, and ghod-knows what else, they still didn't get it.


Anyway, eventually they moved so we could claim our prize (the window seats, natch), then sat for the entire journey glaring daggers at us.  Well, she certainly did.  He put his earphones in & played some game on a little white boxy thing for the entire trip to Firenze.  Then they got off.  I had nearly turned purple with the effort of holding my breath for that entire time, but I breathed again once they'd gone.  In with the calm, out with the stress.


In Firenze, two delightful American Gentlemen got on the train, and engaged with us in charming, well-read and well-bred conversation all the way to Venezia, where we bid them a fond farewell, and proceeded to drag our suitcases all the way from Fondamenta Santa Lucia to Strada Nova.  I noted with some small degree of pleasure the new steps on some of the bridges that allow people with wheelchairs and idiots with suitcases to negotiate the bridges without dragging their wheels off, but there weren't enough of them to make it easy... and the idiots in tour groups didn't help either.  


Needless to say, a small tiff ensued because I didn't have my handy-dandy Venice map on me, right there, right then, and "we might have missed the turn", but Mr G solved that by going into a bookshop to buy yet another one.  That's about 19 we own now, but, to quote Ms Lois McMaster Bujold, "No artificial shortages".  Once we had the map, Mr G was satisfied that we hadn't missed the turn (see, he has absolutely no short term memory, and so could not remember from our visit in 2006 that the street we needed to turn into was almost directly opposite the street for the Ca' Doro vaporetto, unlike me), and we walked the 20 feet to our turning.  I felt almost vindicated, however, smug does not make for a happy marriage, so I held my tongue.  Kind of.


Our apartment was small but perfectly formed, with two bedrooms, PayTV and a laptop, and the most difficult-to-use washing machine I've ever encountered.  However, once I'd mastered it, it was extremely handy, so no more whining, lucky for you Mr ForeignWashingMachineMaker**.


It was also directly on a canal at the front, so we were able to leave windows and shutters open during the day, which meant we got some lovely fresh air, and it was relatively quiet, which meant we got some nice sleep, once I persuaded Mr Golightly to turn off the TV, that is - did I mention it was in the bedroom?  Same in Rome, too.  I think it's a bit weird, I have to say, to have the house's only TV in the bedroom, but Mr G liked it.  


It also had the worst shower I've encountered in a building***, where the temperature varied from 'boil your arse off' to 'freeze your arse off', and the pressured varied from trickle to slightly faster trickle.  It was one of those showers you have to run around in to get wet, which made washing my hair interesting.  


Some views, then:

View from outside the living room window.

This is a very famous building just near Ponte Rialto, which also features in this photo I took in 2003, but from a different angle:

We came out of this calle onto the canal which connects to the Grand Canal whilst we were looking for this:

The amazing Scala Contarini del Bovolo, which sadly was closed to the public when we were there, and it's probably just as well, because about 30 seconds after we got there, and an extremely nice French lady took our photo, a horde of tourists arrived, making lots of noise, disrupting every body else's views and generally being irritating.  I'm sure they would have overrun it.  We left them to it and went off in search of the Gondola parking lot!


Ciao for now!






*See?  I don't like to generalise.
**Whose name I can't actually remember.  Nothing wrong with my short-term memory.
***As opposed to 'whilst camping'

And, while we were out...

More doors:

Across the road from our apartment:

Our Apartment Building door:

Mr Golightly outside a BIG door:

And outside a REALLY big door:

Prize for the shortest door:

Prize for the oldest (looking):

Prize for most interesting behind the door:

All in the Centro Storico, the historical centre of Roma.  Sometimes it pays to stick your head inside doors marked "Non Passo Carabile"...

A day-trip

To Ostea Antica... a truly fabulous Roman town, abandoned in the 5th Century CE.  It's full of half-houses, arches, mosaics and bits of statues, and according to this website, large chunks of its remnants have ended up in museums, galleries and private collections all over the world.  See, the Goths are still with us.


One of the more interesting bits we found was the remnants of a temple to Mithras, the Persian Soldiers God:

Look familiar?


We also found these:

Gum trees.   How weird is that?  We're 10,000 miles from Australia, and yet, there they are.  And about 100 years old, from the looks.  It was a nice nostalgic moment, the smell of eucalyptus wafting around the 2,000 year old ruins... and Mr Golightly was highly amused... 


We also found a bath, albeit somewhat leaky:

And some fantastic mosaics:

And the occasional chunk of carving, just lying around:

and even the occasional building:

What did the Romans ever do for us, hey?