October 31, 2006

The Cutting Room Floor

I'm currently on the Eurostar to Firenze. Here are a few things that didn't make the regular entries. Napoli: Spending half the night vomiting cos' I still can't handle the amount of oil in Italian food. Roma: Italian soldiers making passes at me in the night, nothing happened but lets just say I'm pleased to be out of there! Roma also: Not getting the number of the hot chick from San Francisco, ug :-S

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Romarama

This morning I visited the Colosseum and Palatino. Everyone goes to the Colosseum first and there the ticket queue was quite long. However it's a combined ticket for both, so I bought mine at the empty Palatino ticket booth and then walked the 100m back to the Colosseum and walked straight in! The building itself quite impressive and entry to the games was free for ordinary roman citizens.

However everyone got a ticket with a seat number, so that the entry and exit of thousands of roman citizens was carefully orchestrated. The best seats were those closest to the arena, held by Senators who had their names craved above them. In the afternoon I explored a bit more of central Roma and did some grocery shopping. Food prices here are close to Firenze, about 5% cheaper overall.

Photo Gallery for Roma

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Welcome to Roma York

As the graffiti on the wall just outside the train station said... Yesterday I visited the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel, since they were free one day only. I arrived at 8am and by then the queue was already 3 streets long! 3hrs later I got in. The chapel was ok, though i'm not sure it was worth the wait. In the afternoon I visited the Trevi & Tritone Fountains and the Spanish Steps.

Photo Gallery for Roma

Photo Gallery for Vatican

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October 26, 2006

Sempre Lavoro

Yesterday I took the EuroStar from Napoli to Bologna to stay with Anna again until Saturday morning. Today and tomorrow I'm working, so there isn't going to be much of interest to report—well I'm going to buy a couple of new shirts after work but that's about it. On Saturday I head south again to Roma, as the Vatican museum is free this Sunday only—yes the queues are likely to be huge.

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October 25, 2006

Pompeii

Today we caught the train to Pompeii, the city that got buried when Mount Vesuvius erupted. What surprised me most was the size of the city, I spent 3.5 hrs exploring it and probably covered less than half of it. The frescos were pretty cool, as were the gardens that have been replanted. One of the buildings was an ancient brothel with frescos depicting a menu of various positions on offer!

Photo Gallery for Pompeii

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October 24, 2006

Napoli By The Sea

I'm sharing my room with a French guy from Luxembourg, today we explored the waterfront and a couple of forts and churches. I see why my friends said I had to visit here—it's really nice, the weather is good and the people very friendly. However the traffic is absolutely crazy, people doing U-turns right into on coming cars and parking in the middle of road! I also think it must be a legal requirement to honk your horn every 30 seconds to make sure it still works, and I haven't seen a single car here without dents, missing mirrors, bumpers, or all of the above!!

Photo Gallery for Napoli

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October 23, 2006

The Wild South

Southern Italy is like another country. I arrived last night in Napoli at about 9pm in the dark, it was hot, humid and busy. I went to the McDonalds in the station to get a late dinner the only a couple of letters of their sign were working and everything inside that be stolen had been stolen, including the toilet seat but fortunately I didn't need to use that!

After getting off at the correct Metro station for hostel, I got hopelessly lost. Turns out the hostel is up a winding industrial driveway in the middle of a construction site, and very difficult to find in the daytime, let alone at 10pm at night in the dark. I ended up miles away from it, being spat at by passing youths on Vespas. Napoli was starting to sound like a very bad plan.

The area I'd wandered into was pretty rough, with rubbish piled piled a metre high on the sidewalk and I was starting wonder if I was going to end up in dumpster too. However, I saw a family walking by and asked the husband for directions, but got lost again. Then they drove by in their car and motioned for me to get in and kindly drove me to hostel—without them I'd never of found it!

Photo Gallery for Napoli

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October 22, 2006

The East Coast

After Firenze I've spent two days over in Marche staying with Anna and her parents in a small town near the sea. Yesterday her father drove me over the mountains into Umbria to an even smaller town to catch the train to Roma and then on to Napoli. The mountains are really pretty in autumn but I'm looking forward to the better weather in the south as it's been raining and a bit cold here.

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October 21, 2006

Follow The Yellow Brick Road

Today is my last day in Firenze, tomorrow I head east to met up with Anna. Firenze is undoubtedly the most beautiful city I've ever been to and I can understand why so many great artists were inspired by it. However, it is incredibly easy to get lost here, the street markets being much like pinball machines, but this has lead to many unplanned discoveries, like the botanical gardens today!

My Hostel was about 5km away from the Train Station, so it took some effort to find. Below is a montage of the landmarks I use to get from Centro to the Hostel and back. The painted foot prints on the pavement are in fact to help school children find their way to school—green and red are two different schools. They also help lost tourists to find their way through the maze of streets too and I was very lost at the time!

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October 20, 2006

European Hostels

After staying in a number of hostels in Australia, with lots of hot foreign girls that all spoke English, hostels here came as quite a shock. For one they're not co-ed, so I'm stuck here with a elderly guy, a young Dutch guy, both of which don't speak English or Italian, and an old Australian guy that sleeps naked. Yes, i don't think it could worse! lol. Hopefully the next one is better!

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October 19, 2006

The Bicycle Mafia

Many people over here ride bicycles, not the modern looking ones we get in New Zealand, but bikes that look at least 40 years old. However, there is the problem of the Bicycle Mafia, who will steel your bike, stip it down, and then try to sell it back to you, lol. This may explain why all the bikes on the street have at least 2 locks, if not more, with chains that are up to an inch thick!

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October 16, 2006

The Italian Job

After 3 planes, 4 trains and 51 hours travelling I finally arrived in the City of Bologna in Northern Italy. This has been the longest trip I've ever done and navigating Milano after being awake for 45 hours straight proved to be an almost insurmountable challenge. Everything was in Italian, no-one spoke English and I was fast approaching the point of complete physical exhaustion.

Everything here is old, the airport felt like I was walking in the 1970's, there's no modern malls, big supermarkets, or chain stores. Grocery Shopping is done at several small vendors, the butchery, the baker, and yes, there is probably a candle stick maker around here somewhere too! There is also small fruit and vegetable stores that look like they haven't changed for 100's of years. Today I'm working in Anna's office at the University of Bologna, which is 918 years old...

So far I been been getting of over the jet-lag and the dodgy aeroplane food—for the first two days I had a very upset stomach and was feeling rather ill. The food here is quite different to what I thought Italian food was. They put Olive Oil on everything and I mean everything, peas, beans, carrots, broccoli, potatoes, pasta, they're all coated with oil. Bread they eat plain with nothing on it, and at the home where I'm staying they keep the dough pre-prepared in the fridge and bake it fresh each day.

I also found out why Anna and her flatmates don't have a car, apart from the fact there are no and I mean no car parks, petrol is over $3 per litre—and we thought $1.70/litre was bad!!

Below is a photo taken from my bedroom window at about 7am yesterday. Each morning the bells of the Duomo (The cathedral in Centro [the city centre]) ring to call people to mass just after dawn. On Sunday there are several masses in the morning, so they go to town on the bells—there's no such thing as a Sunday morning sleep-in here!! Tomorrow I'm heading to Firenze and Sienna in Toscana, I'll post again in a few days.

View from my window

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October 13, 2006

Please Open The Hatracks With Care

Good Morning, the local time is 6am, Friday 13th of October, Welcome to Arabia! Possibly not the best day to be flying over Iraqi airspace, but we'll find out! lol.

The Middle East is one of the most amazing places I've every been. The land of the horse lords, desert oasis's and ancient cites. The buildings here are unlike anything I've ever seen. I had the fortune of sitting beside a local on the plane, who explained the interesting places to see, the names of mountains and what it is like to do business/live in this part of world—apparently it's not a good place to have a credit card, as the interest rate is 43%!! This is definitely one place I intend to return to the explore, as my time here on this trip is very brief.

If you're wondering about the title, when the Arabic was translated to English on the plane, the Arabic word for "Over head locker" became "Hatrack" in English—however I seemed to have left my bowler hat at home!!

The view at 40,000 feet

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October 11, 2006

Tiki Tiki Bang Bang

The time to depart is near, the bags are packed, plane is ready, but where is destination on the ticket? I'll give you a clue, the airport code has an X.

I've been using Opera Mini for a little while now, it's a browser that let's even old phones like my Nokia access the Internet, including this blog while on the go. In fact i'm writing this with it right now!

I've added some code to this site that adds the graphic below to every entry posted from my phone ;-)



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October 6, 2006

Reverse Vending Machines

Just off the wire from the people at Springwise:

 Reverse vending machines (RVMs) are as the name suggests, vending machines that allow consumers to deposit used beverage containers. Instead of spewing out junk food, the machines invite customers to insert their trash for recycling. Once a customer deposits a used container, the machine sorts it and crushes, compresses or shreds, reading a container's barcode to determine the type of material. Capacity varies per model, but stand alone machines hold 1000 cans and/or PET bottles before needing to be emptied. The machines run on about 40 watts of electricity per day.

Sounds like a really good idea, as recycling can be a hassle—I still have an empty drink bottle sitting on the floor of my office, to take home and put in our recycle crate... and it's been there for 3 weeks now, lol.

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