When deux (2) becomes duh!

We have left Italy behind after a change in the weather following our recent bragging. We briefly stopped in Turin, home of the famous shroud, then moved on to Nice in the south of France. Adam has now mastered the manual gear box in the little Opal car we have hired and only tries to use the door handle to change gears once a day. We are in Provence now and even the key boards on the computer have the letters in different spots. Azerty not Qwerty.

Adam is really noticing his lack of French and is playing well the role of La Madeleine's silent body guard. So chic....

We have spent the morning in the market at Aix-en-Provence, having a great time buying cheese, olive oil, wine (looking forward to the Chateau-neuf-du-papes) herbs and vegetables. Time to get back to our chalet before the roquefort melts

Miss you all

A Room with a View

After leaving Montalcino, we headed to the brighter lights of Florence. There were probably more tourists there per square km than anywhere else we have been so far! Despite that, we endeavoured to expand our cultural horizons with a visit to David, Michelangelo's famous statue. A visit to the Duomo, Florence's main cathedral was another highlight, though as always, queueing was required at all locations. Museo dell'Opera was selected out of the many available museums for us to visit, so that Adam could see the statue Michelangelo started to carve for his own tomb, before he changed his mind and attacked it with a hammer. Oh the artistic temperament!

A few other required tourist experiences (a walk across the Ponte Vecchio to look in the windows of the jewellers shops...tourist traps for sure...and a spot of window shopping), plus the mandatory food and wine experiences, and we left feeling that we had made the most of our 3 nights. Due to our landlady warning us about the local cafes and their pricing policy, we became masters of the standing up espresso coffee and brioche for breakfast, to avoid the five fold! increase in price if you sat at a table.

We are now settled in a stunning village in a valley, right on the Mediterranean, called Riomaggiore. It is part of five little villages called the Cinque Terre, which are renowned for their stunning location. We are staying in an apartment high up in the village, with vast ocean views, as well as an eagle eye view down onto the residents. We are both very excited to be able to prepare meals again (yay! cornflakes for breakfast), and celebrated with the biggest T bone we have ever seen, and a bottle of Chianti Classico. Today we have caught the train to the other end of the Cinque Terre, to a bigger town by the name of Monterosso. We really need to make an effort to get up a little earlier, as there is a long siesta from about 1-5 pm, when all the shops close, and that is about the time we tend to arrive at our day's destination.

It is still beautiful and sunny, and the jumpers we brought with us have been unnecessary baggage weight for at least 4 months now. We had enough of constantly trying to arrange accommodation 1 or 2 stops ahead, so we came up with a firm itinerary and have booked all accommodation until we return home at the end of Oct (we know it is not the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants approach favoured by others we know, but we are very happy!)

Thanks for the comments...we love getting them.

New Photos

New photos from New York and Rome have been added. Click on the link to the right to view.

Roman Holiday

Sorry there has been radio silence for a little while, but we were having difficulty with the blog site. Since our last entry we have been experiencing the delights of Italia. Our first 5 nights were in Rome, in a gorgeous little hotel near the Vatican, with marble floors and wooden shutters on the windows. We had a nice mix of touristing and wandering around getting to know the Italian way of life a little. Maddi had been to Rome before, but it was a great place to start for Adam's first time in Europe. We went to St Peter's basilica, where a claustrophobic and very steep walk to the cupola at the top gave us amazing views over Rome. The amount of artwork inside St Peter's was a little overwhelming. Thank goodness for audio guides! Another day saw us at the Vatican Museum, full of items that the Popes have taken from other places at great expense over the years. The Sistine Chapel was a highlight, of course, and we both left with very sore necks from hours of looking straight up.

Wandering around the Roman ruins and the Colosseum provided a look even further back in the past. Without our guidebook it all would have been a bit of a blur, trying to work out what was what. Adam was disappointed that after all the warnings about gypsies out to steal our valuables, he didn't see any. Our one trial of a restaurant from a guidebook was a culinary disaster, and we did much better just walking out from our hotel in a different direction each night, and eating where there were lots of locals. Our very limited Italian skills (cappucino, scaloppine, spaghetti) meant that Adam thought he ordered a very manly strong latte, but ended up with an embarrassing babycino. Our phrasebook is already heavily thumbed, and we can now book a table, order a 3 course meal and arrange a taxi home with confidence!

After Rome we headed to Siena, which is a medium sized old town (established about 100 BC)in Tuscany. It was beautiful to just wander around the old narrow stone streets and up little stairways, never knowing what was around the next corner. It was hard to feel that we had stumbled upon a secret spot though, as the tourists seemed to outnumber the locals by 3:1. One of the best parts of this stay was our bus tour of the Chianti region, guided by a great guy from London who had stopped in Siena 6 months earlier as the first stop on a world tour, and never left. We tried a number of different Chianti Classico, which is a type of Chianti which has tightly controlled production, and can only be made in this small part of Tuscany.

A bus to Montalcino was next on the list, which itself was a gorgeous trip through the Tuscan countryside. Montalcino is another very old town of about 1300 people, high on top of a hill. Another wonderful hotel here, hosted by an Italian American who loved to talk and had lots of stories (ex cinematographer). He arranged one of his mates, called Alberto, to take us out in his car for a day tour of the local region. We were told that Alberto had been knighted for his services for food, and until very recently had been a well known restaurateur in Montalcino. We were also assured that he spoke some English, though after a day with him, he had only spoken one word of it! Who knew our phrasebook, some hand gestures (so Italian) and Maddi's rudimentary French could combine to make communication possible? We went to the locally famous cheese making town of Pienza and had a tasting plate of pecorino delicacies. It was nice, but we are sure that those with more cheese experience would have got more out of it. We tried some of the local Brunello, apparently the best red wine in Italy, and can only be produced in Montalcino. We decided against the AUD $200 shipping cost for a case though, and reluctantly decided there was no room in our packs either.

We are on our way to Florence (Firenze) today, and will keep you all updated.