Merry Christmas

Hey All, still alive despite the cold. As romantic and tradition as a White Christmas sounds (and I do love the movie) I'm beginning to think it is highly overrated! There's nothing like drinking mimosas on the deck outside Christmas afternoon. Not that I've done that on recent Christmases, but I could if I wanted!

Anyway, it is warm inside and wonderful to see friends and family again. The adventures are over but I'm still having fun, at the moment playing with a four year old is the highlight! I've been to Ottawa to visit the La Rues, family friends who may as well be family now, and now I'm in Hamilton with Mum's family. I'm staying with my cousin Suzy and her daughter Kylie (afore-mentioned four year old) and much of the family is expected for Christmas Eve dinner tonight. Then Christmas Day I head for Dad's family again and I basically flit between the two for the next three weeks taking total advantage of everyone's hostpitality. It's a great way to end my trip.

This is short because I don't think it's as interesting for you all to read about my family except for my family, who I talk to regularly now anyway so they know all about them already!

Merry Christmas everyone, hope Santa's good to you!

Oh the stupidity

Before I explain the oh so tantalising title let's see what the last days in England held...

Sheffield was fun, hanging out with Jen a bit more, seeing a large exhibition of knives and forks which Sheffield has produced for many years. Yes, that is their claim to fame. Also Michael Palin comes from there. My bus to London left from a shopping centre outside town so we went there for a while before I made my way back to London to meet Paul for yet another pub dinner.

Wednesday Paul had to work so I went to Harrods and the National Gallery. I honestly don't think I can describe Harrods. It is one of the most ostentatious, luxurious, opulent building I've been in, up there with the Vatican and Uffizi but with that nice touch of tackiness because everything is for sale. Stuck for what to get me for Christmas? Try their Under 1000 pounds section. No, really. I mean, not to buy me but they really have that section. It includes a sterling silver engraved holder for a Heinz ketchup bottle. I spent about an hour wandering around, it was hypnotic and frightening, and it made me feel quite nauseous by the end. In comparison to the shortages of what we would consider necessities in Tanzania the idea that one might want to spend 500 pounds on a Swarovski Christmas decoration was quite sickening. Still an interesting visit and they did have some rather spectacular shoes.

Then back to the National Gallery to see the wings I had missed - some of van Gogh's sunflowers and lots of other Impressionists. Very nice but not one of the better laid out galleries I've been to, lots of backtracking required and impossible to go in order of the room numbers so I don't even know why or how they were numbered!

Then dinner and drinks with Paul, a lovely last night in London. It's always sad to leave my friends but I was also really excited to get to Canada and see all my relatives!

So now the long, horrible and hopefully entertaining tale of how a smart and practical girl managed to make a really basic mistake and had to be rescued by people who love her and a few strangers as well.

Thursday was the 11th of December. Probably you knew that. Probably I knew that somewhere sub-conciously. Unfortunately conciously I thought it was the 12th. How that came about is unclear. I know that for many weeks I believed that I was flying out of London on a Thursday and that at one point my phone calendar was set to the wrong year; whether these two facts are related is not confirmed, it is all speculation. The facts which are known are that it was the 11th of December, it was a Thursday and Caitlin was at the airport three hours before her 12pm flight. Oh and, of course, her ticket was for the 12th. So after swearing in front of the lovely British Airways girl (not at her, I'm not mean, just rude and I did apologise but she just laughed and said she understood - she's British after all and they tend to think of swearing as punctuation, I'm sure she just thought it was a lot of full stops.) she asked if I wanted to see if I could get on today's flight. Everyone in Canada believed I was arriving on the 12th so to arrive a day early would be quite confusing but manageable and the alternative was taking the tube back to London, finding Paul and getting back into his flat before repeating the morning routine of up by 7 out before 8 and to the airport by 9. Not appealing. I picked get on the plane.

To their credit British Airways was great. Stand-by ticket in hand I headed to another desk to sort of register with them and get more instructions and by the time I reached the front of the queue they had decided to put me on the flight. A very full flight I found out so it was a bit of luck and some nice staff. I overheard a man in Business class saying he was lucky enough to get upgraded and I'd like to think that was thanks to me.

Now an hour before boarding and I have to contact Canada, but it's 4am there so instead I ring Peggy on my credit card (oh yeah, add to mess that cell phone battery died) and make her stay up until 1am to phone my grandparents at 7am their time to give them the good news. Plus Gatwick airport was closed so my flight, which I wasn't meant to be on, was delayed by two hours.

I did get picked up by a confused and loving Grandfather who was nice enough to only tease me incessantly since hearing the full story. He enjoyed Friday morning saying that the only thing he had to remember to do was to pick Caitlin up at the airport. It's less than I deserved for such a completely dumb thing to do so I'm content. I did consider lying to try and blame someone else but even on an 8 hour flight I couldn't figure out a believable tale I decided to give you all a nice wee laugh instead and opted for the ruefully honest tack.

Learn from me - check a calendar as you leave the house!!

So I'm here in Canada with family, it's great. Nice to not be a tourist and to just relax, can't wait to see everyone and so looking forward to Christmas. I probably won't update this as much because while Mum and Dad will be interested in how everyone is I imagine reading about what various cousins are up to is not as thrilling as being stalked in Istanbul or visiting the Louvre in Paris for the rest of you. Hope you enjoyed my tale of Karma saving my arse once more (with the help of three BA staff, one tired sister, one devoted Grandfather and a Visa card which wasn't maxed out.)

A Trip North (but not Very North)

Hello again!

So the British Museum was fantastic! Saw lots of great stuff, including interesting African, Mexican and Indian displays - not usually seen in European museums but I guess the British stole from everyone! Interesting also was the pamphlet available in the Parthenon display explaining why the British Museum would rather not return Greek national treasures to Greece. Top reasons were hinting that the Greeks couldn't take care of them properly (because they accidentally blew stuff up in 1610) and that where they are they can be viewed in an international cultural context. Nevermind that thousands of people come to see it every year and maybe they'll make donations, that's so not an issue, we're just interested in the furtherment of cultural understanding. Can you guess what side of the debate I'm on? No? Glad I was able to present a balanced point of view.

So after that I met Charles and Paul, we got some dinner and went out to meet some of their old school friends who are now living in London. I was pretty exhausted and Paul was too, plus they took us to this horribly tacky bar full of young professionals with music so loud you couldn't make yourself heard without shouting. So we went to HMV instead and then home to watch Stardust. We're exciting people.

Sunday was my last chance to see the changing of the guard because it's only every second day in the winter so Paul accompanied me out to watch men in big furry hats play the flute and carry guns with pointy knives on the front. Not simultaneously, different men played flutes and carried guns. I got some photos which I will post in due course (i.e. in about a month.) Paul then had to do some work since I had effectively distracted him for five days so I headed to the Tate Britain to entertain myself. It was really cool, lots of British artists and artists who lived in Britain so I got my fill of Turner and Constable. Did a wee tour with one of the guides talking about the meaning of flowers in paintings, quite interesting and not too long. After Tate I had some time so I headed to the National Gallery but I was a bit burned out so I only did one wing thereby missing van Gogh's Sunflowers and a lot of other famous paintings. If I can be bothered I might go back Wednesday but it depends on many factors. I did enjoy the National Portrait Gallery - lots of famous people there! Saw the portraits of Shakespeare, Henry VIII, his six wives plus his kids and more.

Monday (yesterday) I headed to Sheffield to visit my friend Jen, from Volunteer Africa. Jen emailed me to assure me that there was nothing touristy to do in Sheffield, which sounded quite nice. Mostly I just wanted to visit her, which I am in fact doing right now. So we went out for lunch and then to the art gallery which is quite cute. We went out that night for a drink and then home to watch a bunch of great panel shows. I don't think anyone in the world does panel shows like the UK, they're hilarious! Loads of comedians and intellectuals discuss current events. So it sounds terrifically dull but I love it.

Bit of a late start today, a nice lie in and cooked breakfast before heading into town for more wandering and probably lunch. Bus to catch at 4.30 to head back to London so it's a short visit but a nice one.

Londonium

Hello all, sorry about the delay in update, I've simply been having too much fun to take the time to write about the fun I've been having.

Tuesday I arrived at Gatwick airport at 8.15pm and caught a bus into London, except my bus arrived at Fulham Broadway which is about a hundred miles from Paul's house. To complicate matters I caught an earlier bus and he had just ordered a drink with a friend who lives out there when I got in so I spent my first half hour in the country drinking lager in an Aussie themed bar (not his first choice but closest to the bus stop.) It was fun, like a piece of almost home. Then we headed big pack and all to find some food because we were both starving but by the time we got to his part of town is was almost midnight and we had a mission to find a place open. Ended up with Indian from a nice restaurant, don't know why their kitchen was still open at that time on a Tuesday but didn't ask.

Wednesday was a touristy tour of the city, I saw Big Ben, Winchester Cathedral (didn't go in, £12!) Buckinham palace, St James Palace, Trafalgar Square, the Canadian Embassy (not so touristy but still cool) and had lunch in a 400 yr old pub called The Cheshire Cheese. Then we went out to Camden - pretty much the coolest place on the planet. I want to go and live in the market, or at least near by. Amy Winehouse lives there, which is not necessarily an endorsement of the area. I really loved it to the point that I insisted we go back at a later date when I had time and money to really shop. Paul's uncle works in London and we ran into him on the street, really weird since that never happens in London, and we were invited to go out for a drink with him that evening. We had to meet him in Leicester Square which is coincidentally where the Twilight preniere was taking place (Haven't heard of it? Lucky you.) and we got to battle screaming teens and preteens all waiting for cheekyboney brooder and sweepeyhair glarer, not fun. Found a lovely pub with two for one drinks and I released my inner girl by ordering a raspberry dacquiri. We had decided to go to a West End show and since my heart was set on Les Miserables or The Lion King and Paul alway thinks of beastiality with the latter we bought the cheap seats to Les Mis. The seats were right at the front, Paul literally got spit on, but we could see almost everything and were right in the action so I loved it. It is such a great musical and it was so well done, I wanna go back!

We found something for dinner and headed home to watch British comedy (Green Wing) before retiring to bed since Paul had to be up at 5 to pick up Charles from the airport. Paul is playing hostels as various people take advantage of him for free acommodation. So not really playing hostels since no one is paying him.

Anyway, he had had about 4 hours sleep and left me still sleeping and Charles had just flown for 12 hours so they were both pretty punchy all day. We went to the Tate Modern which was very very cool. Lots of great modern art and some odd contemporary stuff - Paul is doing his Art History PhD so is qualified to say things like "well that's just bollocks" and "ach, what shit." Along the walk to the gallery was the Tower Bridge and the Tower and various other sights from the Thames. We headed back to The Cheshire Cheese for lunch, it's one of Paul's favourite places. Terrifically historical - burnt down in the Great Fire and was rebuilt, Samuel Johnson wrote part of his dictionary there and invited many a famous friend around.

That afternoon we went on a major hunt for an inflatable mattress so that everyone would have a place to sleep and failed to find one for a very long time, eventually picked one up in Argos which is this crazy place where you order from a catalogue and they go get it from the storeroom for you. That evening we headed out to Wembley Arena to see Russell Howard, a British comedian who's often on a show called Mock the Week. Hugely funny, I had trouble breathing at times I was doubled over from laughing.

Friday we all slept for about 10 hours, them from tiredness and me from laziness! We got up around 11 and headed out to Camden again for lunch and shopping. I bought a few nice things, though I was surprisingly controlled. The markets have everything from secondhand stores to rave stuff. There's a store called Cyber Dog which sells a bunch of neon coloured Jetsons' style outfits. I suspect you have to take a lot of party drugs to really appreciate the clothing, but it was fun to browse. They also sold stuffed toy versions of germs like chlamidia, black death and ecoli. It would be kind of fun to give someone the plague!

We decided to cook our own dinner that night instead of going out yet again and then hit the town! We went to a couple pubs and then a couple bars. I'm still not sure what the distinction is but pubs close at midnight and bars are open later. Eventually we decided to go dancing and ended up somewhere Paul described as gay-friendly but being one of only five girls there I think it was more than just friendly! It was great, no worrying about creepy people grabbing you or about people spiking your drink or being labelled a 'tease' - not a single person in that room was interested in me, it was quite relaxing. We danced our hearts out until about 3.30am before having the mission of getting a taxi to take us home because apparently at that time of the morning all the taxis want to go home and will only take fairs in the direction they're going. Got home safely anyway and am now about to head to the British Museum! So ridiculously excited.

Yeah... I'm a classics geek. But a happy one. Except maybe they should return the Elgian marbles, just not this week. After this I think my London experiences will be complete: West End, comedy, Camden, gay bar, museum... what more is there?

Tiddlee dee potatoes

I just got back from the magical part of Ireland now! Dublin is very pretty and fun but the highlights of Dublin were definitely Frances and Laura. This week I headed South to find cute villages, rolling hills and rainbows everywhere, you know that image you have in your head of what Ireland looks like? That's pretty much accurate.

So Wednesday we headed into Dublin centre early, though not as early as we had intended, for breakfast at Bewleys, a place James Joyce frequented back in the day. Lovely breakfast where I got to try black and white pudding. Black was okay, full of flavour and spices. White was one of the grossest things I've ever eaten to the point that I almost spat it out (harkening back to the first time I tried avocado when I was 9 so it might yet end well for white pudding and I since of now a big avocado fan, but proportianally that won't happen until I'm 44.) Laura went to work while Frances and I walked to the bus station to get me a ticket to Limerick and kill half an hour walking along the dock (past some 'knackers') and back. Bus ride was uneventful and I met Mike at the other end. It was great to catch up after so long! He lives in a little community called Doora which has a pub and a church (Irish priorities are clear) and is a ten minute drive outside Ennis for all the necessities. I got a proper Irish welcome from Mike's parents who said I could stay as long as I wanted (unfortunately I couldn't really take advantage of them since a) I was well raised and b) I had plans for Sunday.)

That night his father Mick was performing in a one act play for the Ennis Players. There were three plays on and his was definitely the best, in fact they won a place in the All Ireland competition and hope to be able to travel with it as well. Thursday morning I ate three kinds of cereal for breakfast (the joy of staying with a family instead of in a hostel) and then we went out to the Cliffs of Mohar, very beautiful and rugged. The weather was clear but cold when we left and by the time we got to the cliffs it was raining and freezing so it was more like the one minute tour of the cliffs with an hour and a half driving through pretty countryside one either side. A good trip out anyway and then home to thaw out. The area is really beautiful and I must have seen half a dozen rainbows on the drive.

Friday was a trip into Limerick to find out that King John's Castle was closed, it looked good from the outside anyway. We drove past the area where people get shot and the university and stopped in Shannon for tea and cake. Also hit the two euro store where you can buy 5 chocolate bars for €2! I was excited about that. Probably a little too excited. It was Mike's friend Gary's birthday so we went out for a few drinks with him to celebrate. Not a true Irish pub experience since no one drank Guinness but it was fun all the same.

Saturday I got a bus back to Dublin to hang out once more with Laura and Frances who were playing tag team because they were working different shifts and only overlapped by half an hour! Laura and I went to the art gallery and spent a long while in the gift shop - so full of pretty things. Frances and I went shopping for NZ wine to take to Enniscorthy and for dinner supplies. We thought we might go out on the town but it was so bitterly cold that we ended up not bothering and watched X Factor instead which I've heard a lot about but never seen. It was fun, different kind of fun to going out, but infinitely warmer.

Sunday my bus left at midday so we had a nice breakfast again before Laura went to work again and Frances and I headed to the station... again. It was very much like the Wednesday before! I arrived in Enniscorthy to be met by my cousin Bridget. Want a family tree? I know I needed one! My great-grandfather Patrick Fitzgerald and his brother Francis moved to Canada, his sister Mary Fitzgerald stayed in Ireland and married somebody Dempsey and she is Bridget's grandmother. Cool? Anyway, she was great, kept saying I had 'come home.' We went out to the pub for a true Irish experience, it was loud and crowded and a woman gave me a picture of Jesus to look after me and someone got a drink poured over his head. I met a bunch of Bridget's friends and got stories about all of them, she seems to know everyone and be "practically related" to most of them! Monday we went out to Blackwater, where Patrick and Francis grew up. Got quite the tour of the area and went to a sawdust pub and a tavern for lunch before heading back to Enniscorthy and going to Carmel's for dinner, Bridget's sister. On the way I met their brother Peter's kids (Eamonn, Elizabeth, Elaine and Stephen) but Peter was working so wasn't in. Carmel has a ten year old daughter Niamh who's a firecracker. I got lots of hugs so felt quite welcomed. Their brother Tony stopped by for a drink too and I got to go out and see his house and meet his wife Eleanor - it was quite the family meeting day!

So today I got a midday bus to Dublin, where I am now taking advantage of Frances' internet account to update you all. I fly out to London in three hours so I'm about to get some supplies and head out to the airport. See you in England!

Eire (Not pronounced like ire)

So I flew out of Paris to Dublin. Flying with Ryanair so I had fun rearranging my bags so that my checked bag was 15kg and my carryon was 8. Strange rules. I mean, as far as weight on a plane surely it doesn't matter that much how it's distributed?

Arrived in Dublin uneventfully and was met by Frances! My friends Frances and Laura moved to Dublin in January to work and travel around Europe. Isn't it confusing that there are two Lauras I am visiting? I don't know how to simplify this for you other than the fact that one is in France and the other is in Ireland. If you need further clarification let me know (other than those of you reading in NZ because you know both Lauras so if you're confused then that's not my fault.)

Right, so Frances met me at the airport and we realised that it was my birthday last year when we last saw eachother and hence most of our conversation was punctuated by "I can't believe I'm/you're here!" and lots of hugs. We headed back to they're house for dinner and conversation before heading into town, ostensibly to go 'out' but instead we got crepes (very Irish) and sat in a cafe talking until Laura was done work and we headed back home for more conversation.

They both worked Sunday and I had to do washing so I hung around the house reading and watching TV while my washing took forever to be done. Then I discovered a) it hadn't spun properly so it was all sopping and b) something black had run so now all my stuff is a little grey. No real dramas here because nothing vitally non-grey was in there but it was still an unpleasant surprise so I threw a wee hissy-fit and made a big mess getting it into the dryer which I didn't clean up before I stormed out of the house in Frances' trousers because I couldn't stand it. Within about 20 minutes I realised that it really wasn't that big a deal and that I hadn't taken the time to see what the damage really was but it was a bit late to turn the bus around so I carried on and spent some time in town before meeting Laura, doing some groceries, buying some gloves (it's cold) and heading home. Damage wasn't horrific. Cream pants are now greyish but evenly enough that it seems on purpose and one pair of pink underwear must be a particularly absorbant material because now they are chocolate coloured! They probably did me a favour and save much of the rest of my clothes from being effected.

That night we just sat around chatting again, lots of fun, and I talked to my Irish cousin Bridget (2nd cousin? Removed? Twice?) who I am going to visit later this week! Very excited, and she sounded so excited to have me visiting that I don't feel at all bad about imposing. She said (in a broad accent) "Oh yeah, you don't come to visit your relative in Ireland and not get put up."

Monday was Laura's day off so we wandered around Dublin. Went to the museum, which was closed because it was Monday, went to Trinity College but didn't see the Book of Kell because it cost a silly amount, went to St Stephen's Green, pretty and open and free! Frances started early so finished at 2.30 and we met her for lunch and then brownie (yum) before doing some shopping at Penneys - this ridiculously cheap clothing (and other stuff) store with some nice stuff. Frances wanted Christmas decorations but didn't like what they had on offer.

Home to watch America's Next Top Model (oh yes we did) before an early night because we were all exhausted! We keep staying up late talking so we needed a proper night's sleep. Today the girls are working again so I'm going to head to the museum and probably along the river because it's nice and sunny. Not warm in the slightest but sunny at least so photos will look nice.

Tomorrow I head down near Limerick where Mike (the volunteer) lives and I'll visit for a couple days. I'll try to update from there but otherwise it could be a week till I can send stuff again. We'll see :)

And as requested by certain family members here is the flickr site again: http://www.flickr.com/photos/31050258@N04/

Ooh la la

Well it's been a busy few days. While in Lyon I made I list with Laura of the absolute must-sees in Paris and then the hope-to-sees and then the if-there's-times so I had a prioritised list to work through and the good news is I'm done it! Well I ,issed a couple from the last section, but they were always designated misssable anyway and I did add a few things too so it balances.

Thursday was Notre Dame in the morning. It really is so beautiful. I had intended to climb the towers but I got there early and they weren't open yet, my stair climbing plans didn't stand up under the idea of having to return especially. I walked all around the cathedral and took a bunch of photos and imagined Quasimodo clambouring all over it. I know he wasn't real, but it was such a good book that I want it to be real.

Then I wander around the Ile St. Louis which is very pretty and tiny, really lovely, and the Ile de Cité which is bigger but also pretty. Then the latin quarter (also with more pictures of Notre Dame) where I found Shakespeare and Company. People always either look for it and can't find it or just stumble across it so I was category two. Latin Quarter was beautiful but so touristy and crowded it was a bit off-putting.

I walked to Musee d'Orsay next, got a crepe on the way and felt very French (except I made a total mess and I think real French people are tidier.) Musee d'Orsay was great, it's in an old train station so it's quite different to most museums, I mean, really, those ones in old palaces are so passé. I spent a couple hours there, saw lots of Manet and Monet among others and had a great time. It was nice to feel like you could actually cope with the exhibitions, the Louvre made me feel so incompetent. Half of one floor was closed and the lovely lady I asked said depending on staff they might open it after 6pm (it was 2.30) so I decided to come back.

Musee Rodin was a hope-to-see and isn't far from the d'Orsay so I headed that way with a detour past Hotel Invalides where Napoleon is buried but didn't bother going to see his tomb. Rodin was great, lots of works on display that I wasn't familiar with but which were really amazing. One piece called Playing Nymphs was marble carved on both sides so thin that you could see light through it, really beautiful. I spent about an hour and a half wandering the gardens, the museum and the temporary exhibition about Freud and Rodin who never met but had several mutual friends and both collected ancient objects from Greece and Rome.

I still had over an hour to kill so I decided to check out the Pantheon and the Luxembourg Gardens. Checked my map and plotted my route only to find it blocked by one of Paris' infamous student protests! It was pretty impressive. Riot police, fences being pushed back and forth, tear gas canisters being waved threateningly. I don't even know what it was about but it was pretty cool. So I found a new route, saw the gardens but didn't go in; ditto for the pantheon. Had the best crepe I've had in Paris. No really, next time you're in Paris (as you will be I'm sure) head to the pantheon and then walk away from it until you get to the intersection and on your right is a green crepe shop, it's not expensive and it's awesome.

So back to the Musee d'Orsay, via Notra Dame for a night pic, and the rooms had been opened so I got to enjoy the naturalists, symbolists and the Art Nouveau. Delightful. But a really long day, I left the hostel before 9 and didn't back until about 8.30, I was exhausted. So I went to bed at about 10.

Yesterday I headed to Versailles on the nastiest day I've had yet, frezing cold, windy, with icy rain, it was so not the day for exploring gardens! I went anyway and enjoyed the palace a lot. You get a "free" audiguide (read: we've raised our prices to include the audioguide) so I enjoyed having a British accent tell me about the court of Louis the umpteenth. Unfortunately someone thought it would be a great idea to display the contemporary "art" of someone called Jeff Koons in each room so you were walking through the bedroom of Marie-Antoinette and got to see an inflatable lobster hanging from the ceiling. Not my cup of tea but someone somewhere is making a lot of money out of this. Still fun to see all the rooms and portraits. I did manage about ten minutes in the garden before scampering to the train station and the heat.

Afternoon was spent in the Centre Pompidou where I ignored all the floors except 1905-1960 where all the stuff I like is. I'm sure I could have seen some really great contemporary art if I'd had the energy but I was still feeling ultra-cynical after the Koons/Versailles experience. I loved the modern art display. Lots of Magritte and Man Ray, and a lot of people who I'm going to have to look up because their works were so interesting.

Got to the hostel earlier than usual, around 6, because I had to pack for today's flight to Dublin, which is now in 5 hours! This morning I walked to Galerie La Fayette which is Paris' answer to Harrods, and it's amazing. Big shiny and expensive, what more could you want from Paris? Then to Le Marais which is a really lovely pretty part of the city. As pretty as the Latin Quarter I think and not so touristy. I visited Victor Hugo's house (free, hurrah) and had a wee moment of hero-worship. He's so cool.

Then I came to update all of you and next I'll check out a couple vintage stores in the area before heading off to catch my bus to get to my plane. Paris is the first city I've left where I really wish I had more time, I long to stay here another... lifetime? I just have to keep assuring myself that I'll be back!

Paris When It Sizzles

I'm in Paris! Not that I'm excited or anything...

So Sunday night in Barcelona Laura and I went out for dinner to a rather flash restaurant and had rather spectacular meals. I had cannelloni to start, best I've ever had, and Laura had roast vegetables. Then for our main we got paella - yum. Dessert was toffee tart (me) and an apple creme brulee with catalonya cream (her) and both were delicious. We had some sangria and lots of chat, it was a really great night. Nice way to end our trip and almost our visit.

So Monday we were headed back to Lyon, not so early it was painful but not late enough to do anything interesting in the morning so we just packed and ate breakfast before catching the bus to the airport. Excitingly I have developed a cold so the flight was fun; as was returning to the cold weather here in France. We got back to Lyon with enough time to run some errands and then I took an unexpectedly long nap! We didn't sleep much so added to my illness I guess I needed to catch up on rest. Dinner was simple and Sondra, Laura's friend we had dinner with, came over too. I wasn't really the best company, I spent most of the night packing!

My train left for Paris (well, a stop near Paris which was €20 cheaper than Paris itself and only a short cheap train ride away) at 9.30 and Laura lovingly accompanied me to the station and saw me off. She looked very French sitting alone on the bench in the station looking at the train pulling away; it seemed like a movie where I should have leapt off the train to declare my love. I went to Paris instead.

Got to my hostel okay, no dramas. Room wasn't ready yet so I just dumped my stuff and went to see Monmatre and Sacre-Coeur. The Cathedral is beautiful and Montmartre is very interesting, different than I expected! It is very picturesque but it's also full of tourists, immigrants and stalls of cheap stuff, really lively and fun. I wanted to get stuff done that afternoon because I only have four days here and there is so much to see that I can't waste time so I walked down to the Cemetery and spent almost two hours wandering around paying my respects to Wilde, Delacroix, David, Gericault, Ingres and Edith Piaf. I couldn't find Sarah Bernhardt or Modogliani and I forgot about Jim Morrison because I'm not that big a Doors fan anyway so I was more excited about Gericault than Morrison.

Around 5 I headed back to the hostel, picked up some groceries on the way. I made myself pasta for dinner and spent a lovely evening in the social area being social! There are a couple of Aussies staying who have already made a bunch of friends in the city (after only two days) so we had a couple of music students, three Spanish tourists and a Danish guy who comes to Paris for a week every year. Also an American from Hawaii whose parents are hippies (her name is Amazing Grace, her brother is Orion Skywalker) and a British woman on her way to London from Albania. A multi-cultural night with lots of great travel stories.

Today I went to the Louvre and blew my mind. I got there before 10 and didn't leave until after 4, with only about 20 min break for lunch in the middle. And I still missed stuff! But I saw so many amazing things. One of the electives I took at Uni was an Art History paper on art around the time of the French revolution so I had studied a lot of painters and paintings from about 1780 until 1860 and had such a fantastic time seeing the pure scale and colours which photos can never reproduce. These paintings are huge! The Death of Sardanapalus and The Raft of the Medusa (Delacroix and Gericault respectively) are two of my favourites and they are so big they wouldn't fiit on the wall of my room. I can't describes everything I saw, you'd be here for 6 hours! Yes, I saw the Mona Lisa, though why anyone was staring at her when Ingres' Grande Odalisque is in the next room I don't know.

After that I decided to hit the Arc de Triomph before dark and the Eiffel tower to see it all lit up so I walked along the Camps-Elysee, bought a crepe, and watched the crazy Parisian traffic. Arc was cool, Eiffel tower was pretty in a kind of weird way. It's lit up blue so it's a bit strange looking. I'm trying to decide whether I have to see it in the daytime or if I can tick it off my list. I guess it will depend mostly on time.

So that's it for the last few days, tomorrow I'll hit Notre-Dame and the Musee d'Orsay, all going to plan. Paris is beautiful, all the quotes are true!

Hola!

Hello from Barcelona! It´s a beautiful city and we´ve loved our time here, lots of great things to see. We´ll try to add some photos from Lyon but it´ll depend on the computer and how organised we are.

Let´s see... Wednesday I updated and that afternoon Laura had a meeting for her new part time job that she starts next week so I went to the art gallery without her. It was very nice, lots of lovely impressionist pieces and a very impressive sculpture collection. I was about an hour or so there and then I went and got a coffee and pastry (of course, what else would you do in France?) Although the coee here is surprisingly bad, especially after Italy which had great coffee! Then I headed home with a few wee supplies because I was cooking! It was fun, the first proper meal I´d made since before I left NZ. I made casserole with mushrooms, chicken, potato and zucchini. Rather tasty if I do say so myself.

Thursday we had decided to go around a couple of the vintage shops which Laura had seen in her wanderings but it turned out they were all closed in the morning so we walked for a while before heading back to try and use up four zucchini for lunch (we went a bit courgette-mad at the market.) We managed three so I think that was a good effort. Then back out to find the vintage stores and somewhere nice for dinner since we decided to treat ourselves. The first vintage store was a let down, very overpriced. The second however was a treasure trove of cute dresses, none of which fit me right, and a beautiful jacket/cardigan which fit perfectly. I´ve been making do with my sweater, very stained from Africa and not the prettiest even if it is practical. So now I have a practical and pretty wee jacket - from a little boutique in France! Just to make you all jealous.

That night we wandered for a whil to find a dinner place, had a drink in a really nice little pub and then headed to a favourite of Paul´s (friend who used to live in Lyon.) I had a lovely ravioli and a local main called Quenelle, a sort of dumpling with lobster sauce. Very yum. Then cheese and dessert. We were out with Laura´s friend Sondra, who very kindly spoke French for me even though she obviously wasn´t very comfortable with it, I do feel so bad sometimes. She was very sweet and it was a lovely evening.

Friday we flew to Barcelona! This required being up at 6.45 to get a bus at 7.20 to get to the airport by 8.30 for our 9.45 flight... arrived very tired but determined to make the most of our time here! We ditched our stuff and headed out to see the cathedral, the gothic quarter and the Picasso Museum. We saw the outside of the cathedral, which was covered in scaffolding, but didn´t go in. From what we saw on a postcard later it is a very impressive cathedral! We hit a corner of the Gothic Quarter and found the museum. The Picasso exhibition was amazing. It was chronological so you could really see the development from being an immensely talented child to being an unbelievably creative adult. After that we just wandered for a long while and found ourselves at the beach! We sat for a while and just enjoyed the view and the people around us before wandering along the waterfront down to the giant Colombus monument and back to the hostel. Another walk later that evening, free dinner at the hostel and lots of chats with other travellers before we went out for a wee drink. We met a nice french guy, Jean-Marie, who is here for the weekend too and has no spanish and not great English so he and Laura had a nice chat in French. He had been recommended this lovely little bar, attached to the wax museum of all places! It was sort of forest themed so it had a great ambience, we shared a bottle of wine and Jean-Marie practised his English for my advantage.

Yesterday morning we got up around 8 but pottered around with internet and breakfast for a bit before heading off at about 10. We had read about a flea market which was not too far away so we wandered that way and found one of the best markets I´ve ever been to! We spent about two hours there wandering and browsing and spending money. It was a bad couple days for me, I lost my sunglasses and broke my watch so they were priorities for me to replace, success on both counts for only €10 total - love markets. We had designated today Gaudi Day so we left to find the Sagrada Familia. Gaudi designed this big amazing cathedral which is still being built and probably won´t be done for at least 20 years. It was absolutely amazing, one of the best things I´ve seen on this trip I think. So complex and beautiful, a stunning building. I don´t know how to describe it, google it and times the impressiveness by about a million.

After that we found a few more Gaudi buildings including his old home, Casa Batllo but missed one of the big ones, La Pedrera. We headed back to the hostel for a nap because Saturday was dancing night!! We rested up and had planned to go out for dinner but tortellini and rice with veges were on the menu at the hostel for free so we decided to save some money and eat in. Met up with Jean-Marie again and decided to walk out to the west and see the ¨Magic Fountains¨which we´d been told about. Took a totally roundabout route before we finally got there, but it was fun and so worth it. The fountains only run at night and they light up pretty colours. Then we walked back to El Raval for a drink, or a couple of drinks actually. We had mojitos which were really great and then some wine and nachoes. Chatted for a long time and invited Jean-Marie dancing with us, he had to change etc. so we went back to the hostel and on the way got discount tickets for the club which is right next-door. That solved the question of where to go, although teh cover charge was still pretty high. We got there around 1 and at first we couldn´t find the room which wasn´t hip-hop so we danced for a bit to some really horrific music before finding the other room which played everything from Elvis to U2 so we had fun and Laura made fun of my utter lack of musical knowledge. At around 3 I couldn´t handle the cigarette smoke anymore (Spain still lets people smoke anywhere so it gets a bit painful) and we went home to bed! It was a really great night.

This morning we were still up at 9, although moving a bit slower than usual. There was a funny little market outside our hostel which we checked out before going to explore the western area which we looked at yesterday in the dark. Found the park, a bunch of museums and a great gallery with heaps of free exhibitions, we saw one of Mucha and one of religious art on loan from the Uffizi. Very cool, spent a long time in the shop but didn´t buy too much. Then we wanted to see the Gaudi we missed and on the way found a wedding expo, which would have been cool but it cost too much to get in so we flagged (gee Catie, what an awesome story.) La Pedrera was beautiful and we saw a postcard for the Palau de Musica which looked pretty and was in the part of the Gothic area which we missed Friday so that was next. Very impressive stained glass windows and Gaudi mosaics, and the rest of the Gothic bit was very cool too.

So tonight we´re going out for tapas and paella, necessary I think, and then probably early to bed because all the coffee in the world is not going to keep us awake for long. I think we´re getting old.

Laura! Oh and Lyon too...

So I am in Lyon staying at my friend Laura's apartment on the banks of the Soane river and have had a lovely few days of sight-seeing and relaxing.

I had many wee adventures getting here and finding Laura. I left Verona at 9.50pm and got to Milan at midnight then got to hang out until 6.40 for a train to Paris, me getting off at Chambery. Milan has a waiting room which is handy but the benches are old wooden ones, like church pews, so I passed rather an uncomfortable night. Then it turned out that there is a limit to how many eurail tickets they'll sell for a French train and I had missed out so I had to pay full price (not too expensive, but unexpected costs are annoying.) Got to Chambery to discover that the train my eurail guide told me to take didn't exist so I caught the next suitable train and was half an hour late meeting Laura who was well panicked that she had missed me and I had handily forgotten which exit we were meant to meet at so I stood in the complete wrong place (knowing it was wrong but figuring that if I stood still for a while she might come to me) and voila, she appeared. I was waiing under the "meeting point" sign so the first thing she said, after a hug, was "But it's not our meeting point!" But it all worked out in the end so we should probably stop worrying about could-have-beens.

Lyon is lovely, a very pretty city with lots of cafes and patisseries so I'm quite at home. No gelatoso I've gone cold turkey there, but tarte praline is a pretty good substitute. Friday we went for lunch to a bagel place and then did some groceries and walked around the town. I was pretty exhausted, sleeping on a church pew for four hours isn't my body's idea of rest, so we hung out at home eating cheese, bread and salad and then watching Obama speeches - he's so impressive! I thought we should have had popcorn. Laura's flatmate Louis was in London until Sunday night so we got the space to ourselves for a bit. Louis studied in NZ for a year so we already know each other which is handy. Laura has to find a new flat at the end of the year because Louis is moving so she's been emailing and calling people to find something not-to-expensive and not-too-inconvenient. Of course those two features rarely go together!

Saturday we got up early and we climbed Fourvière and saw a big cathedral, then down the hill to look at a couple smaller churches but they weren't open until the qfternoon so we headed back to the apartment and ate baguette for lunch, it was super! In the afternoon we went for another walk, back to the churches which hadn't been open, one of which had five guys break-dancing outside, so that was fun to watch.We looked at the pretty churches and then went for a walk out the other direction where Laura introduced me to the delicious tarte praline. Dinner was nice, Laura invited Joanna, an American girl studying in Lyon, to dinner and she brought an apple pie for dessert. We went out for drinks nearby and had intended to go dancing but I still hadn't fully recovered from my train ordeal and was almost falling asleep at the table! It was a little embarrassing, especially since we were sharing our table with three English guys who we'd just met. I'm sure they have a great impression of New Zealanders now!

Sunday we were meeting some of Laura's friends to see an art exhibition at 11 so we went to the market early and had fun buying fruit and vege and cheese. We may have gone a tad overboard on the capsicum and courgettes but I'm sure we can just eat a lot of salad. The exhibition was of modern art from 1945-1949 so there was lots of Pollack and Rothko and then lots of European artists who we hadn't heard of so now I have a list of people to look up in my edu-Catie project! Sunday afternoon we hung out at the apartment mostly because that evening we were attending the ballet! Prokofiev's Romeo and Juliet was being performed at the Opera House and Laura got two of the last three tickets available. It was really good, especially Juliet. The costumes and design were futuristic, the stage looked like something from Stargate, and they had cut out a lot because they wanted to shorten it, it was less than two hours and Tybalt was still alive at teh end so if you're familiar with the story you can imagine that Laura and I had a sort of "Huh?" moment at that! But the production was beautiful and we both teared up when Juliet was trying to wake up Romeo, always a good sign. It was fun gettin dressed up and going out and we had wine and cake afterwards since it wasn't very late.

Monday was a bit of a lazy chore day. We woke up late, talked to NZ for two hours then went to do our laundry then groceries. It was just a get-stuff-done kinda day. We had to go on a mission to find a camera cord because I cleverly left mine in Florence! We went to three different plqces before the guy in the last place told us we'd have to order one in for €30 and it would take 30 days so why not just buy a card reader? So that's how we solved my problem in the end, now I have a multi-card reader which does the same job. Tuesday was Armistice which is a public holiday so it seemed like lots of places closed for Monday too, wanted an extended weekend. Laura made a pretty fabulous lasagne for dinner (I pretty much bullied her into it because Joanna had talked about how good it had been.) I spent the whole evening transfering photos to CD because I only had space on my camera for 3 more photos!

Monday night was also ny interview for the journalism course which I want to do next year. I rang using Skype and then discovered that my earpiece was broken so I ended up calling ten minutes late, but he was very nice about that. I guess you cacn't expect calling long-distance to go without incident! I had practised a lot of answers and thought a lot about what he would ask but the interview went really well and after 11 minutes when he asked if I had applied to any other programmes I said "No, if I don't get into this course I'll have to consider my other options" and he said "I don't think you'll need to worry about that." So there was smiling and arm-pumping and trying to sound like a grown-up on the phone. I should receive an official letter at the end of November but since I'll be in Ireland I'll have to rely on my family to be privacy invaders so we can have official arm-pumping and smiling and cheering.

Tuesday we went for a walk, public holiday etc everything was closed, but we picked a bad day because it was raining off and on all day. We headed up a hill and found a market and a carnival of all things! Got quiche for lunch, hid in a cafe from the rain, ran when it stopped for a minute and found nuttella crepes, very exciting. So we headed down the hill with our yummy hazelnutty treat and decided to see a film since it was such a rotten day. We had to find one which doesn't dub stuff so we ended up in a wee arty place and saw The Visitor which is about a depressed widower and illegal immigrants in New York, very good, we liked it.

Dinner was at Joanna's with her friend Michelle so it was a nice English speaking evening. All Laura's French friends speak excellent English but I feel bad making them speak my language when obviously they could all converse quite comfortably in French if I weren't there.

That's it for today, talk to you again from Barcelona! Oh and forgive typoes, French keyboards are crazy!

Venice and Verona

Okay so my hostel had free wifi but no laptops that we could use so hence no update until now, when I found a place in Verona with internet for €1 per hour! That's really cheap, I was stoked.

Okay so it was Sunday afternoon and I was about to find myself some dinner when I left you. So I wandered in circles until I found a place with the right look for what I wanted, and adorable little trattoria with yellow table clothes and a big wooden door. It was quiet, but that's because I was eating at 7 and no one eats until 8 here. I asked for a recommendation from the waitress and she suggested the lasagne bolognese so that's what I ordered. I thought it might be like the spaghetti bolognese and was hesitent to go with something standard but I had asked for her advice... with great results! Bologna style lasagne is so yummy! All kinda cheesy and spicy. It was great :) Then gelato and back to the hostel... It was a good day :)

Monday I headed out to Ferrara for the day and it was lovely, but Siena was much prettier. Ferrara has pretty old bits, but there are lots of modern things slung in between so it's not as cool. I did enjoy myself, saw the outside of lots of cool stuff but it was Monday so all the museums were closed. Not a big news day really.

Tuesday I caught the 9am train to Venice, easily found my great hostel. Venice is super expensive but as soon as I'd paid I got to forget about that and just enjoy it. The place is really enw and the guys worked together at a hostel in Florence before opening their own hostel, and they have a puppy who is gorgeous! It was pretty social too, we all sat around last night drinking wine and talking, and the Americans celebrated having a new president! So I dumped my luggage in the room and went out for a walk in the pouring rain. Visited San Marco and the Rialto and then walked along the water for a while before getting totally completely ridiculously lost. I enjoyed it for the first hour, being lost in a city is my favourite part sometimes, but it was so wet that I was soaked and my sneakers are still wet through, completely horrific and then I got cold and just wanted to get home. It was cute though, I asked for directions to San Marco because from San Marco there are signs to the train station and I was staying right beside the train station and a nice man gave me some directions and then said "And you will find a big street with a red cafe. Then you ask for new directions." Which is so true in Venice! Oh my goodness, I couldn't believe the number of dead ends and circles! So I found my way hostel-side around four and just stayed in the rest of the night, cooked some pasta, chatted with some other people. Lovely night actually, when the rain let up a bit we went and got gelato!

Yesterday it was sunny entirely thanks to the power of my mind - I was determined that it would be nice weather because I wanted just one picture of me on a canal with a blue sky! And voila, I got my way. So I decided to head for the Galleria and the Peggy Guggenheim and I thought I'd walk because nothing in Venice is that big, it's just twisty... really twisty. After I hit the exact same dead end from three different directions I decided to take teh water bus, but that is €6.50 for one hour which is a rip off so I sort of snuck on and didn't pay and then spent the next half hour sweating because although our hostel guy said they never ever check two girls in our hostel got €50 fines the night before! But I made it without incident, the Galleria was lovely but the Guggenheim was AMAZING. Can you imagine having a private collection cool enough to become a museum? Yeah, fantastic. I now have a list of artists to look up and educate myself. I met two American women there, one of whom lives in Venice and the other was her visiting friend, so I went around with them there and then out for coffee afterwards, it was lovely. Headed slowly back to the hostel and managed to catch sunset on the Rialto, very cool! So it was a really nice meandering kind of day.

I really loved Venice, it was so beautiful at every turn and there was so much to see which wasn0t even a "sight" it was just pretty. I took so many pictures in Italy that I'm going to have to buy a DVD and figure out how to put all my photos on it because I'm out of space on my memory stick and on my flash drive. Really great.

Today I headed for Verona with two girls from my hostel, Alanna and Katie. We got here around noon and Katie was super organised so she played tour guide and showed us all the best sights. Yes I touched Juliet's right breast and carefully avoided her left! A few people on the Japanese tour didn't seem to really get the tradition so we watched lots of them get there picture taken hugging her or just hanging off her arm. Also saw a castle, a couple palazzos, an arena and a few churches before a lovely lunch at a cafe on the piazza de Erbe. Bought myself a little brooch in the shape of a mask because the masks are so beautiful but I can't get one home! It was a really nice day to have people to walk and talk with, and to hand the reigns over! Alone I have to make all the decisions but instead I played duckling and just followed Katie everywhere. Fun! And good weather again. Oh and did I mention it was a THREE gelato day? New record that one... Verona is lovely, I think it is better competition that Ferrara against Siena, it's all wide winding streets and big colourful buildings. Ooh and I stood under this whale rib which hangs from an arch in the city (google it, there should be pics and stories) and had my picture taken. Supposedly it's going to fall when a perfectly just person walks under it and so far despite a lot of tourists and a few pope it's still there! Better story than the Mouth of Truth in Rome which is meant to bite liars - I stuck my hand in and nothing there either but there are probably more liars than just people so I don't know why there aren't more tourists with missing fingers. Of course what is the whale rib falls and hits the just person? Isn't that counter-productive?

So tonight I train to Milan, wait six hours in the train station overnight and then head to Lyon to meet Laura! So excited!

I think that's all my news really... Doesn't seem that long. Oh well, I'll give you guys a break :)

Bologna and beyond

Ok so where was I? In an internet cafe in Florence on Wednesday night, yes? Huh, I just reread my last post to catch up (I forget what I've told you and where to start) and it ends with the rather mysterious single word paragraph of "Shoes." Not so unusual really considering my general obession but I'm sure a point or curiosity.

Basically I had the most amazing shoe experience ever and couldn't even formulate the words to describe it. I have known for a little while that I needed to buy a pair of shoes because while my trusty Converse Chuck Taylors are still comfy and stylish and loved I am attending the ballet on Sunday the 9th of November and my options included Chucks, jandals or hiking boots. Très chic (I don't know if that's the right accent for the e, there are too many options on this keyboard.) So I needed shoes and had been vaguely staring in the window of shops to find something I actually liked and could afford and which would be semi-practical to travel with (stilettos = fun but not functional.)

So remember the rain? Torrential and horrendous and I hid in a cafe? Well when it let up and I asked where Piazza Independenza was it turned out I was just aroudn the corner from home. Heading along Via Nazionale, the street my street comes off, I suddenly noticed a little shop I had never spotted before with bright blue paint and overcrowded windows. I walked through the open door and discovered to my right an old Italian man making shoes. As I entered the store I was surrounded on all sides by shoes of literally every description, even hanging from the ceiling. There were jester's pointy shoes and big bright clown shoes, classic black brogues beside almost as classic huge black goth boots. The proprietor came out to say "Ciao" and was the most amazing man I've ever seen with a huge white beard dressed in an outfit which was white (well, underneath) and covered in colourful paint splatters, pants, shirt and boots all matching and made by he and his partner, of course. So I browsed this amazing little store and saw, sitting on the shelf between a jagged cut gladiator sandal and a big soled black boot, one modest little black shoe. 1930s/40s style with little laces and a small heel, I think I met my soulmate - we recognised eachother. Ok, so I exaggerate, but it was a special moment. And then it fit perfectly (in a shop like this you can't exactly ask for an 8 1/2) so then the fun of the hunt for the second shoe began! Literally every shoe is on display so we had to hunt for it, but when found it was never doubted that they would go home with me! So I had to go get a lot of cash (no visa for these aged hippies) but I am now the owner of handmade Italian leather shoes. I had some eek moments about the money until Mum reminded me that I worked damn hard for that money and ought to enjoy spending it on something so utterly me. So now I just glance often at my feet and sigh happily. So there lies the long and exciting story of "Shoes."

Thursday morning I packed and checked out around 10 to catch a train to Bologna. Got to Bologna a bit after 12, asked a guy with a lanyard where to get my bus, he put me on a bus and told the driver to drop me at the right stop. So I waited at the stop, got the right bus and got to my hostel, the Centro Turisto Camping-Hotel. It sounded a bit inconvenient but was really cheap, and it turned out to be great, bus is pretty straightforward so I'm happy. I didn't bother going back into town that afternoon, I did the hundred little jobs which add up - like laundry. Ha, you should have seen the outfit I ended up wearing to do my laundry! A skirt I got in Africa with the tank top from my swimsuit, the only clean woolen jersey I had and my raincoat! Awesome. But soon laundry was done and I could look vaguely sensible again. The hostel retaurant does cheap pizza which is really good so that was my tasty dinner.

Friday I headed into Bologna early to explore. I decided Friday would be Church Day so I hit about 8 out of the million and a half that Bologna had to offer. Saw the tomb of Saint Domenicus, very snazzy. I've become a bit flippant about churches but the Basilica of St Petronius was really amazing, so amazing that I went to church there this morning. It's very open and airy and light, with terracotta coloured pillars and edges which make it seem more welcoming than the plain marble or concrete ones. I liked it. I also went in to the Palazzo D'Accursio which houses the Municipal Art Collection in a wing of the old palace so it was cool art (with signs in English, bonus) in pretty rooms, well worth the free ticket. Also in the palace is the Morandi Museum, full of artwork by an artist from Bologna but it was quite reptitive stuff and sadly not very impressive after the majesty of the other gallery. Oh and the stairs to the first floor of the palace are really shallow and wide because they were designed to allow a horse and carriage up them! Those crazy noble families. I got a bit tired in the afternoon and was trying to decide what to do as I wandered the main piazza and I ended up in the library where I spent a delightful hour reading The Guardian and New Yorker. So now I'm all caught up on how McCain is election scum (something like 80% of his advertising budget is spent on negative ads about Obama) and why it's a myth that genius exhibits young (Picasso may have peaked at 25 but Cezanne was awesomest in his 50s) so I felt smarter when I left. Dinner was again pizza, but a different kind so it's ok, there is variety in my diet.

Yesterday I went to Ravenna, famous for it's mosaics but my motivation was pure Dante, he's buried there. The mosaics were certainly also impressive, I even bought a few wee giftcards with pictures of birds from the souvenir shop. I enjoyed walking around Ravenna although it isn't the prettiest city I've been in in Italy, in a way that made it seem more 'real'... I mean, not every Italian can live in Siena, right? Dante's tomb is majestic and I made a nice American lady take my photo in front of it, which I would show you but I forgot my camera cord. Next time. I caught a different bus to the hostel because it required no waiting but I missed the stop and had to walk twenty minutes back, following the bus stops, thank goodness it wasn't raining!

So today was Museum Day and I decided to go to church because I went a lot in Tanzania and found it really nice, being part of a community, and I find mass in another language very soothing. It's not as scary to be warned of brimfire if you can't understand a word of it! And the Basilica, as I said, it beautiful so I spent a lot of time staring at the ceiling. Then the museums! Bologna rocks because almost all the museums are free! I went to the Museum of Archaeology, mummies, vases and old statues; the Medieval Museum, illuminated books, armour and statues of Popes and Saints; the University Museum, old maps, model ships and wax anatomy models. I missed the Modern Art Gallery because I couldn't find it easily (the signs stopped before I could get near it) and the National Picture Gallery because it cost €10 - ha! I sat in a cafe reading and drinking coffee for about an hour, delight, before deigning to come and update all of you!

Tomorrow I'm going to explore Ferrara, which is the picturesque medieval city in this region, so I can compare it to Siena. Then Tuesday it's the early train to Venice and my exploration of the sinking city can begin! I think my hostel there has free internet so you can expect an update in a few days, probably a good deal shorter than this one unless I fall in love with a handbag, coat or man!

Firenze

So Monday I went to Siena for the day. Whenever I said I was going to Florence to Italians they were unimpressed but everyone perked up when Siena was mentioned so my expectations were pretty high. The city didn't let me down, it is exactly how you imagine a little Italian town will be, all curving narrow streets and tall shuttered buildings. The Cathedral was beautiful, the Palazzo was impressive and Piazza del Campo was very pretty, although I had great trouble imagining a horse race there! It was an overcast day but didn't make good it's threat of rain so I quite enjoyed my wander around the little town. Lunch was foccacia and a lot of pastries. Patisseries here (here being Greece and Italy thus far) sell things with a price per kg so it ends up being really affordable to buy two or three little pastries! And super yummy. I mostly just wandered for the four hours I was there, it was a pleasant place to wander.


That night I was so tired from my back to back expeditions that I just read and wrote letters in my room. I was invited out by another guy in the hostel but decided I was too wiped, luckily didn't feel guilty because the other girl in my dorm made the same decision, we spent the evening on our beds doing solitary activities but feeling vaguely social.


Tuesday I decided to explore Florence and headed early to the Uffizi Gallery to join a reasonably long queue and suddenly get every "organised by Italians" joke I've ever heard. Despite supposedly opening at 8.15 no one got in before 8.45, not even the people who had pre-booked tickets and were in the short queue (not me, €3? Ha!) So then we were warned we would have to give up all our bottles and knives (among other things) but maybe the two cancel eachother out because I got to keep both my swiss army knife and my drink bottle. Once I was in it was pretty amazing though! I'm very tempted to go back to study art history now!


There is a lot of religious art from the 13th-16th centuries with Boticelli, Titian, Leonardo and Raphael among the most famous examples there. I was blown away by everything. I have done one art history paper and some reading, but my knowledge of pre-1700s in pretty much nil, and this changed every preconceived notion I've ever had. So that was a good experience! Boticelli's Birth of Venus is there so if you wanted a visual of something cool I saw, that's one for you.


After that I headed accross the Ponte Vecchio, a really old bridge with jewellery shops along it, for the Church of the Santo Spirito. A really beautiful church, I was impressed. I think it might be my favourite church I've seen because it wasn't as ornate as most of the ones in Naples and Rome. It had big paintings on the walls and then quite plain pillars and design, it combined the ornate and the simple to be very graceful. And I gave them some money for being free, it seems strange how many churches charge for entry.


As I left there it had started raining, as it had been threatening all day. I bought an umbrella on the street, and I bargained the price down. I had seen the day before, when it wasn't raining, €3 umbrellas on a street stall and when a guy on the corner chased me (I was ducking from overhang to overhang) and said €5 I just said no without thinking and he said four and then three, so I said yes to three figuring that was a standard mark up instead of a desperate-tourist markup! So I got my umbrella, thankfully since later it was raining so hard I'd have paid €10 for it! I decided that today was a day to sit in a cafe and read so I headed for a bookshop mentioned in Lonely Planet. I'm reading Dante's Divine Comedy and loving it, but I need to intersperce the cantos with something a bit different. I took in a paperback to exchange and ended up getting two books for €2.50, hurrah.


The bookshop is right behind the Duomo so I decided to duck into the Cathedral to check it out and found one of the nicest cathedrals I've been in, very open and airy, it felt lighter than usual. And they had actualy candles to light which I did. Although personally my beliefs don't really extend to an afterlife I like the idea and the action of lighting a candle for those who have passed on but every church I have been to seems to have replaced these with electric candles so you make a donation and flick a swith as your offering! Not exactly the romantic feeling of lighting a candle from another flame and leaving it to burn itself out. So it was nice to find an old-fashioned candle tree. Below the cathedral there are the foundations of an even older church too so that was another interesting sight.

I thought I'd head to a cafe near the hostel but managed to get myself 100% lost! I took a wrong turn right at the start and walked for half an hour before arriving at exactly the place I left from - I still don't understand how that happened, lost I get, but in a big circle? Anyway then I found the right street but missed my turn and fell off the map, headed in the right general direction and got tired so I ducked into a little non-touristy cafe for a latte and chocolate croissant to finish my journal (I was a week behind yesterday and now I'm all up to date!) Turned out I had come in another wee circle around my hostel and with a little help from the cafe owner I found my way to Via Nazionale.

This morning I headed to the Galleria d'Academia to see the most famous David - he was indeed impressive. The Gallery in general wasn't as good as Uffizi, but there was a really interesting musical instruments museum and a lot of great religious art too. Interesting to note that while faces and clothing seemed to come easily to most of these artists babies were definitely a difficult point! Most of them looked more like freaky blobs of flech than actual offspring of a human, and since they were meant to be baby Jesus I don't think that's the look they wanted. I really want to learn more saint iconography now, I've figured out Catharine and her wheel, Sebastion and his arrows, and Julian always has a red cape and a sword so I think he's the patron saint of Super Heroes! But lots of them have books and hats and stuff that obviously means something, but I don't know what.

After that I headed up to piazzale Michelangelo which is meant to have amazing views of the city, and it does. I ate my lunch up there and enjoyed the pretty city. Then I climbed even higher to the Church of Saint Miniato (I think) and saw even more pretty city and landscape, Tuscany is definitely one of the most beautiful places I've been, it looks just like a watercolour. It was neat climbing the hill because it was exactly 1pm and the bells were ringing as a climbed, it seemed like they were for me especially.

Then I just wandered the streets, explored markety areas and ate gelato. Now I'm going to find some dinner and think about packing my stuff up. Tomorrow I head to Bologna! I'm excited, I intend to day trip out to Ravenna and maybe Ferarra (there might be more r's in that). I'm staying five nights there too because I was going to stay more in Venice but it turns out that off-season Venice and Verona get even more hellishly expensive because the youth hostels close! How mean is that? So instead I'll have two nights in Venice and a day in Verona before I go to Lyon to see Laura! Yay!

Shoes.

So Thursday I chilled out a bit, literally since it rained lightly, but also in the relaxing kind of way. I headed off at about 12 and wound my way to Campo del Fiori and through the Jewish district both of which were really pretty and worth a look. Then on the the Protestant Cemetery to pay tribute to Keats, Shelley, Goethe and lots of cats! There's a sort of cat shelter thing run by volunteers in the cemetery so there are a lot of cats about. It's kind of nice, they're very quiet and there's a poem by the gate about the guardians of the souls. Then back to the hostel, so only three hours of wandering instead of my standard eight! More relaxing, read my book, went to the supermarket, cooked some dinner... That was it for me!

Friday I got up early and headed to Tivoli to see Hadrian's Villa! The bus took longer than I expected and by the end I was busting so instead of getting off the bus at the Villa Adriana stop I stayed on until the terminal assuming there would be a loo there. Not only was I wrong, but turns out the terminal is in central Tivoli - on top of a hill. I ducked into some kind of official building (Uffizio di Tribunale Tivoli?) for their facilities before having to figure out how to make my way to the bottom of the hill to find Hadrian's holiday hot spot. I didn't want to follow the motorway because it had no path and wasn't very pretty so I just found a road that headed downwards and kept walking... and walking. I considered turning back but when turning around requires steep uphill it's not much of a bet which I'll choose! It all worked out anyway, turned out the reason there was no traffic was the big guard rail that ran along the main road and across the end of my path. So I jumped the rail and found myself in the right area! Twenty minutes of sign following and I had found the villa, paid the exorbitant fee and found myself in a lovely green park. I followed various signs and discovered that that Hadrian wasn't so dumb. The whole area was lush and beautiful, and very peaceful. It must have been a lovely retreat from the city then, and it was definitely a nice escape from Italian traffic!

Of course getting home was a mission, but I found the right stop with my limited Italian (or complete lack) and a nice Italian man who realised I didn't speak any Italian but kept talking for another five minutes sold me a ticket! So I found myself on the right bus and got back to Rome in time to cook myself the rest of my pasta and repack my bags! I'm getting really good at packing, it's still annoying but now I've got it done in no time at all. I'm thinking I need to buy something really annoying and bulky to challenge myself, like maybe Spanish boots...

Saturday I wanted to find this cool sounding market with lots of food and clothes which I had marked on the map, and I did find a big space which seemed ideal for holding a market, but sadly no actual market was found. Oh well, next time! So I just meandered again, one of my favourite activities and this time strangely found myself exactly back at Termini, really near my hostel! So I went to the supermarket, bought some lunch, ate some lunch, collected my bags and headed for Florence! Very excited.

Found my hostel almost easily and settled in before going for a walk to find a cash machine which would except my sad foreign ATM. Actually it wasn't that difficult, it's just that Italy is full of reginal banks (Bank of Tuscany, Bank of Naples...) and lots of them don't take Plus cards. No stress because the big ones all do and BNL came through for me, handily placed near a gelato place!

So that was yesterday. Today I headed for Pisa to confirm that the tower of is still leaning. It is. I almost skipped it actually but the train was free on my Eurail pass so I though I might as well. The thing is I've seen lots of cool old towers which are still upright, and that seems somewhat more impressive than one which is tipping. Still, it does lean which is something of a novelty. I didn't climb it because a) it leans, not a trait I generally look for in climbable architecture and b) it costs €16 to climb it which is what I'm paying for a bed each night, I just don't approve of that kind of scale. I did however get a lovely photo of me in front of it which will go up on Flickr if/when it starts working!

Tomorrow is Monday and everything in Florence is closed so I'm going to do back to back day trips and visit Siena. My hostel doesn't have free internet this time (so sad) but I've made sure my one in Bologna does because I'm a communication junky.

Oh and I've compiled a list of tacky Pope souvenirs. I think the winner is the pill box with the Pope shaking hands with a Cardinal, both in big hats. Runners up include magnets, badges, collector cards, calendars and full A2 posters. Honorary mentions are the Catholic Priest calendar (check out Flickr) and the Vatican shot glasses; due to their lack of Pope they couldn't win the grand prize but they should really have had their own category!

I guess that's it for now... I'll update again in a couple of days!

Roman Holiday

Let's see... Naples seems so long ago! Monday I had a really nice lazy day, usually I'm up and out early so this time I stayed in bed, missed breakfast, ate pastry, watched TV (So You Think You Can Dance and Sex and the City), read a book (Conn Iguldon, Emperor series, not too bad), ate lunch with the hostel owners' family and caught a train to Rome!

My hostel is nice, free internet (always a bonus), easy to find and I met two English guys in my dorm who were going for a night walk to take in the lit up sights so I tagged along. It was nice, although also strange because I didn't have any kind of map in my head so I just got led in circles, pretty circles, until we got back magically to the dorm! I saw the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps so my sightseeing got an early start!

The next morning I started early and headed to the Roman Forum, in a round about kind of way since despite the map in my hand I struggled. I made it anyway and was unpleasantly surprised to find that it was no longer free before being pleasantly surprised to find out that for €12 I could go to the Forum and Palatine Hill and the Colosseum, so that's what I did. I wandered the Forum/Palatine area for three hours, I could definitely have done more but I was suddenly starving so I had to head out and find some food! Then on to the Colosseum - wow! It does take some imagination, since people in the middle ages decided to steal the marble so they could build the other monuments I would visit along my way. Still, it is huge and impressive. I could just picture Russell Crowe marching down the tunnel to his victory. There was an exhibition on art which has been taken from and then returned to Italy which was interesting. Napoleon liked to keep stuff, like souvenirs I guess "Oh yes, I just picked that 2000 year old statue up while I was in Rome. It brings out the feather in my hat, don't you think?" One interesting thing was that Italy also returned stuff to Egypt, Lybia and Ethiopia in the spirit of giving back.

So that was another hour or so, then I traversed all the same sights I had seen the night before, but in the day time - Trevi Fountain, Spanish Steps, the Wedding Cake (officially known as the Monumento a Vittorio Emanuele II but called the wedding cake by locals due to it's extraordinary resemblance to an over decorated white cake.) And then the Pantheon - wow. I can't imagine that it is as old as it is! Apparently they can't really figure out how it was built considering the technology they had available at the time. I mostly stood staring at the ceiling, and had a quick visit to Raphael's tomb. Really amazing.

After that I got gelatto. Here starts an eloquent wax on the most amazing gelatto skip it if you really don't care about my ice cream obsession! Now ususally I'm not a fan of chocolate ice cream. Don't have a clue why, love chocolate, love ice cream but chocolate ice cream kind of glugs in my throat and sticks and I just don't enjoy it as much as other flavours. But if a sign says Dark Chocolate then who says no? Oh. My. God. Has anyone other than Mum and Peg tried Betty Crocker Dark Chocolate icing? Peggy and I use to sneak spoonfuls when we thought Mum didn't know (which of course she did.) This was just like that but cold. It was like eating magic. I might go back for more today!

After that I just walked around for a few hours looking on the map to see if I was near anything worth a visit and then walking in vaguely that direction. I saw a lot of piazzas, a few palazzos and I found one museum which I didn't end up going in but which had these intriguing stair up the side, with no signs or rope to keep me out, so I found a nice garden with a fountain and statue and an exit right beside the Quattro Fontane (four fountains.) Rome is amazing, the only downside being that there is way way way too much to see and remember! The main things will stand out but I just know that I'll go back through my pictures and say "Well it's definitely a fountain, but which one?" It's easy to see all the sights because they really are quite close together but to remember them all I think will be the greater challenge.

So that was Tuesday and Tuesdays my hostel has a free pizza and beer night (a major reason I chose this one!) So the English guys, Shane and Sam, and I went early so we could eat more than our fair share of what was very good pizza and not horrible beer. After dinner we went to Trastevere, an area on the other side of the river, for a drink and found a really lovely bar where they let us bargain over the price of the wine and gave us free nibbles! So we shared a bottle of wine and played trumps. A really nice night. Because I travel alone I don't often get to do things like that, especially since the metro stops running at 11.30pm so we walked back to the hostel, about half an hour so not a long walk but not something I could do alone! So going out for a glass of wine was a highlight of the day - along with everything else I did.

Wednesday I woke up early despite the late-ish night out and I headed to the Vatican to get my Pope on... Although actually I didn't see the Pope. I might have been able to, Wednesday at 10 he does his audience with the public but you're supposed to book in advance (short queue) or else wait until they know how many spare seats there are (really long queue). I didn't realise at the time but I probably could have caught a glimpse by walking to the end of the piazza where there's a wide open bit. Couldn't have gotten in or close since the Swiss guards who protect him are everywhere, but I'd at least have seen the blur of a big hat. Instead I went to the Museum, that was exciting. Really cool, quite the museum! They've set up a clever one-way system of seeing stuff where you can either skip straight to the big stuff (Sistine Chapel) or meander through the different rooms of exhibitions. I meandered of course, how else would I have seen Laocoon and His Sons? It's such an impressive statue, and you can definitely see the inspiration to Bernini and others. I'll be honest, I sort of ignored the map room and the tapestry room - sometimes you find there's just too much to see and have to prioritise! I saw the Stanze of Raphael and had my picture taken in front of the School of Athens (well, part of it, crowds wouldn't allow for me with all the cool guys, but I got Plato and Aristotle so that'll do.) His paintings are truly amazing, I eavesdropped on a tour group and found out that the first (less impressive) room had been done by his students, then walked around to be amazed by the Deliverance of Saint Peter which is really beautiful. And St Peter has the face of the Pope! Not the new Pope of course, the Pope of the time.

So then through the Borgia Apartments which is all modern religious art where I got mad at all the people who ignored Rodin's The Thinker, just because you came to see Raphael and Michelangelo doesn't mean you can't show some respect... Then I proceeded to glance carelessly at almost everything else in the rooms because I couldn't take it all in.

The Sistine Chapel was very impressive, but also smaller than I expected and the Creation is way more complex than implied by that God touching Adam clip that you always see. I spent a long time wandering around the room (slowly pushing through crowds of people, for a smallish room they sure do push it full) and wondering why God wasn't offended by Adam's complete nudity, but my shoulders would have been too much for him. Wait, that sounds way too flippant - the paintings, skill and scale are awe-inspiring and impressive. I think part of the problem is that I personally find that kind of set up overwhelming, there is just too much too look at. I do better when I can just look one on one with a painting in a frame because I know the boundaries of the painting and can really develop an opinion. I think to really appreciate the Sistine Chapel I would have needed a few hours, a guide book and no crowds. Instead I had about half an hour before I couldn't take in any more and before the endless push of people drove me out, so while it was an experience I wouldn't trade, I will continue my Sistine experience with a good library book when I get home!

After that there isn't much museum, I stopped in to the Carriage Pavilion to see the ridiculously ornate methods of transport which the various heads of the church have had over the centuries before leaving the museum for the basilica. St Peter's Basilica is beautiful, another overwhelming building, and full of amazing architecture and sculpture. I have to say I was blown away my Michelangelo's Pieta. It is right by one of the entrances but I went in the other door so it was one of the last things I saw and after so many impressive sculptures of saints and popes and angels it could have been a let down, except it is genius, true genius. I stood in front of it for a long time just looking at Mary's face and at the limbs and drapery. There is such a delicacy to it that is lacking from anything else I had seen in the Basilica. It's not about strength or holiness, or even piety, it's about sorrow and it inspired more emotion that the rest of the basilica put together.

Enough flowery stuff for you? After that I climbed the dome (about 500 steps all together) to look out over all of Rome - so amazing! Like being on top of the world, which I would have been if I could have climbed in 1600 years ago (you know, before it was built.) I took photos all around and then spent ages trying to figure out if the Pope lived in that pink castley looking one or the white central mansion or the greyish one with the fountain. I still don't know, but it was fun wondering if the Pope owns jeans and whether he's a boxers or briefs man.

Climbed down all those stairs and headed around the waterfront past the Castel Sant' Angelo and the Palazzo di Giustizia, across the river to the Ara Pacis, which I viewed through the window of the museum because I couldn't be bothered paying to go into another museum, I still got a pretty good look at it, very clean glass! Then up to the Piazza del Popolo which was really beautiful. I was exhausted so I sat on the steps of the fountain and read my book for a while, nice to chill out in such a setting! And then I made my way back to the hostel. I started to write this then actually but I was so completely wiped that I ended up saving it with brief notes about my day after one paragraph and going to make dinner. A couple card games and some book and it was an early night for me.

So today I slept in a bit and read a bit. I've picked up Dante's Divine Comedy as my souvenir of Italy so it's fun to read an Italian book in Italy. Now I'm emailing you before heading out to see the Protestant Cemetery (where Goethe, Keats and Shelley are spending their decomposition) and maybe the market. And maybe lunch near Campo del Fiori because it's meant to be pretty and cheap food from carts. Mmm pizza. Also I want to eat gelatto on the Spanish Steps so that I can be like Audrey Hepburn in just one more imperceptible way! Wish me luck!

Old stuff and a lot of ice cream

Today I headed to Pompeii and after running for the train (in jandals, not pretty) I made it by 10.30 and was amazed at how big it is! I spent three hours wandering around in a kind of headspin. It's really strange, it is ruins but parts are also so incredibly well preserved that you can imagine people living and walking there quite clearly. I had trouble standing the casts of the people who were dying, they're quite detailed because the ash preserved folds of fabric, and grimaces of pain. I did go to the brothel and I have to say I hope they had mattresses because beds literally made of concrete don't seem very conducive to those kind of relations! I couldn't describe everything I saw, I just spent 3 hours exploring and gazing and trying to avoid other people (not very successfully.)

After Pompeii I headed for Sorrento, it's on the same train track so it was easy. It's a really pretty town and I had a big walk through the little streets. I bought gelato when I arrived (nutella and cherry... mmmm) and walked around the port for a bit. Then I headed to the shopping streets and bought another gelato (bounty bar and 'amore eterno' which was mixed berry.) Yeah... I ate a lot of cold sugar today. It was really really good. And the town was pretty too.

On the bus back from Sorrento I did sleep a bit (I can sleep anywhere) but I also spent a lot of time trying to judge whether the person sitting across from me was a man or a woman. It was very difficult. Face and body would have been undeniably male, but 'he' was wearing a pink wool cowlneck sweater and matching pink hat. Then he started ranting to a girl next to him and the voice was definitely male. It was intriguing. Then I slept some more, until the girl next to me nudged me in case I was going to miss my stop, which I hadn't (it's the second to last stop so it wasn't too likely.)

Then what? Hostel, book, pasta, hair cut. Yeah. There's a hairdresser here who does cuts for €15 so I took advantage, she's making her living my doing cuts and colour for people in the hostel and my hair was pretty annoying! I'll take a picture and post it soon so you can all admire my new look (much like the old look but shorter.) So now bed and tomorrow Roma!

Naples or When To Start Writing Your Obituary

Well 36 hours of travel later... Yeah. That was fun.

Actually it was fun! I settled into my seat and in my row were two Canadian girls (patterns are emerging in my trip... how many pairs of Canadians can I meet? Is there a limit?) and nearby were three American girls who had made the ferry ride the other way a week earlier so they were our resident experts. It was really nice! Shannon and Joanna (the Canadians) and I hung out the whole time, ate spaghetti for dinner and talked about Greece and travelling. The ferry is about 15 hours so there was a lot of talk and a bit of sleep, one of those meetings that wouldn't have happened if I had taken tonight's ferry. When we got to Bari we had 4 hours until our train so we went to McDonalds (it's okay, I didn't eat the food so my rule stands, although I did buy a bottle of water, maybe that counts?)

I swapped books with the last Canadians and had two really horrible historical novels to get through. Truly horrible. One was described on the back as "misery lit" which was a bad sign right away. They both fit that description - how many bad things could happen to a woman between 1900 and 1940? They overlapped with dead parents, abusive guardians, unmarried motherhood and the inevitable rescue being marriage. I read them anyway. Can you believe I gave away Hunchback of Notre Dame for those? Oh well, there's a book swap here so I imagine I'll take advantage of that, and leave behind the one of those books that I kept. Someone else can enjoy the story inspired by Catherine Cookson's mother.

Whenever I told people (especially girls) that I was going to Naples they had some sort of horrible story to tell me about muggings and pickpockets and the Mafia. I wasn't too concerned about the last one, but I met three girls who were so put off by some stories they'd heard that they cancelled their trip to Naples and headed straight to Rome. So I was mildly concerned. Not overwhelmingly so, but enough to wonder whether I should splurge on a taxi and whether I should have bought groceries to make my own dinner. Realistically I travelled alone through Stone Town, Athens and Istanbul so I didn't think it could be too much worse! But I got here safely, and found the hostel without too much bother (okay so the instructions were horrific but once I found the right street it was easy, so I just approached people on the street with "Scuzi? Where?" and the accompanying pointing at the name on my page. Easy as pie!

When I got in the reception guy was out for five minutes but I could not wait to shower so I dumped my stuff in reception (way security concious me) and went to shower. It was magical, except the smallest shower I have ever ever seen, let alone been in. I ended up leaving all my clothes outside (with my wallet and passport - again with the good security) and then heading into the toilet in my towel with my stuff to get dry and dressed! I can't imagine the fun someone bigger than me would have had! Then I checked in and went to find a pizza place called Da Michele, familiar to all those who read Eat, Pray, Love because a group I met on the bus invited me to meet them. Sadly I was half an hour late and had missed them, and the queue was massive so instead I got a sandwich from a deli and wandered the streets. Yeah. I wandered the streets of the most dangerous city in Italy (alleged) after dark on my own. Sorry Mum. But look, I'm fine! People are so dramatic! I didn't feel unsafe at all, though I did keep a hand on my purse at all times. After my sandwich I found gelato (of course) and so I had nutella gelato and vanilla gelato and I'm going back tomorrow for lemon and raspberry! The man wouldn't let me have nutella and lemo together, he said it wouldn't work. I trusted him. So within two hours of Naples I had not had pizza, but I had eaten gelato! It worked for me.

I got back around 8.30 (I've been told that after 9.30 is when it gets a bit dodge) and got chatting to a Kiwi girl in my dorm! It was exciting, there aren't many New Zealanders around. I didn't have to explain where Christchurch was or what Whitcoulls sells (stores here are mostly just books or stationery or DVDs, selling all those is weird apparently.) She left for Rome today but we overlap by a day so might catch up for a walk or coffee or something. I may be travelling alone, but I do appear to be collecting people in Rome this week!

So I got up around 7.30, ate my free breakfast (sub-standard, but apparently standard or better than standard for Itally, they should learn from Istanbul!) I pulled out my map and the hostel owner showed me a good walking route to see the best sites of the city. His English isn't great but we communicated fine, when I got back he made his wife check that I was okay so I guess he's self-concious about his language skills. His English is a lot better than my Italian! Although I learned the word rotto today, broken.

I headed to the Archaeological Museum first because I read that it was kind of disorganised and I though I wouldn't have the energy for it later in the day. It was interesting, really good exhibits in some places and then just old stuff hanging on the wall in other areas! I probably saw some very interesting and important things but I don't know what! They did have a weird let's-educate-kids thing which was conversations between a fictional family. There was a boy who has a lisp, a talking mouse and a ten year old girl who fell in love with an eleven year old boy who lived in the museum. I think I missed some of the story but it didn't make sense at any point.

I need to adjust my head a bit now that I'm in Italy because I kept seeing things from the 1600s and thinking "400 years? That's nothing, if it were dog years I might be impressed!" Greece is just so unbelievably old that I've lost perspective on the rest. So I didn't enjoy the painted ceilings as much as I probably should have but I got big thrills from the mosaics because I saw the Alexander Mosaic! You don't seem excited enough. I saw the ALEXANDER MOSAIC!!!! Yeah, it was a big moment for me!

And the mosaics room is right next to the Gabinetto Segretto (Secret Cabinet) which is wehere they hide all the dirty stuff! Wow is my education complete now... Those Romans (and Greeks and Etruscans) were not prudes. I had a funn moment towards the end of the room when I read the sign first and it said "Goose, hen and duck adorning a herm in the shape of a cock." You are all thinking what I was thinking but it was, in fact, a rooster shaped herm. Yeah. Tricky people, first they show you a room full of frescoes with the kama sutra on them and then they call you dirty minded when poultry aren't your first thought! Ha, turns out those frescoes were really practical. Lots of the prostitutes (pornai in Greek, my etymology lesson for the day) were slaves and lots of the clients were foreign traders so there were frequent language issues, hence the need for visual aids! You just point at what you want, much like me ordering stuff at the patisserie except with more nudity.

After the museum it was time to wander churches for about 2 hours. It was neat, I was surprised at how different they all were. There were the hugely ornate and the really plain and all between too. And a wedding in the Duomo so I felt totally intrusive, I slipped in with a tour group (speaking German so I'm glad they didn't need a password) but it did seem kind of rude. Good reason not to have your wedding in one of the city's biggest tourist draws though. They do love their saints here, each church and area and probably family has their own and for the first two at least you can buy souvenirs of all kinds! I wandered along to the waterfront and saw the Castel d'something, the Palazzo Reale and the Teatro di San Carlo but I didn't go in to any of them because it costs money and I just couldn't be bothered really, I'd just spent a long time looking at the insides of interesting buildings and I was enjoying the sun and the outsides of interesting buildings. I did go to the Teatro museum which was free and saw lots of pretty costumes, now I want to see every ballet ever, starting with Romeo and Juliet in Lyon!

I headed up the hill on the Furniculare (?) and went to Castel Sant'Elmo which is on top of a hill and has a really great view of the city. It was neat, I took the lift up but found a long pathway down so I walked through under the castle and came out at the back so I could walk around the building and get a good look.

That was pretty much it for me, I was tired so I went to the grocery store and headed to the hostel. This hostel has a full kitchen so I made myself some pasta, it was quite exciting to cook for the first time in five weeks! And that's it. Hope life's good with you, it is with me!

Oh how could I forget? I had pizza for lunch, nice and simple and very good, and gelato in the afternoon so with my self-made pasta I'm as Italian as high fashion!