Well, I'm pleased to report that the first night in the test went well..... very well. Fortunately, the evenings cool down nicely from the low thirties in mid afternoon, to high teens by the middle of the night. While we are in the campground, we constantly burn a mosquito coil to keep the delightful little bastards at bay. Our cunning plan for the evening is that we shut up the tent and spray fly spray into it, so that any mosquitoes that are on the inside of the tent die before we get into it to go to sleep. As fly spray is supposed to last for 30 days on any surface, we felt this, along with the mosquito nets on all the windows will give us protection from mosquitoes through out the night. I'd have to say however, that a mosquito net on all the windows is only so effective when you the tent doesn't have a sewn in
ground sheet on the floor. When we woke this morning, the massive fly on the inside of the tent suggested that any mosquitoes that took a shine to us during the night, would probably have free reign and would have no trouble finding ways into the tent via the gaps in the floor of the tent.
Tonight was our first night of 'picnic' camping. We don't have cooking facilities, but with a bottle of wine, some cheese, proscuito, olives and foccacia bread, we are able to make ourselves quite a reasonable picnic meal. The exceptionally cheap chilled red wine from the camp supermarket, seemed to have the added benefit of being virtually free of alcohol, so that by the time we'd finished the bottle, we felt as wide awake as when we'd started it.
Today we went siteseeing and cruising in the car to some little towns around Lake Maggiore. Stressa is the main town on the West side of the lake and where many of the ferries to the islands depart from. It's a pretty little town, with narrow cobblestoned streets leading away from the lake. The shops sell mainly tourist tat, with ceramics, handbags, shoes, and Murano glass to tempt the passers-by. There are lots of nice restaurants in the town and we will come back tomorrow for lunch.
We also visited Baveno, Arona and Verbania, but none of those were as pretty as Stressa. The famous sites on Lake Maggiore are the three islands – Isola Bella, Isola Pescatori and Isola Madre. We are planning to visit the first two of those tomorrow.
We had lunch at what has become our favourite haunt in Feriolo. It's a lovely little restaurant / coffee shop with a terrace restaurant on the shore of the lake. Although we are about a day away from high season, there doesn't seem to be very many tourists here at the moment and we are always able to get a seat right on the lake front, whether we are visiting for breakfast, lunch or dinner. The Italians (or the ones we've seen so far) drink Cappucino (which is very like our flat white – no chocolate or cinamon) for breakfast and then an espresso (short black) for lunch and dinner. We have started following this and are very surprised to be enjoying the short blacks as much as we are. Certainly after a lunch with Wine, the short black is light hitting the after burners and recharges you for the rest of the afternoon.
The plan for the next few days is – Isola Bella, Isola Pescatori and lunch in Stressa tomorrow, Stressa market day on Friday, followed by a visit to Villa Taranto in the afternoon, and then on Saturday we'll head down to the Riviera – South of Genoa. It's about a 3 hour drive once we've managed to pack up the tent and all our camping gear and pack it all into the car. I'll report on Sunday on how packing up the tent goes.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Day 3 – Lake Maggiore – Tuesday June 29
Today we collect the car from Milan's Linate airport. Linate is the local city ariport and only 6ks from the city centre. We're taking a taxi to the airport, because with all our camping gear, getting round isn't as easy as it was when we arrived two days ago.
The taxi ride to the airport was a bit of an eye opener. Cars and trams compete for the same piece of pavement, or cobblestones as they're more likely to be. In some roads, there is a separate lane for the trams, but the taxi driver seemed to leap into that fairly regularly to queue jump the cars in the car lane. I'm not sure if he was supposed to be there, or if being a taxi gave him some extra privileges, but it made for an interesting trip.
The car this year is a 308cc and the new model has come right into the 21st century, with a GPS as standard and an iPod dock. Peugeot have also come into the 21st century and now email you to confirm your appointment to collect the car. Our first stop is Lake Maggiore, an hour North and West of Milan. Getting there is mainly on the motorway, so a real breeze and with the GPS telling me everything including when there were traffic snarl-ups ahead, it really was very easy.
It's currently 6:10pm on Wednesday and Anne and I have just sat down in the camp ground to a glass of wine. We bought wine glasses today from the supermarket and Anne has just returned from the camp supermarket with a bottle of wine. Much to my surprise, the wine glasses have a square top and, following my instructions to a T, which were, “I don't care what wine it is, as long as it's cold”, I am now sipping contentedly on a glass of chilled RED wine, from my square wine glasses..... WTF?
Anyway, back to yesterday afternoon and the excitement was erecting the tent for the first time. As I mentioned earlier, the tent is self erecting, so taking it out of its bag, I took off the safety harness and threw it up in the air – it sprung itself open and the collapsed on the ground. It didn't exactly open completely, so Anne and I spent a couple of minutes getting it from 2 to 3 dimensions, but once it had been spread out to having 4 corners, the rest of the setup was pretty painless. It's much smaller than we'd originally planned, but is plenty big enough for the two of us, an air bed, with room to stand up and walk around. Most importantly, it has mosquito nets over all the doors and windows. As I said before, taking it down might be a bigger task, but I've been giving it plenty of thought and think I've got it sussed, so we'll see how Saturday's destruction effort goes.
The campground is on the western side of Lake Maggiore near a small town called Feriolo. It is a magical setting, with the campground being right on the lake shore. The village has a couple of restaurants, one of which we are rapidly becoming locals at. We'll be here for a few days visiting the islands on the lake, which have really impressive villas and going to some of the small towns dotted around the lake.
The taxi ride to the airport was a bit of an eye opener. Cars and trams compete for the same piece of pavement, or cobblestones as they're more likely to be. In some roads, there is a separate lane for the trams, but the taxi driver seemed to leap into that fairly regularly to queue jump the cars in the car lane. I'm not sure if he was supposed to be there, or if being a taxi gave him some extra privileges, but it made for an interesting trip.
The car this year is a 308cc and the new model has come right into the 21st century, with a GPS as standard and an iPod dock. Peugeot have also come into the 21st century and now email you to confirm your appointment to collect the car. Our first stop is Lake Maggiore, an hour North and West of Milan. Getting there is mainly on the motorway, so a real breeze and with the GPS telling me everything including when there were traffic snarl-ups ahead, it really was very easy.
It's currently 6:10pm on Wednesday and Anne and I have just sat down in the camp ground to a glass of wine. We bought wine glasses today from the supermarket and Anne has just returned from the camp supermarket with a bottle of wine. Much to my surprise, the wine glasses have a square top and, following my instructions to a T, which were, “I don't care what wine it is, as long as it's cold”, I am now sipping contentedly on a glass of chilled RED wine, from my square wine glasses..... WTF?
Anyway, back to yesterday afternoon and the excitement was erecting the tent for the first time. As I mentioned earlier, the tent is self erecting, so taking it out of its bag, I took off the safety harness and threw it up in the air – it sprung itself open and the collapsed on the ground. It didn't exactly open completely, so Anne and I spent a couple of minutes getting it from 2 to 3 dimensions, but once it had been spread out to having 4 corners, the rest of the setup was pretty painless. It's much smaller than we'd originally planned, but is plenty big enough for the two of us, an air bed, with room to stand up and walk around. Most importantly, it has mosquito nets over all the doors and windows. As I said before, taking it down might be a bigger task, but I've been giving it plenty of thought and think I've got it sussed, so we'll see how Saturday's destruction effort goes.
The campground is on the western side of Lake Maggiore near a small town called Feriolo. It is a magical setting, with the campground being right on the lake shore. The village has a couple of restaurants, one of which we are rapidly becoming locals at. We'll be here for a few days visiting the islands on the lake, which have really impressive villas and going to some of the small towns dotted around the lake.
Monday, June 28, 2010
Day 2 – Milan – Monday June 28
It's 6:15 on Wednesday morning and I'm 2 days behind on my blog. I'm not up this early because I am behind, I'm up this early because we're in the tent now and we wake up when the sun comes up.
Milan is a lovely city, built around it's centre piece The Duomo. The roads all lead away from the Duomo and the main roads are generally named for the place they are leading to – Corsa Di Porta Romana for the road to Rome etc. The plan seems to be more concept that reality because it doesn't seem to have been delivered in precise detail. For example, Via Dante, the road between Piazza Duomo and the Castle should enable you to stand at one and view the other, except you can't because it takes a kink just as it leaves the Duomo.
We visited the inside of the Duomo today. The interior seems to be as dark and austere as the outside is light and ornate. Getting in involved a bag search by one of either the Polizei, the Carabinieri or the army. I got the Polizei, and so I opened the back of my laptop / camera bag. "ok" he said, so I opened the top of the front of the bag "OK" he said.... so I opened the third section of my bag... I then figured out that the first ok was a coverall and he was now sick of this bloke opening up different section of his camera bag. I think I was one step away from being charged with wasting police time.
Anyway, today was more about getting things sorted for the rest of the holiday, so we did a long walk round parts of Milan. I've bought my internet stick from New Zealand and was going to buy a SIM card for it, so that I could surf the internet to my hearts content and do all my uploading on my own account and not be perched in the corner of camp ground reception areas trying to access their wifi.
Everything is so cheap now that a vodafone internet stick, with 150 hours of internet usage for the month is 60 Euros, so I bought that and saved myself the hassle of working out how to convert my NZ stick to work in Europe. I've been using it this morning and have been amazed at the internet speed here is Europe – it has a range of speeds – Mbps, Kbps, bps and my personal favourite 0. Fortunately, when I was loading up photos, it was going at Mbps, so it was quick.
We caught up with Giampaolo and Elena (friends of a friend) while we were here and had dinner with them tonight, which was awesome. Went to a really nice restaurant right beside their apartment which is next to the Porta Romana – One of the gates to the ancient city. Milan is a very safe city and we had no qualms about walking the 2kms back to the hotel at 1am in the morning. The only unsafe thing about Milan are the trams which are very quiet and can sneak up on you when you unawares. Being only our second day here, I'm still looking the wrong way and end up having to look every way about 6 times to make sure there is nothing that is going to run me down.
We dined inside tonight with Giampaulo and Elena because the locals know that if you dine outside, the mosquitoes will be doing more dining than you will. Our legs are both testament to the previous nights pizza on the pavement and even as I sit here now a 7am in the morning, I have the mosquito coil burning to keep the little bastards away from me.
Milan is a lovely city, built around it's centre piece The Duomo. The roads all lead away from the Duomo and the main roads are generally named for the place they are leading to – Corsa Di Porta Romana for the road to Rome etc. The plan seems to be more concept that reality because it doesn't seem to have been delivered in precise detail. For example, Via Dante, the road between Piazza Duomo and the Castle should enable you to stand at one and view the other, except you can't because it takes a kink just as it leaves the Duomo.
We visited the inside of the Duomo today. The interior seems to be as dark and austere as the outside is light and ornate. Getting in involved a bag search by one of either the Polizei, the Carabinieri or the army. I got the Polizei, and so I opened the back of my laptop / camera bag. "ok" he said, so I opened the top of the front of the bag "OK" he said.... so I opened the third section of my bag... I then figured out that the first ok was a coverall and he was now sick of this bloke opening up different section of his camera bag. I think I was one step away from being charged with wasting police time.
Anyway, today was more about getting things sorted for the rest of the holiday, so we did a long walk round parts of Milan. I've bought my internet stick from New Zealand and was going to buy a SIM card for it, so that I could surf the internet to my hearts content and do all my uploading on my own account and not be perched in the corner of camp ground reception areas trying to access their wifi.
Everything is so cheap now that a vodafone internet stick, with 150 hours of internet usage for the month is 60 Euros, so I bought that and saved myself the hassle of working out how to convert my NZ stick to work in Europe. I've been using it this morning and have been amazed at the internet speed here is Europe – it has a range of speeds – Mbps, Kbps, bps and my personal favourite 0. Fortunately, when I was loading up photos, it was going at Mbps, so it was quick.
We caught up with Giampaolo and Elena (friends of a friend) while we were here and had dinner with them tonight, which was awesome. Went to a really nice restaurant right beside their apartment which is next to the Porta Romana – One of the gates to the ancient city. Milan is a very safe city and we had no qualms about walking the 2kms back to the hotel at 1am in the morning. The only unsafe thing about Milan are the trams which are very quiet and can sneak up on you when you unawares. Being only our second day here, I'm still looking the wrong way and end up having to look every way about 6 times to make sure there is nothing that is going to run me down.
We dined inside tonight with Giampaulo and Elena because the locals know that if you dine outside, the mosquitoes will be doing more dining than you will. Our legs are both testament to the previous nights pizza on the pavement and even as I sit here now a 7am in the morning, I have the mosquito coil burning to keep the little bastards away from me.
Sunday, June 27, 2010
Day 1 – Milan – Sunday June 27
It's 2:30am on Monday and I'm wide awake – downloading photos and starting our blog. Anne's wide awake too – planning what we're going to do today. I had hoped for a better result than that, given that we'd stayed up until 11pm, however, the “reviving” 2 hour nana nap in the afternoon must have been more reviving than we'd expected.
Getting here has been a breeze. Fly to Auckland on Friday night, overnight in the airport hotel, get to the airport first thing, catch the flight to Singapore, spend the couple of hours stopover in the Transit Hotel having a really good sleep and a shower. Fly to Milan, slept for 6 hours on the plane to arrive in Milan at 6:30am.
We caught the Malpensa Express (train) from the airport to the centre of Milan, then walked the 700 metres to the Hotel, so arrived there before 9am to drop off our bags. A coffee and a change of clothes later and we were out and about – heading back down to the castle
Kerry Prendergast was on the plane on the Auckland – Singapore leg, in economy class. I don't know if she was traveling on personal or official business, but I was pleased to see her in the back of the bus – it's a good sign for the way our rates dollars are being spent – maybe.
Milan is a business, rather than a tourist town and even the Italian Tourism web sites describe it as an optional place to visit. It was however, a place that despite 3 previous trips to Italy, we had never visited, so as it was our flying destination, we decided to have a couple of days there to get over our jet lag. There are a couple of key sites to visit and our hotel was right in the middle of them. First on the agenda was go to the castle – originally built in the 14th Century and modified, enhanced, besieged and trashed by various owners and offenders over the centuries. It currently houses a couple of galleries and museums and is now owned by the city of Milan. After 30 hours stuck in planes or an airport, it was nice to be out walking in the fresh air. At the back of the Castle is a big park, where people were out walking, sun bathing, playing soccer (don't mention the football), so Anne and I went for a walk round it for an hour.
On our way to the castle we had stopped off at Decathlon – the sporting megastore we discovered last year and the place where we will purchase all our camping gear for the next 5 weeks. Items purchased – 1 tent, 1 ground sheet, 1 table, 1 air bed, 2 pillows and 2 chairs – all for 150 Euros. The tent is self erecting, which I have no doubt it will be. What I have more doubt about is my ability to fold it back up into the nice circle that it originally started out as, and be able to fit it back into the car – but that saga won't be played out until next weekend, so what this space for updates on that python fighting task.
After the castle, we walked to the Duomo - Milan's magnificent white marble cathedral. The cathedral has been undergoing restoration work because it is amazingly clean on the outside. I imagine it's an ongoing task because the size of the cathedral and the detail that has gone into all the stone work on the outside would take years to complete an overall clean. Although there are some awnings covering the areas being worked on, it is apparently more viewable at the moment than it has been for years. By now it was early afternoon and there were huge crowds outside, so we decided to leave a visit inside the cathedral until Monday.
Beside the Duomo, is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – a huge shopping arcade set between two buildings with a steel reinforced glass roof completely enclosing it. Built in the 19th Century, it was the forerunner to shopping malls and is an amazing work of art. The tile mosaic floor is beautiful and the highlight is the bull (the symbol of Milan), which the locals use to ensure their continuing good luck by stomping on its testicles everytime they walk past. The area of his testicles is now just a hole in the ground, they've been stomped on so regularly. When we were there, there was a bus load of Japanese, each giving his nads a good old stomp.
By 3pm, it was time for a nap, so we set the alarm for 5pm and had a strict two hours sleep. The Concierge at the hotel recommended a nice area to go for dinner, which was about 15 minutes walk from the hotel and away from the main mall. We sat in a bar till about 9pm having a couple of beers and tapas, before hitting a nearby pizza restaurant and heading home ready for a nights sleep, which I've already mentioned earlier.
Getting here has been a breeze. Fly to Auckland on Friday night, overnight in the airport hotel, get to the airport first thing, catch the flight to Singapore, spend the couple of hours stopover in the Transit Hotel having a really good sleep and a shower. Fly to Milan, slept for 6 hours on the plane to arrive in Milan at 6:30am.
We caught the Malpensa Express (train) from the airport to the centre of Milan, then walked the 700 metres to the Hotel, so arrived there before 9am to drop off our bags. A coffee and a change of clothes later and we were out and about – heading back down to the castle
Kerry Prendergast was on the plane on the Auckland – Singapore leg, in economy class. I don't know if she was traveling on personal or official business, but I was pleased to see her in the back of the bus – it's a good sign for the way our rates dollars are being spent – maybe.
Milan is a business, rather than a tourist town and even the Italian Tourism web sites describe it as an optional place to visit. It was however, a place that despite 3 previous trips to Italy, we had never visited, so as it was our flying destination, we decided to have a couple of days there to get over our jet lag. There are a couple of key sites to visit and our hotel was right in the middle of them. First on the agenda was go to the castle – originally built in the 14th Century and modified, enhanced, besieged and trashed by various owners and offenders over the centuries. It currently houses a couple of galleries and museums and is now owned by the city of Milan. After 30 hours stuck in planes or an airport, it was nice to be out walking in the fresh air. At the back of the Castle is a big park, where people were out walking, sun bathing, playing soccer (don't mention the football), so Anne and I went for a walk round it for an hour.
On our way to the castle we had stopped off at Decathlon – the sporting megastore we discovered last year and the place where we will purchase all our camping gear for the next 5 weeks. Items purchased – 1 tent, 1 ground sheet, 1 table, 1 air bed, 2 pillows and 2 chairs – all for 150 Euros. The tent is self erecting, which I have no doubt it will be. What I have more doubt about is my ability to fold it back up into the nice circle that it originally started out as, and be able to fit it back into the car – but that saga won't be played out until next weekend, so what this space for updates on that python fighting task.
After the castle, we walked to the Duomo - Milan's magnificent white marble cathedral. The cathedral has been undergoing restoration work because it is amazingly clean on the outside. I imagine it's an ongoing task because the size of the cathedral and the detail that has gone into all the stone work on the outside would take years to complete an overall clean. Although there are some awnings covering the areas being worked on, it is apparently more viewable at the moment than it has been for years. By now it was early afternoon and there were huge crowds outside, so we decided to leave a visit inside the cathedral until Monday.
Beside the Duomo, is the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II – a huge shopping arcade set between two buildings with a steel reinforced glass roof completely enclosing it. Built in the 19th Century, it was the forerunner to shopping malls and is an amazing work of art. The tile mosaic floor is beautiful and the highlight is the bull (the symbol of Milan), which the locals use to ensure their continuing good luck by stomping on its testicles everytime they walk past. The area of his testicles is now just a hole in the ground, they've been stomped on so regularly. When we were there, there was a bus load of Japanese, each giving his nads a good old stomp.
By 3pm, it was time for a nap, so we set the alarm for 5pm and had a strict two hours sleep. The Concierge at the hotel recommended a nice area to go for dinner, which was about 15 minutes walk from the hotel and away from the main mall. We sat in a bar till about 9pm having a couple of beers and tapas, before hitting a nearby pizza restaurant and heading home ready for a nights sleep, which I've already mentioned earlier.
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