Roaming the Roads of Lands Remote

With your capable pilot Nick Maskell and his trusty co-pilot Tess Hocking

[shockinghocking]

Feelin’ so Bohemian like you

We arrived late at night in Český Krumlov and checked into a hostel, leaving the trusty wagon in the snow outside.  Everything is soooo cheap in the Czech Republic (and Slovakia, actually) and we stayed in a really nice toasty hostel for almost no money! 

But it was a rather intimidating village to drive into - it’s seriously medieval, with huge hulking defensive walls over the Vlatva River and most of the architecture dating back to the 14th Century.  

Welcoming, though was the restaurant we stumbled across, buzzing with locals (more of a pub really) with young men playing live music in the form of fiddles, accordions and random percussion instruments...! 

And some seriously yum meat dishes.  Can’t wait for the photo to be taken before I start the taste testing process...!

After a nice warm night in our indoor digs, we spent the next day exploring the town and castle.  There has been a castle on the promontory over the river since the 13th C, but the present building is in the Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles (as is the town), and largely built in the 16th to 18th Centuries.   The town was built around the castle throughout the same period.  The pubs and houses are decorated with coats of arms, the roads are cobbled and the squares are wonderfully higgildy-piggildy.  And sweet Jesus is it picturesque! UNESCO describes Český Krumlov as an “outstanding example of a small central European medieval town whose architectural heritage has remained intact thanks to its peaceful evolution over more than five centuries”.  All of which is a long winded way of saying it really truly looks like this:

We spent the first two days that we were there just strolling around in the quiet, chilly town.

We tried the local medieval restaurant, using recipes that have been cooked in the area for centuries - including cups of hot mead and lots of millet - like what budgies eat...

We worked off all that hot alcohol by climbing the bell tower, parts of which date back to the mid-13th Century, but most of which was completed in a Renaissance style in the 1500s, offering an amazing view of the castle and the surrounding village.   

Sadly, the two bears who famously live in the moat of the castle (it’s a lot less depressing than it sounds, but still fairly depressing) were hibernating, so no cute bear snaps for us.  

We did risk waking some wild bears from hibernation by going for a big walk in the snowy woods with some friends we’d made staying in the hostel.  It was really lovely going for a stroll in the snow, not that there was much hustle and bustle to escape from in the town!

After our relaxing few days in Český Krumlov we decided to continue on that theme and do some more relaxing.  But of course in Europe, there’s no need to restrict oneself to a single country.  So we hopped the border on an easy 2 hour drive from Bohemia back to Baveria - though it thankfully vindicated our snow tyre purchase:

Bavaria was where Craig, Nick’s dad, learned German while living there for a few years in his early 20s volunteering (doing “Christiany stuff” - Nick).  Those were the days (more on where this photo comes from later):

He had linked us up with Barbara and Ulrich von Schnurbein (!!!), the couple who he had lived with while he was over there, and who run Forstgut, what their website described - in translation - as a romantic holiday village in the Bavarian forest.  We were down like a double brown.  We rocked up to this romantic village and into our delightful chalet for a night in the spa on the balcony, hanging out in front of the fire and drinking the last of our (tetrapak, but still DELIGHTFUL) Italian red wine.

We also took the opportunity to start unpacking the van, sorting our accumulated clothing, food, equipment and other random gear and packing what I wanted to take home - this was one of the last stops for me, and the last place where we would both be in the van!  

The next night we spent at Ulrich and Barbara’s house, where they had cooked us an incredible feast - it really was like another Christmas!  

They regaled us with many interesting stories.  Ulrich grew up in a castle nearby, which was confiscated from the family because his dad was a Nazi soldier.  The castle is now owned by a youth church or something (I’m hazy on the details) and that was where Nick’s dad worked while he was in Bavaria.

They showed us a bunch of photos and documents that were from when Craig was with them, which was pretty cool! Here’s him playing with Nina, Ulrich and Barbara’s daughter, who now manages Forstgut and has four children of her own.

All in all, it was a very cool way to (kind of) end the trip.  Because the next day we chugged down the highway to Munich where I jumped on the Deutsche Bahn off to Frankfurt where I was spending a few days with Verena and Michael (remember them from Croatia???) in their winter home, and Nick was leaping off to snowboard in Austria. This really did feel like the end of the trip, despite the fact we were still a few days (in my case) and a few weeks (in Nick’s case) from getting on the plane home.  We were going separate ways at this point because way back in Tuscany when we were staying with Stuart and Helen in Pietrabuena I had very unexpectedly interviewed with a panel of judges from the Court of Appeal for a position that had come available as a judge’s clerk.  Well, fate intervened and instead of going back to Auckland to start working at Chapman Tripp at the end of February, I was heading home, moving to Wellington and becoming Justice Miller’s clerk...

Bon voyage to me!

[shockinghocking]

Bratislovers and Awe-stria

We had never heard or read anything about Bratislava, but loved strolling through the green, hilly city with its interesting post-Soviet art, delightful craft cola and pastel coloured buildings.  To be honest, we both wish we’d had more time to explore Slovakia, which is supposed to be a window into medieval life, with sleepy villages, wild animals and spectacular scenery.

Nonetheless, we made the most of our short time there.  Bratislava is guarded by the stocky, storybook castle on the hill, which was rebuilt in the 60s after being destroyed by a fire in the 1800s and now sits pride of place over the old town.

The old town square, Hlavné Námestie, has great sculpture and is flanked by buidlings dating to the 14th Century.  

Similarly old is St Martin’s Cathedral, an imposing Gothic church that doubled as a fortification, built as it was in the city’s ancient city walls. 

The church’s surrounds as are pretty as the building itself, with a little vined courtyard, beautiful religious buildings for housing the adepts and a cobblestoned paths and roads.

Our wandering continued, leading us to the funny statue of Cumil (“the watcher”), the manhole peeper who spies on the goings on of the old town and is accused of eyeing up all the passing ladies:

He’s apparently lost his head twice as a result of inattentive drivers, so has his very own “Man at Work” sign above him keeping him safe!

We also saw some other cute little galleries - check out the Renault!

And then on to the eye popping baby blue “Little Blue Church” (Modrý kostolík), a masterpiece of the Hungarian art-nouveau style.

Having worked up a mighty hunger on our wanderings, we indulged in some meaty delights of the Slovak variety at the 600 year old brewery  Bratislavský Meštiansky Pivovar.

Not too much beer for us though, as we had a little drive to do in order to spend the night the night at the foot of the eerie Devínsky Hrad, a castle that dates back to the 600s, but in a location that has been a site of dense human settlement since the Neolithic era... That was to be where we lay our head in our little van for the night, spooky!

We made it through the night without any hauntings, and slogged up the hill in the beautiful sunshine to the archaeological site and castle ruins.  The location of Devín Castle is on the confluence of the Danube and Moravia Rivers, so was of rather invaluable strategic importance for centuries.  We saw the remains of a 1st C Roman tower, and the ruins of the 15th C castle, which is a maze of staircases, gardens, towers and walls.  It was blown up by Napolean when he rampaged through the area.  Check out the little door in the cliff - it’s a tunnel that passes through the entire cliff.

The watchtower below the castle, standing alone on a rock in the river is known as the Virgin’s Tower, (allegedly) being either the site of maidens being locked waiting for rescue, or the site where a young bride jumped to her death when her disapproving family killed her groom.

Refreshed from the vitamin D and ancient history, we pointed the van due west and drove into the Baroque heart of Austria - Vienna.  We’d already been to both Innsbruck (briefly) and Salzburg in Austria, and had loved them both - especially the incredible ice cave near Salzburg! The rambling, majestic and downright regal Wien proved just as lovable.  We parked up on the east bank of the Danube a wee way out of town and strolled into the city, starting with the cathedral, Stephensdom.  It is unmissably grand, with its colourful tiled roof and outrageous Gothic decorations, and is smack in the centre of the Viennese old town. Oh, and it’s massive - this thing has 18 alters just in the main part of the church, with more in the chapels attached.  

Inside, you’ve got a Gothic pulpit, a masterpiece of stone work, but dwarfed in the massive space.

In all this glitz, it’s important to keep it real: the sculptor of the pulpit did, carving himself staring out of a window under the stairs of the pulpit with such an expression of satisfaction on his face he’s earned himself the name fenstergucker - window gawker. 

Having been guckers ourselves long enough, we treated ourselves to a delightful Sichuan meal in the suburbs and headed off to bed.

The next day we started with a tour of the Rathaus, an unfortunate name for a rather impressive building that has served as the city hall since 1833.    

The building is Gothic, but in the Belgian style and arranged around Baroque courtyards, and is very pointy, lacy and spindly.  Inside you have salons, festival halls and galleries which are all, of course, lavishly decorated.

Perhaps best of all, it has an active paternoster, or continuous elevator, which are increasingly rare because of how dangerous they are!  They’re called paternosters because they work in a loop like rosary beads which are used to help recite the Lord’s Prayer, aka the Pater Noster.  Good one, Europe. 

Anyway, we very much enjoyed playing on it!

With a stop in a famous Viennese coffee house - all marble benches and whitewashed timber panels, a stroll through Margareten, a suburban district of Vienna and a peek at the neoclassical Musikverein, we were chilly enough to huddle into bed for the night!

Working harder than we had in months were the riders who we saw practicing at the Spanish Riding School inside the Hofburg Palace the next day. The Lipizzaner stallions perform classical dressage to music within the palace while the public watch from beautiful balconies under glittering chandeliers.  The riders wear uniforms dating back 200 years and the whole thing is like a trip to the ballet, but with white stallions! Photos are against the rules, but we snapped a couple of sneakies just for posterity.

The horses are treated like kings, including spending summers in the meadows and woods of Heldenburg and their winters at the palace! 

With the afternoon at the Albertina Gallery, home to the biggest collections of prints and sketches in the world (think The Young Hare by Durer and pencil studies of The Last Supper) and afternoon tea at Demel, a patisserie established in 1786, we were fully getting into the high society life.

However, we were still urchins in reality, and living in a shopping mall carpark in the burbs, cooking toast grilled in a fish-shaped set of tongs in our sleeping bags every morning...

We also spent all of one evening going in a loop on one of the Viennese free trams just to warm up, so it wasn’t all Baroque architecture and gilt framed artworks!

However, we still got to spend our days carousing through palaces.  We visited the seriously cold but beautiful Schloss Schönbrunn, the former imperial summer palace of the Habsburgs built in 1740 in the neoclassical style.    It includes beautiful gardens that feature a whimsical (fake) Roman ruin and a gloriette, which is a European thing meaning a pavilion-like structure on a hill above a garden...  

From the Habsburg delights of Austria, we decided to tootle back to see a little more of the Czech Republic, chugging three and a half hours to the Southern reaches of Bohemia to spend a few days in the sleepy wintery village of Český Krumlov where we got to relax and unwind on the medieval streets away from the Crowds of the big gilded cities! 

[shockinghocking]

Czeching out Prague and Hungaring for Budapest

Prague was as beautiful as everyone says it is, perched on the Vltava River, filled with ridiculously picturesque alleys and bridges and stuffed full of Baroque, Gothic and Renaissance features.  We stayed in a nice warm hostel not far from the Old Town Square with its famous Astronomical Clock. The clock was installed in about 1410, with the council of Prague so impressed by it they ordered the clockmaker blinded so he could never recreate his work.  He stuck it to them by throwing himself off the tower into the clock, breaking it.  No one was able to fix it for 100 years!

Not to be outdone in morbid legends, the Baroque St James’ Basilica in the Old Town was a highlight - hanging by the alter on a chain is a mummified arm, allegedly dating back 400 years.  The story goes that a thief attempted to steal something from the alter, at which the statue of Mary reached down and clamped onto his arm.  No one could get her to release her grip, so it was sawn off and displayed for all to see as a lesson learnt the hard way! Terrifyingly, it was carbon dated a wee while ago and it was only 200 years old... which means it’s a disembodied arm totally unrelated to the poor old thief.  God only knows where the church got an arm from.

But we were suitably disinclined to nick anything from the enormous collection of glitz and gold.

Next on the list was the Jewish quarter, with wonderful synagogues (the Jewish population was devastated in WWII, but there’s a long Jewish history in Prague) and checking in with Kafka appreciation statues on the way.

We also walked over the famous Charles Bridge, dotted with beautiful baroque statues, with incredible Gothic towers at each end.

By the next morning we weren’t just fighting with ghost stories and hordes of tourists but with a big snow storm that had come in overnight.  We were chilly in the extreme, but couldn’t complain as far as the picturesqueness scale went! 

We headed back over the Charles Bridge to the Castle District of Prague - Hradčany - which is newer, but almost as beautiful as the Old Town. And, of course, the castle: the biggest ancient castle in the world, with construction beginning just before the year 900 and the architecture encompassing every European style of the last millennium.

And if we thought that the myths and legends surrounding Prague were creepy, we had another thing coming when we went to the Sedlec Ossuary, a short train ride from Prague in Kutna Hora...  Basically, the churchyard was a very fashionable place to be buried (thought to include soil from the Garden of Gethsemane) and later became the site of mass graves during the plague.  When the church was extended, thousands of skeletons were dug up and the family in charge asked a local woodcarver to do something creative with them.  What resulted is an unbelievable display of an estimated 70,000 skeletons.  The two centrepieces are a chandelier made of at least one of every bone in the human body, and a perfect replica of the family’s crest, complete with a skeleton crow pecking at a skeleton head.

Oh, and the woodworker even left his name, just to make sure his great work was attributed to him.  And what better media in which to write?

Having whet our appetite, we headed for lunch in the nearby village, where we dined on local beer and deep fried goodies at the Bohemian beerhall.

The next day, we bussed back to Erlangen, ready to pick up the van, get the snow tyres on it and boost all the way to Budapest.  

She was rearing to go, that’s for sure!

With all that automobile admin sorted, we got on the road and pulled up at the apartment of Orsi, who had done an exchange at Auckland University - we’d met in the library, bonded over our passion for Whittaker’s berry biscuit choc and next thing we knew, she’d been our flatmate for six months! We were planning a big few days partying with her in Budapest, and she did not disappoint. 

Budapest, which clusters on low hills and on islands in the blue Danube, was probably the most beautiful city we went to in all of Europe.  It was just so stunning...!

Budapest (which it became on unification of Buda, Obuda and Pest in tghe 1870s) has been a city since the Celtics, and has been home to the Romans, the Holy Roman Empire, the Ottomans, the Hungarians, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Soviets and now the Hungarians again!  This patchwork history means it is stuffed full of Renaissance, Gothic, Byzantine, Baroque, Classical, Neoclassical, Romantic, Art Nouveau and Soviet architecture, all packed cheek by jowl.  It’s an incredible town in which to be a tourist, with the most beautiful central city in Europe, outstanding nightlife, thermal springs and a beautiful (and functional) old metro system.  It’s even better when you have a local guide!

Having crossed the famous classical-style Chain Bridge into the Castle District of Buda, we set off exploring.

To really get a feel for it, one requires a stop for some medieval activities in the Castle courtyard and some delightful snacks.

Next to pop into the ridiculous Gothic Matthias Church, dominating the waterfront.

That’s just the start though! Why not add the spectacular FIsherman’s Bastion with seven towers (representing the seven Hungarian tribes that settled the area and a panoramic view of the Danube, the Pest side of Budapest, the Chain Bridge and Margaret Island.  

Next was a warming bowl of Hungarian goulash - a dish I ate once ate so much of as a child that I made myself throw up.  I love goulash.  Managed not to hurl from the excitement this time.

And finished up for the evening with a spot of tea and cake at the incredible Bookstore Cafe, on the second floor of a bookstore that used to be an ornate department store.  Distractingly glitzy frescoes!

And what for it but to get outrageously drunk at Orsi’s apartment and then hit the town in Budapest’s infamous ruin bars! Found in the old Jewish district of Budapest, which was largely left to decay after WWII, Romkocsma (as the Hungarians call them) are abandoned factories and industrial spaces that have been set up with stages, dance floors, bars and lounges.  They are decorated in crazy “I’ve plundered all your grandma’s weird furniture, covered it in graffiti, added some machinery and stapled it to the wall” kind of way and are sooooo funnnnnn.  We started in Szimpla Kert, the original ruin bar that started the whole trend, which is an enormous multistory sensory overload.

We turned it up a notch and headed to Hello Baby, a schmancy nightclub in a 19th C palace with a glass roof and huge bubbles glowing overhead.

After a seedy wake up the next day, we faced a chilly morning and headed to Hősök tere (Heroes Sq in English) to ogle at the cenotaph and the colonnades with their 14 figures of Hungarian history. They’re Hungarian kings, great military men and dudes who rallied the peasants - in post-independence replacement of the Habsburg emperors who originally featured.

Then the fabulous pink and gold St Stephen’s Basilica (which houses the “incorruptible” right hand of St Stephen, the first king of Hungary), featuring an eerie choir practice. 

Of course, we couldn’t miss out on another Hungarian favourite for dinner - hortobágyi palacsinta, which is savoury crepes filled with veal.  Yum! 

Well rested, we packed in a massive day the next day.  We started with a tour of the neo-Gothic Hungarian Parliament building, one of the oldest parliament buildings in Europe and currently the biggest building in Hungary.  

Yeah, she’s no Beehive. Completed in 1904 - with half a million precious stones set into the building - and housing the Holy Crown of Hungary and the hexadecagonal (sixteen sided) central hall, only small portions of the mammoth building are used by the unicameral Hungarian parliament today.  

Outside is the terribly moving Holocaust memorial, in memory of 3,500 people (800 of whom were Jews) who were killed by the “Arrow Cross” militiamen in 1944: having been told to remove their shoes and stand on the banks of the Danube, they were shot, fell into the river and carried downstream.

We headed to the Great Market Hall for lunch.  A beautiful 19th C building, it has butchers, fishmongers, veges and pickles in the basement, pastries, spices and breads on the ground floor and souvenirs and eateries on the top floor.

Bring on the langos!

With our tummies sufficiently bloated with sour cream, cheese, bacon and deep fried bread, we were ready for the famous neo-Baroque Széchenyi Medicinal Bath, the largest thermal bath in Europe and certainly one of the most excellent pools we have ever been to! 

The next day we went on a little roadie to the area known as the Danube Bend (for reasons that are obvious when you look at a map. We started in the cute little town of Szentedre, a cute, artsy riverside town where we ate more langos by the river.

Next, we headed to Esztergom to see the colossal basilica of the same name - it’s 114 metres long!  Look, there’s me!

From there we headed onward to quiet, leafy Visegrád (which translates to Highcastle) where we we were treated to an incredible sunset view of the Danube.  In that perfectly European way that is so strange to New Zealanders, the land on the other side of the river is Slovakia, a different country!

Beautifully, we shared the view with an Hungarian puli, the adorable (if slightly weepy-eyed) Hungarian dredlocked herding dog.

After a tasty Danube-bend dinner and beer, we headed back to Budapest to do some more partying with Orsi, this time with some live music aboard a boat in the river.

And some pizza on the way home!

And, ending on that high note, the next day we jumped the river to the country we’d been looking at through the sunset the evening before - Slovakia!

[shockinghocking]

Bevvies in Bavaria

We started our central European sojourn in Innsbruck where I got outrageously drunk on mulled wine (to become a theme of this part of the trip) and ate spätzle at the freezing cold and world-famous Innsbruck Christmas market or Christkindlmarkt in German.  

Onwards to Munich, where we redeemed our behaviour of the night before by expanding our minds in the Deutsches museum of technology.  Later, we walked in the frigid wind to watch the infamous Munich surfers, carving the lip hundreds of kilometres from the sea (and even further from a natural surfbreak) while flurries of snow started.

Nothing can warm up a cold couple of kiwis like the joy of Christmas, or at least the joy of hot alcohol at Christmastime, so we thought we’d give the even-more-famous-than-Innsbruck Munich Christmas market a squiz.  Sprawling through Marienplatz, the centre of Munich since the year 1100, the markets are dwarfed by the beautiful Neues Rathaus, the ‘new townhall’ (new being, of course, like everywhere on this continent, an extremely relative term - with construction beginning in the 1860s).  Carol singers were stationed on its balconies, serenading us as we ate sweet pretzels.

Next was the amazing Hofbräuhaus am Platzl, a beer hall dating to the 16th C, frequented by both Mozart and Lenin when they lived in Munich (not together). Although it’s Munich’s biggest tourist attraction, locals dressed in their lederhosen store their steins there and come to drink on the reg.  And the food and beer? Amazing. We were totally overwhelmed by German portion sizes and the heft of the food (a whole pork knuckle and a massive kartoffelkloesse (potato dumpling), but it was absolutely delicious!

The next day we went for a stroll along the very cold and misty Isar river, before driving the two hours to Erlangen, source of the best product of German ingenuity yet - the unsurpassable Sarah Hahn. By divine providence, Sarah was in Germany for Christmas visiting her family in Erlangen - bringing her kiwi boyfriend with her - and we had managed to wrangle ourselves an invite to the big event in their lovely house in the beautiful university town. To put icing on the cake, some of Sarah’s university friends were in New Zealand at the time, so we were able to stay in their amazing apartment for the whole time we were there. Oh, and of course Erlangen was not to be outdone on the Christmas market front, and we had a long overdue catch up while gorging ourselves on langos, weiners and ever more glühwein.

From thereon in, we settled into the most relaxing and slow-paced part of our trip. With the temperature plummeting, a warm house, Christmas preparations in full swing around us and plenty of wine, beer and dense German foods to sample, we found ourselves in semi hibernation mode, enjoying everything at a snail’s pace. In an absolutely ridiculous twist, some of Nick’s parents German friends lived just minutes from Erlangen, as did Felix and Moritz, two backpackers we had met in Tonga years before who had stayed a few weeks with us in our flat in Auckland!

The result? Drinking games in amazing Bavarian bars:

unexpected supermarket purchases:

romantic walks with our fave lady:

and lots and lots of spätzle!:

In the lead up to Christmas we did however muster the energy to do some amazing mini breaks to the amazing sights in Bavaria. We went a number of times to Nuremburg, which is a short train trip from Erlangen. It’s a beautiful medieval city, much of which was rebuilt after WWII.  We visited the castle, parts of which were built as early as the 12th C, perched on a rocky outcrop in the middle of the city.

And of course the markets were in full swing in the Hauptmarkt on the Pegnitz River. 

Nuremburg is also famous for its Nazi history: being in the centre of Germany, the historic base of the Holy Roman Empire and very beautiful, Hitler chose it to be the site of the incredible and terrible annual Nazi rallies, enormous propaganda events. The half completed architecture of these rallies is an awful reminder of the regime. 

Nuremburg is also infamous for being the location of the Nuremburg trials in 1945.  It was chosen as the location because of its symbolism to the Nazi regime - the rallies had been held there and the laws stripping Jews of their citizenship were passed in Nuremburg.  We visited the fascinating museum dedicated to the trials within the Palace of Justice where they were held, describing the incredible effect they had in the post-war world.

Also in the region is the picture perfect Rothenburg ob der Tauber, beautifully preserved from the Medieval era, with a Renaissance town hall and pastel buildings on cobbled streets.  It’s so perfect it was the inspiration for Disney for the village in Pinocchio and was a filming location for Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, the Brothers Grimm and Harry Potter. 

And what would a medieval dream land be without alarmingly large servings of carbs and meat? (Sarah looks v stressed at the task before her)

Once Dylan arrived, we took the van for a spin a bit further afield, setting out on a trip through southern Bavaria.  We spent a very sad afternoon at the terribly macabre Dachau, the first concentration camp opened in Germany, which held political prisoners, forced labourers, homosexuals, gypsies and POWs among others. It was a prototype for all other concentration camps set up by the Nazis and includes the terrible phrase above the entrance gate  "Arbeit macht frei" - work shall set you free.

We stayed that night in Ammersee, where the Hahns have a lakehouse. We had a lovely dinner with Sarah’s dad and watching movies, before heading off to the delightful (and very crowded) Neuschwanstein Castle the next morning. The weather was stunning and although we had to fight our way through swarms of people, it was so worth it! The castle is insane, being the crazed invention of a reclusive Bavarian king Ludwig II who was obsessed with Wagner’s operas and the romance of the past. Hilariously, his family castle was on the site and was actually from the Middle Ages, but he knocked it down to build one that better fit his ideal of what a castle from that period should look like (and as an homage to Wagner).  During its construction, his expenses spiraled out of control, as did his mental health problems and he died in very suspicious circumstances in the lake below the castle before the interior of the castle was completed.  

We spent another night in the lakehouse, then headed back to Munich for more museums, more strolling and more Hofbrauhaus! 

Next on our list was a sneaky pre-Christmas trip to Bamberg, a river town situated on seven hills, each topped with an historic church.  It includes a beautiful rathaus (town hall) built in the 13th C in the middle of a bridge over the river.

By this stage, we’d made it to Christmas and still without a single snowflake! We celebrated in German fashion with carols in the church in the early evening on Christmas eve (which is the real day of celebration in Germany).

That was followed by an amazing Christmas spread at the Hahn house, presents and carols around the tree.  We were on intense snow watch, but no luck yet!

Christmas day was similarly lovely, with Sarah’s brothers and their families arriving. Still no snow! But the next day, which in German tradition is still Christmas, there was snow!! 

Nick, Felix, Moritz and I climbed the amazingly pretty Staffelberg, the most famous landmark in the region. It was settled as far back as the stone age and has Celtic ruins at the top.

After a few more relaxing days in Erlangen, we prepared ourselves to head to Berlin for New Years! However, with our van parked for weeks in the freezing cold and lacking any type of snow tyres we thought it would be sensible to take the train!

In Berlin, we met up with Sarah and Dylan’s mates from NZ, who were partying their way around Europe! We stayed on their floor in the midst of a manic few days of eating, drinking, sightseeing and trying to stay warm in a very wintery Berlin!

Having suitably seen in the 2015th year of our Lord, we split off from our German posse and - van still safely ensconced in Erlangen - we were ready for a ramble further east, jumping on an early morning bus (a very unfamiliar experience for us!) to Prague! 

[shockinghocking]

Lake it til you make it

After making the painful decision not to make a very expensive detour to Geneva, we pointed the van north and made for Milano. The first stop on our list was a famous seafood restaurant which served us delicious seafood risotto and deep fried squid, before finding a nice carpark for the night behind a venue which was seemingly hosting that week's Italian X-Factor!

The next day passed in a storm of shopping. Milan, of course, is famous for its designer clothes and expensive labels. It’s also the home of incredible outlet shops, full of the end of line, sample and misfit extras of the biggest European designers. We thought it was imperative that we sample the wares, support the local economy and get ourselves kitted out in a new set of work clothes for our return home. 

After a satisfying day of cheap eats, cheap clothes and a seriously beautiful cathedral (we definitely took some photos, but I can’t seem to find them, so google will suffice)...

... we skipped over to Switzerland to peek what things looked like across the border, eat McDonalds (the only food we could afford) and have a look at another outlet that we had heard about. 

To ensure we didn’t feel too glamourous with our quick dash to Switzerland and fancy new clothes, that night we found a slug in the van. In our bed.

Nonetheless, we continued our lavish lifestyle, calling in to George Clooney’s house at the stunning Argegno hamlet on the shores of Lake Como.

Having hung around his gate for a while:

We are stoked to be able to show you photographic evidence of us having a drink at George and Amal’s. 

Thanks for your hospitality guys, we’ll be back soon for sure! 

We had a very chilly but very beautiful walk through the hills, past the villas and churches and around the shore of the lake, and stopped for a delicious pizza at a likely looking spot - you can see it to the left of Ristorante Barchetta. 

It pains me to talk about it now, so long after consuming it, but one had asparagus and crème fraîche on it. It’s like Italians could see into my soul and create things that I didn’t even know I wanted. So delicious.

We then took the funicular from the lakefront to the little hilltop village of Pigra. It’s one of the steepest cable cars in the world - in five minutes it takes you from 200m above sea level to 850 m. 

In Pigra we took a stroll across the ridge, looking at the view and playing in the very impressive collection of autumn leaves. 

Next was a night in the lovely Menaggio, here was where we really started to feel the cold!

The town was filled with locals who were gearing up for a big hunt - presumably boar or deer - and by gearing up, I mean getting trashed on red wine in their hunting gear at about 9 in the morning...

We beat a hasty retreat, not liking the idea of being mistaken for a four legged beast by half blind drunken old men, and paid a visit to the beautiful Como town, the largest settlement on the lake. Our spidey senses had been right - it was getting lots colder, very quickly, and the Italians felt it too. For them (and so for us too!) it meant Christmas was in the air and everything was starting to look very festive.

The Christmas markets, ice skating rinks and hot drinks were everywhere and we cuddled up in a cafe and read our books in the warm, looking forward to our first white Christmas! 

The last town on our whistle stop of Lake Como was Bellagio (inspiration for the famous Las Vegas hotel and casino), at the end of the peninsula that divides Lake Como into its iconic Y shape.  It’s famous for its view across the lake to the Alps. 

We were pleased with our acquisition of some local friends, baby miniature goats.

After a stunning drive on the road that winds around the shore of the lake (and with a stop to buy tyre chains just in case), we arrived back in Lake Garda. I say ‘back’, because when we had driven from Venice to Cinque Terre in October, we’d stopped in Lake Garda for a night, but hadn’t remembered the name of the lake. We both felt a sense of deja vu as we pulled into a freedom camping spot, and realised we’d ended up in the exact same place as months before, traveling in the opposite direction! 

With our bones feeling cold and damp, we treated ourselves to an incredible hot pool experience on the shores of the lake at Parco Termale del Garda. Located in stately grounds and full of beautiful mature trees and old arches and buildings, the spa itself is a huge thermal landscaped lake surrounded by enormous trees, with an old fashioned glass house (where the changing rooms, bar and restaurant are) and a backlit cave and waterfall area. The water was exactly body temperature, and the lake had two teardrop shaped spas in its centre that were at hotter temperatures. We had the whole lake almost to ourselves on a rainy weekday afternoon - we snuck in some red wine in a drink bottle and blissed out for hours and hours. It was phenomenal.

We had beautiful rabbit and brocolli gnocci for dinner at a wonderful trattoria to top it off.

We started the next day with a bang, rolling up to a famous deli where the sandwiches blew our minds.

Then began our drive into the mountains to see the towns tucked on the border of Italy and Austria, where they speak both German and italian, and eat apple strudel after their pasta and pizza. 

The road on the way was amazing.  We drove through the Lagarina Valley, which is carved out by the Adige River. It’s known for its apple trees, fortresses and mountain climbers.

We stopped at Besenello, where the castle was unfortunately closed for the winter but the view remained jaw dropping.

A few hours later we were officially in the Dolomites, drinking mulled wine and enjoying the transformation that a few kilometres makes in the culture and food in this damn continent! We based ourselves in the lovely university town of Trento - a city that has swung between the Habsburg Empire and Italy throughout its history. It’s also, for all the historians out there, the site of the Council of Trent, the meeting that started the counter-Reformation. It’s stuffed full of Renaissance buildings and monuments. 

The Christmas markets were in full swing, and we stuffed ourselves with porcini polenta, mulled wine and an Austrian-Italian special that consists of hash browns topped with strong cheese and bacon. 

The next day brought our friend Fiona on the train, travelling via Euro Rail, she dog-legged up to Trento en route from Venice to Florence. 

We made a bit of a dent in that cauldron of mulled wine...

We took a tiki tour through the Alpine villages nearby - they really were the picture of Christmas even without any snow. We were treated to school performances of the nativity, carol singers and the most amazing hot chocolate any of us had experienced.

For a laugh, and because Fi wasn’t going to get to visit Germany or Austria on her trip, we decided to do a dash across the border. We managed to do dinner in Italy, sleep the night in Austria, breakfast in the traditional German way and be back to Italy in time for lunch! 

What a difference a border makes!! 

Back in Italy, we stopped at the Christmas market in Borzano, having another go at the delightful hash brown concoction.

After bidding arrivederci to Fiona and seeing her safely on her train, we motored our way upwards, deeper into the mountains - we wanted to see these alpine views! 

Crossing our fingers that the van wouldn’t be too cold to start when we got back, we left it in Compatsch (still in Italy, despite the tsch!) and took a very long (4,500 m) cable car all the way up to the Alpe de Suisi in the Dolomites:

It had been a very very warm start to the season in Europe, so there was much less snow than would be needed to ski or snow board, but it was stunning to walk in. The Alpe de Suisi is Europe’s largest alpine plateau - they call it a high altitude meadow - and is an incredible place for hiking. 

Having defrosted the van, we stopped for the final night of our three month trip through Italy in the lovely town of Ortisei, known in German as St. Ulrich. Our last night was spent celebrating Saint Nicholas’ day, the day when Krampus, a demon-like creature, appears to punish children who have behaved badly during the year. This region, and the bordering parts of Austria, have a night of debauchery, in which the teens and young adults dress up in black sheep skins and cover themselves in black paint and run rampant around the streets terrorising young children with chains and whips. 

Obviously they saw right through Nick, and marked him so that Krampus could find him and drag his sinful self down to the underworld.

With one last pasta, we were then crossing the border and leaving our beloved Italy behind once and for all.

[shockinghocking]

Under the Tuscan Sun (sans pun)

A few hours after leaving France, we were in the cute little city of La Spezia, a workaday kind of place which acts as a gateway town to the world-famous Cinque Terre. The Cinque Terre ("five lands") are a collection of villages dating back to the 10th century, which cling precariously to the cliffs in Leguria. 

Our dinner that night was a little unusual by Italian standards - we ended up in a fantastic metal-music venue, which in true Italian style, served unbelievable food, but was decorated in death-metal style and played very intense music!

When entering the bar, I saw there was a bottle of gin on the shelf and took the opportunity to order a gin and tonic, having not seen it served in Italy before! The Italian metal-head behind the bar solemnly responded "we don't serve cocktails." I laughed, before quickly realising he was serious. After trying to convince him a G&T wasn't a cocktail, it was a long drink (I bet they served rum and cokes without blinking an eye!), I asked him what on earth they served their gin with then? "Straight." I was tempted to retort that that was probably the reason the bottle of gin had never been opened, but gave up and ordered a beer. Shots of gin? Now that's metal.

The next morning, we headed to Vernazza, the first village on our list and the oldest out of the five (first mentioned in 1080!). We were lucky with the weather - the villages had been affected by mudslides a few weeks before and had already been sandbagged for the winter, but we were treated to stunning blue skies and the famous 'azzuro' (azure) colour of the Mediterranean. These villages really do make you say "wow!" 

We treated ourselves to a great lunch of pasta with pesto (pesto was invented in Cinque Terre!!) and spaghetti with mussels, during which we were serenaded by the ancient proprietor on the piano, who played all the classics!

We then climbed the stairs up through town to the beginning of a section of the Sentiero Azzurro, an old mule track that connects all of the villages together and is the major form of transport between them. The trail between Vernazza and Corniglia is the steepest part of the track, but offers an incredible view of Vernazza, with its little fortress and gorgeous port. Usually these trails are crushed backpack to backpack by tourists, but seemingly the weeks of rain had scared away the hordes, and there were only a few other hikers to say ciao to as we walked.

The walk from there is 4 km, and we passed through lush forest, beautiful stone steps and incredibly old olive groves. Views like this waited around every corner! 

After a hot slog, we were presented with Corniglia!

The vine terracing in the foreground and the terraces below the town are an part of an incredible feat of human engineering, dug by hand over the course of two millennia. Reinforced with beautiful old dry stone walls, the terraces that stretch throughout the Cinque Terre has been compared to the Great Wall of China in their scope and magnitude. They're pretty impressive! Not to mention the multi-coloured, ramshackle prettiness of the village on top, looking like it's only one small push away from tumbling into the Mediterranean!

We watched the light fade while eating gelato: these ancient fishermen and vintners had to work damn hard, but they had views to die for (that's another of the villages on the closest ridge)!

We then clambered down a series of slippery wet stairs to see the beautiful harbour, stacked with colourful houses and shops, and surrounded by dilapidated fishing boats.

The next day, we met up with Kat, one of Nick's friends from Unilever who has recently moved to London. It being one of her last weeks of freedom before starting her new UK job, she joined us for some gallavanting. The weather had turned overnight, and it was a damper, darker Cinque Terre we were exploring today! Having walked through Riomaggiore, stopping for pizza and bruschetta, we returned to see a stormy Corniglia looking like a different town altogether in the wind and rain!

That night, we treated ourselves to an incredible dinner in La Spezia, including hazelnut tart, a wonderful salmon and perfect panna cotta!

The next morning, we hit the road for Lucca, which we wanted Kat to see, since we'd loved it so much when we visited with Elspeth. That too had transformed! When we had been there it was late summer, and having given autumn a pretty good chunk of time to set in, the town was golden!

Having walked the walls and reacquainted ourselves with the 'circular square' in the town's centre, we were off to Florence for a whirwind second trip through there too! Heading to Mario's to fuel ourselves, we proceeded to stuff ourselves full of meat, wine, meat and meat!

Delicious! Off we trotted to once again gape at the monstrously pretty Duomo, all in green and pink...

And after a very satisfying day in Florence, we headed for Pistoia - we were off on our very first HelpX volunteer assignment! HelpX is an amazing resource for travellers like us - it sets up people with accommodation and work that needs doing with people who can work and want accommodation! Pistoia was the closest major city to our destination, which was in the hills of Pietrabuona, and we settled there for the night. Pistoia reinforced that even small cities in Italy are amazing! Kat stayed in a (very affordable) B&B run by a lovely Italian woman, in which she had a huge palazzo bedroom with marble floors and a frescoed ceiling, so she was watched over by cherubs all night. The local bar served incredible food and delicious wine, and we went to bed very happy with our little stopover!

Day one of our HelpX was exhausting but great! We arrived in Pietrabuona in the morning, met our hosts Stuart and Helen, were introduced to the cats and the gorgeous apartment which we were staying in and then headed into the chestnut forest! Stuart and Helen arrived earlier in the year, having moved to Tuscany from England after falling in love with it while holidaying (hard not to!!). They bought a gorgeous 200 year old Tuscan villa with twelve acres of land around it, and set to work taming the abandoned olive terraces and chestnut forest. They had just finished renovating the apartment in the bottom floor of the villa, and it really was the most lovely place to stay (if you're thinking of holidaying in Tuscany, this is the place! http://www.numero182.com). Having earned a good meal - for the first time on our whole trip, I might add! - by collecting firewood for the day, we had a lovely evening over wine and home cooked Tuscan food in the villa, with this view to top it all off!

The trio of trusty Tuscans (photo stolen off Helen and Stuart's blog themovetotuscany.blogspot.co.uk (which, by the way is well worth a read - great escapism for those office-days!)):

After a few satisfying days on the land, we jumped in the van to drop Kat at the train to Pisa which would get her to her Pisa-London flight. Against all odds (it had been very damp the last few days), we managed to get the van up the drive, hooray!

On arrival, a helpful bystander remarked that all trains were on strike today - Italy is notorious for transport strikes, and we'd managed to avoid them due to our trusty set of wheels. Panic!! We turned around to drop me back so I could make a start on stacking the firewood and raking up brambles, while Nick drove Kat to Pisa to jump on her flight, which was thankfully still running! Phew.

That Sunday everyone was buzzing with the arrival of a new member of the Pietrabuona family - a little puppy that Stuart and Helen had rescued from a dog shelter in the south of Italy, a region which is full of unwanted dogs. He was a little Italian hunting dog and so ridiculously cute. Their cats were Lucca and Florence, and they wanted to carry on the Tuscan theme, so settled on Reggie, for the coastal town of Viareggio. A timid little boy who had had a stressful day being transported the length of the country, he was soon settling in with his new best friend the piggie (the cats certainly weren't keen for hugs!)

Over the next few days, we busied ourselves with cutting and stacking the big piles of firewood we'd brought down from the forest, Reggie-proofing the property with a Tuscan-style fence, clearing an old shed of the junk left there by the previous owners and when the weather turned sour, re-pointing an old stone wall under the shelter of a tarpaulin. 

Nick even put those fifth form algebra skills to the test, designing and constructing a gate in the shape of a parallelogram!

The fencing was very satsifying, as within a few days we had a very happy puppy entertaining us as we worked, very impressed with the expansion of his empire (he's the flash in the left-hand corner, testing how much speed he can get up)!

In amongst the hard work, there was plenty of time for tea breaks, too!

Speaking of breaks, it wasn't all work and no play, with heaps of amazing stuff to see in the area. We had weekends off, and used one of them to tour around an eerily foggy Tuscan landscape. 

Of course we couldn't think of taking a walk without some great Italian food to line our tummies, so we stopped in for some roast pigeon and suckling pig on the way.

Satiated, we headed to the bridge at Mammiano Basso, the longest pedestrian suspension bridge in the world (220 m, and 40 m high), which was built to shorten the journey of workers in the local metal factory.

 The view from the middle was very pretty!

That night, we were treated by Helen and Stuart to the most remarkable dinner... They have a local food truck which is run by the delightful Mimmo, who specialises in Italian ham and spicy sausage panini. However it just so happened that it was hunting season in Tuscany and he had his hands on some wild boar, which he had turned into the best burgers I have ever had - succulent wild boar patty, onion ring, unbelievable mushroom sauce and cheese. It was unnnnnnnbelievable.

Now there's a man who knows how to cook!

Our final work day was geese-ramp-building-day! Helen and Stuart have a pair of geese called Goose Willis and Goosy Liu, who are very adorable but very thick. They have a wonderful enclosure which encompasses three terraces, but they weren't forward thinking enough to flap-climb from one to the other, meaning one terrace was pecked raw and the others were lush with grass! We decided to build them an easier route by cutting a ramp into the terraces. After lots of digging and relaying of dirt and rocks, we disguised the ramp with clumps of grass we had dug up and then lay a trail of lettuce up, hoping they would get the idea. Mrs Goose (the smarter by a mile) went straight up without any coaxing, eating her favourite snack all the way to the top! Hapless Mr Goose waddled in a slightly panicked way behind her, he takes his role as her protector very seriously. 

Goose whisperer:

Success!

With that, we were off to our next adventure - having felt truly at home in our gorgeous Tuscan apartment while working with Stuart and Helen, we were sad to say goodbye, but excited to be heading to Milano! 

[shockinghocking]

Nice: it was so damn nice.

We reached Nice, despite insane French drivers trying their darndest to kill us on the Maritime Alps, but arrived to find every carpark in town restricted by height. Clearly the French Riviera has had more than its fair share of camper vans clogging up its parking spots, but it was very frustrating in our 2.5m high VW! Eventually we found a carpark from which we could get a much-needed French dinner. Although a little shocked at the prices (amazing Italian food is ridiculously underpriced), we realised quickly what the fuss is about with French cooking, swooning over our delicious pork Marsala.

In love with France already, we headed to an official camper spot in the suburbs west of the city, which we called home for the next week (it was great, other than the fact someone tried to jimmy the lock and now we only have one working keyhole in the whole van).

Nice is a seriously pretty city, it looks as though it's been designed by someone who really knows how to make the perfect town: beautiful old buildings everywhere, wide open streets, gorgeous plazas, green spaces and all set out on a stunning waterfront promenade. The public artwork throughout the city is beautifully done too.

The next morning we caught a ridiculously cheap bus - I'm talking NZ$2 for a 1.5 hour bus ride - to Grasse. Our bus driver treated us to our first dose of French haughtiness, refusing to understand that we wanted a ticket to Grasse (the major destination of the bus route) because we pronounced the 'e' when it was supposed to be silent. Oh dear. 

Grasse is a beautiful little town in the hills known as the perfume capital of the world. It invented perfume when the glove-makers who were situated in the town began scenting their gloves with flower oils in the mid fourteenth century. Surrounding the town are meadows growing jasmine, lavender, mimosa, orange blossoms and roses, all of which are used for the essential oils necessary to make perfume (Google picture as we didn't seem to take any for some reason).

After a wonderful salmon, cream cheese and green apple bagel...

...we were lucky enough to be able to take a private tour of Parfumerie Fragonard, which taught us all about why eu de parfum is so expensive! If you need rose oil for a particular perfume, the roses must be harvested by hand, as there is no mechanised method and before dawn (when the scent is most developed). It takes about 60,000 roses to make 30 ml of rose oil. Jasmine is even more complex, as the oil cannot be extracted with solvents, so up until a few years ago each blossom had to be laid individually on screens of animal fats, which would suck the scent out of the flower. SO much labour involved. 

The perfumes are designed by a 'Nose', a person who has trained his nose so finely that he or she can determine 2,000 individual scents and then carefully made in these archaic looking vats.

After our tour, Nick chose himself a lovely eu de toilette from the beautifully scented shop and we were on our merry way back to Nice!

There we managed to find yet another unbelievable French dinner, including duck in caramel and pear sauce which was one of the highlight meals of the whole trip!

The next day was spent strolling through town in the sunshine, eating baguettes and looking at the view. 

We went to the top of Castle Hill (where there used to be a castle, but which now is public gardens) by way of the art deco lift which travels inside the hill to the top. The views of the city from the ridge were absolutely stunning:

We made our way down the hill just on the edge of a magnificent sunset which made the light all golden and beautiful - it really was just like a movie! The artificial waterfall:

The main promenade:

The beach:

Sidenote: by the next day a massive storm had hit the coast and that millpond had about four feet of dumping swell and the whole seaward footpath of the boulevard was shut to pedestrians!

Dinner that night was courtesy of Michelin-starred chef Dominique Le Stanc at La Merenda, where we were seated cheek by jowl in the tiny dining room next to beautiful French couples eating specialties from the chalkboard menu (hence no pictures, there just wasn't room!). We hummed and ahhed over the tiny offal-filled menu and eventually decided on calf's head (cheek, tongue, brain and forehead) and stuffed sausage of stomach. With a glass of red wine to fortify us, we managed to enjoy the lovingly prepared dishes, all except the forehead, which was the consistency of eyeball. Disgusting!

We spent the next day's apocalyptic storm hiding from the deluge in the modern art gallery, which was stunning. It is most famous for its collection of works by Yves Klein, who was born in Nice. Having exhausted ourselves running through soggy streets, we gave up and spent the rest of the day hiding in the van watching movies and trying to dry our soaking wet clothes and shoes.

The rain had subsided a little the next day, so we set out on our postponed trip to Cannes. Cannes is like a miniature Nice, with a long boutique-filled Promenade de la Croisette hugging the beach and little old men playing petanque in the streets.

As well as being a luxury getaway for the rich and beautiful, Cannes is of course famous for being home to a very important film festival and therefore being the playground of movie stars. Nick even ran into Lucy Liu and Drew Barrymore!

The theatre in which the famous Cannes Film Festival is staged is a total monstrosity - you can kind of see it in this picture behind the world renowned cameraman Nicholas Maskell shooting some scenes:

I don't know, it just seemed horrendously out of place on an avenue filled with dainty villas and 18th century shopfronts...! Although the storm had passed by this stage, the weather was still rather brooding, and we joined the crowds on the avenue ogling at a ship which had been washed up on the beach during the night.

The whole waterfront was barricaded to reduce damage to the (rather irresponsibly placed, we thought) waterfront bars and cafes that had been shut for the winter. It was still rather a pretty sight, especially with that riviera sunset!

We headed back to dinner in Nice at a ridiculously great restaurant, Le Comptoir du Marché - affordable (at least by Nice standards), fantastic service, creative menu and unbelievable food.

Quail with foie gras:

Duck terrine with caramelised onion:

Beef bourguignon with polenta:

And roast piglet:

It was amazing. Although we were full, we had to try a dessert, because how could we not?? The waitress recommended Ile Flottante ('the floating island'), a classic French dessert of salted meringue served on vanilla custard, with salted caramel and toasted almonds on top. Even the seasoned waitress couldn't hide her surprise at how fast we finished it!

The next morning, after wandering around feeling like we were in a brochure for a fictional and impossibly pretty city with ridiculously affordable and brilliant public transport...

We headed to Monaco for a glimpse at the itty bitty monarchy (it officially falls in the category of 'micro-state'!) that sits in the middle of the French Riviera. 

This is seriously what it looked like while we were there:

I kid you not, we took those pictures in a real place that exists. We visited the world famous casino Monte Carlo (although only the exterior and the foyer, as we are not high rollers, needless to say).

Next stop was the Musée Océanographique, commissioned by Prince Albert I in 1910. It has a museum of marine science, most of which is made up of displays from Prince Albert's personal collection - including the world's largest cabinet of marine curiosities! 

We particularly liked this mini-submarine.

Underneath the museum is a beautiful aquarium, which included some very friendly puffer fish who wished to make Nick's acquaintance. 

On the way back to the bus, we passed the royal palace, which looked like it was made on the cheap out of plywood and paint...

It's got a rather nice view, though.

The next day we continued our tour of the Riviera, heading to Antibes, a pretty town which sits behind a set of walls built in the 10th century. It was a crumbling village until the mid 1800s, when its beautiful position led to a series of luxurious accommodation being built - it is now a famous resort, chockablock with super yachts. 

In 1946, the municipal government of Antibes offered the town's castle to Picasso in which to paint, draw, sculpt and make murals for six months. He later donated a huge number of works to the municipality, and the castle has been converted into a beautiful Picasso museum which we spent the afternoon wandering in.

After taking a beautiful sunset stroll across the walls, we headed back to Nice.

The next day we bid au revoir to France, loosening our belts quite significantly, and headed back up the winding roads to Italy to meet Nick's friend Kat in the Cinque Terre!

[shockinghocking]

Nobody knows the truffle I've seen

Somewhat exhausted from our breakneck tour of Italy with Elspeth, we meandered to elegant little Vicenza for a beer and some seafood, then headed to a lookout above the city to crash into bed. After a late start, we headed into the daily markets, which were packed with fried goodies, cashmere (in preparation for the rapidly dropping temperatures) and what must have been a crazy good deal for shoes. Italian ladies LOVE shoes.

The city of Vicenza is famous for being the location of the Palladian villas, designed by Andrea Palladio, the most influential man in the history of European architecture. 

Next we set off to find two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Verona where we set our scene - although we hoped to avoid any civil blood making civil hands unclean. He never actually visited Verona, but Shakespeare must have been a big fan, as it wasn't just Romeo and Juliet which was set here, but also The Taming of the Shrew (which I prefer to refer to as 'Ten Things I Hate About You minus Heath') and The Two Gentlemen of Verona (which I have never heard of). 

With that in mind, we had to visit Casa di Giulietta, featuring a pretty little courtyard from which a 14th century balcony protrudes (although I failed to see how it would fit two people, let alone someone as muscular as Leonardo di Caprio). Obviously Juliet is a fictional character, but the casa was originally built by the Capello family and still bears their symbol, a hat. It also has a Juliet statue, with her right boobie all worn down because so many people have felt her up. 

The entire courtyard is full of lovesick graffiti and notes. The staff take down the notes regularly, so it's less romantic (and much less permanent) than tourists might have hoped. 

We rented bikes and cruised around the city, taking in the beautiful Roman amphitheatre, the remains of the Roman road which linked ancient Trieste with ancient Milan, the gothic castles along the river, the ancient arched bridges and the wonderful Basilica of San Zeno Maggiore, a stripy cathedral with a very lovely bell tower built in 1123.

After soaking up the sights and atmosphere, we cycled back to the van for a dinner of homemade pork and rocket sandwiches, watching the sun go down over the skyline. Not a bad view!

We decided to make a start on driving in order to reduce the next day's trip, and pointed the van at Lake Garda, the largest lake in Italy. We spent a leisurely morning watching the swans on the lake and wandering up and down jetties all alone. As we've mentioned before, the Italians (perhaps all the Europeans) seem to have a very short period which they consider appropriate for 'outdoorsie' things such as going to the beach, forests or lakes, meaning we had ALL THE NATURE to ourselves.

By the afternoon we were in Alba, a town in the north-west (like baby North West - pop culture reference!), famous for its incredible cuisine, unbeatable truffles and being home to "the wine of kings, the king of wines", the Piedmontese Barolo. The truffle is the most expensive ingredient in the world, and the white truffle is the rarest and most expensive type. Out of this tiny and expensive pool of white truffles, the best and strongest-smelling come from Alba and its surrounding countryside, the "trifola d'Alba Madonna." We were well and truly in the land of the pungent fungus. If that wasn't enough, we were also in hazelnut country, with the INCREDIBLE sweetness of the local hazelnuts (this has to be tasted to be believed) leading to the region inventing Nutella, Ferrero Rocher and Frangelico. It's that good.

The day we arrived in this ancient and well-regarded town was Halloween, as blurrily evidenced by this little child dressed as a poo in a toilet who was trick or treating down the main street while holding a toilet brush.

Bless.

Our luck was in: as well as being Halloween, we had happened to coincide our visit with the world-famous Fiera del Tartufo truffle festival. We rocked up, paid a small entrance fee and were spoiled with baggies of hazelnuts, wine tastings (accompanied by very passionate and informative conversations with the - usually very young - vintners), cheese tastings (accompanied by very passionate and informative conversations with the - usually very young - cheesemakers) and truffle-smellings (accompanied by very passionate and informative conversations with the - usually very young - truffle hunters). It was glorious. We learned that Italians never use hogs in truffle hunting, only dogs, as pigs have a tendency to grow too fond of the truffles and either eat them when they find them, or damage the area, reducing regrowth. One truffle hunter had a photo album of her and her father's expeditions, showing the very cute Romagna water dogs that are commonly trained for the task, and some of their best finds of rare white truffles. She let us smell one of that her father had found a few nights before, for which he had to dig three metres down in the middle of the night. 

Satisfied with our haul of wines, cheeses and completely imbibed with the scent of truffle, we wound our way up the hills surrounding Alba to meet Roberto, a couch surfer who had agreed to have us stay at very short notice. And wow, what a place to stay! He was renovating his beautiful and enormous 18th C homestead while cultivating the famous Barolo and Nebbiolo grapes in the clay soil surrounding it. 

We had been learning Italian for about three months at that stage - being in the car for a few hours almost every day meant that we had lots of time to fill with 'Learn Italian' audiobooks, which had been more helpful than we expected! Roberto spoke a very small amount of English, and by that stage I had learned enough to be able to converse with him to a limited extent in Italian. We were both very excited to realise we were able to communicate - if only because Roberto was putting so much effort into understanding us, and felt like all the hard work had paid off!

Having showered (!) and spent a comfortable night, we spent the next morning wandering through the village. We returned to the house to eat a fantastic lunch of homegrown, homemade tomato pasta with Roberto's own red wine. Unbeatable. He then offered to show us around his vineyard, giving us a tour of all the different varieties of grapes, pointing out the valleys in the distance which grow particular varieties of wine and educating us on how it all works.

Not a bad view!

Extra tour guides:

Beautiful AND delicious:

Even the shed full of old wine bottles is picturesque. What is this witchcraft?

With a very grateful goodbye, we left Roberto and took the road less travelled (the road well-travelled was plagued by terrible tolls) through the Maritime Alps - the southernmost part of the Alps, to Nice!

[shockinghocking]

Well, Lucca here, it's been a Venice trip.

After recuperation time in our Viareggio apartment, we headed out for the day to Lucca, one of my favourite towns we visited in all of Italy. It has retained its Renaissance-era town walls completely intact, and these have been converted into a stunning pedestrian promenade, with each side lined with a different species of tree. The weather was absolutely perfect. We rented bikes and cycled the walls, cooing at the gorgeous villas, parks, gelato-bikes, churches and towers that we passed on the way. 

We parked our bikes outside the botanic gardens and strolled for a while, coming across a lake where, according to legend, a beautiful Luccan aristocrat sold her soul to the devil to get 30 more years of youthfulness. When her years were up, the devil came for her in a flaming carriage and careened around and around the walls of Lucca so everyone could hear her scream and then took her down to hell through the lake. We couldn't see any telltale signs of hell at the bottom of the lake, but were careful not to fall in just in case.

Next was the beautiful Guinigi Tower, easy to pick out by the grove of trees at the very top. 

Once you get past all the people having panic attacks on the stairs at the top (very rickety stairs) and squeeze into the tiny spaces in the roof garden that aren't taken up by trees, the view is stunning.

By a stroke of amazing luck, the animal-spotting element of the Italy tour was about to get a big boost. In addition to being outstandingly pretty, having great walls and perfect weather, Lucca was, on the very day we were there, holding a doggie marathon. All the Italians in the region bought their dogs to the walls of Lucca and walked them en masse around the perimeter of the town. Elspeth and I were so excited that we ALMOST MISSED LUNCH.

I can't embed the video (the only video of the blog so far) but it will follow this post, I can't let you miss out on the full audio-visual experience.

After delicious chewy sandwiches and gelato for (very late) lunch, we headed back to Viareggio to check out the sunset over the beautiful wide beach.

The restaurant we wanted to go to in Viareggio was full, so we asked the waiter if there was a place he recommended. Following his advice, we ended up with one of the only disappointing Italian meals of the trip (over salted, under flavoured, not fresh) - somewhat problematic as it was also the biggest serving sizes we'd had in the entire trip!

I think we ate approximately a quarter of it!

After another great night's sleep in the apartment and having washed all our filthy clothes, we were on the road again, heading for Bologna, home of spaghetti bolognese (which they call ragu!). We all loved Bologna - it's a university town, and it's super vibrant, fun and full of amazing food and wine.

Starting off with a well-earned plate of prosciutto, bread and curd cheese, we decided to treat ourselves to a bottle of Lambrusco, a sparkling red wine from the region (Emilia-Romagna). It was absolutely delicious and we decided to spend the rest of the evening in a little outdoor bar under the famous Bolognese towers (one of which is on almost as much of a lean as the Pisan one!!!) getting more acquainted with this particular type of wine.

Well hydrated, we headed off for a taste of Bologna's famous dish. Delicious, but not as good as dad's!

We rounded off the evening of excess with gelato (second best of the trip... Creamiest that we had, but not quite as intense flavours as the Florentine gelato!) and collapsed into bed. 

One of the coolest things about Bologna is that its streets are lined with an extensive system of pretty porticoes, which mean you're always walking beside beautiful columns under a vaulted roof. We had good weather while we were there, but if it's hot, raining or snowy, the porticoes mean that you can walk while sheltered from the elements.

After Naples, Bologna has the largest historical centre (for those who haven't been to Europe, the historical centre is the bit that everyone takes photos of, usually surrounded by a sprawl of 'normal' city) in Europe. The centre includes some of the most important baroque, Renaissance and medieval buildings and monuments in the continent.

Nick's favourite sculpture out of these was the Neptune fountain (reason being obvious):

Especially cool to visit was the university, which, established in 1088, is the oldest in the world after the University of Fez. Dante, Erasmus and Copernicus were all students there! 

Slightly different decor to Auckland University...

Most famous of all is the Anatomical Theatre, which is covered in sculptures of the great classical medical scholars, and a pair of very gruesome statues which hold up the canopy over the lecturers chair, which are portrayed with no skin. The table in the middle is where cadavers were dissected.

The afternoon was spent in a very satisfying shopping spree along with a peek into some of the beautiful churches scattering the historic centre before piling into the van for the next (and Elspeth's final) Italian destination: Venice!

We arrived in the evening and headed straight into town for dinner and a moonlit wander around the canals. 

With just a peek to whet our appetite, we got a good night's sleep to charge our batteries for lots of walking the next day! 

Good thing too, as lots of walking was exactly what we did. We started the day with the public transport of choice, the vaporetto or gondola ferry, which takes a beautiful meandering trip from one side of Venice to the other, taking in all the sights of the Grand Canal on the way.

Venice is insanely pretty. I was expecting it to be really really pretty. But it was even more pretty than that. 

We wandered and wandered and wandered (the place is a labyrinth) and all the bridges were hump-backed and all the canals were filled with gondolas and all the lanes were filled with palazzos. 

And lets not forget that, touristy or not, this is Italy, and the food was monumental. From delicious seafood, fresh from the fishing boats at ProntePesce...

... to some of the best food we've had on the whole trip at the beautiful Ristorante La Bicca on Elspeth's last night in Italy (duck coated in chicken liver, gnocchi with smoked ricotta, rabbit with porcini mushrooms, and an absolutely perfect panacotta with caramel), to an incredible seafood risotto at Anice Stellato, a restaurant we traversed seemingly the whole damn island to find and was, of course, worth the hike (no photos of these ones, not sure why!).

On our last day, we finally tore ourselves away from the canals and into St Mark's Basilica, a very over-the-top, mosaic covered Byzantine style cathedral. To our uneducated eyes, it looked like both the exterior and interior were almost entirely covered in gold

There's me and Elspeth in the left hand corner of the balcony!

Oh, there we are.

The basilica is the home of the Pala d'Oro, the most famous piece of Byzantine art, a golden cloth embroidered with St Mark's life that dates from 1102. It is housed in a gilt frame which is encrusted with 2,000 gems and is very, very sparkly.

Having worn our down our eyeballs, stomachs and livers from overuse, it was time to drop Elspeth at the airport for her flight home - with a sad bon voyage, the terrible trio was down to two once again. 

[shockinghocking]

Siena Lot of Italy

Although we only spent one evening in Siena, we all fell in love with it. Entering through a double gate piercing the enormous fortified walls made you feel like you were heading into King's Landing, and the old streets within were just as pretty!

The main piazza (Piazza del Campo) is sea-shell shaped and slopes down to the Tower Mangia and the Palazzo Pubblico. It's regarded as Europe's greatest medieval square for its architectural integrity and beauty. We planted ourselves in a likely looking spot facing the view and set out our picnic of champions: outstanding Italian red wine, stuffed olives, fresh bread, prosciutto, rocket, three varieties of Italian cheese and cherry tomatoes. It was seriously good, and even better when washed down with organic gelato from a shop just off the square (from memory, we managed a variety of flavours, including salted caramel, meringue, nougat, dark chocolate and hazelnut). 

There was nowhere to park the van for the night in Siena, so we drove to a little town half an hour north which turned out to be a stunning medieval walled village, built in the 1200s to protect Siena from their warfaring neighbours, the Florentines. It really is exactly the sight that would come to mind if you were to picture a medieval walled village (google photo, obv):

As Dante put it in the Divine Comedy (!), Monteriggione is like a crown of towers. It was also a rather lovely place to park for the night, as it had a pristine public toilet and free parking. After a midnight wander through the empty village, we settled down for the night, just outside the walls. 

The next morning, we were up early to explore the walls, which have fourteen towers which overlook olive farms and vineyards, renaissance villas and the medieval piazzas within the town. 

The rest of the morning was happily spent drinking espresso and checking out the public buildings, squares and gardens in the town.

The next town on the agenda was Greve in Chianti, the heart of the Tuscan wine region known for its chianti wine, as well as other "Super Tuscan" wines, truffles and delicate Tuscan olive oil. If that wasn't enough, it is famous for its wild boar (cinghiale) and a particularly tasty type of pig which is only found there. Obviously, we had found our culinary spirit-home. 

First stop was Antica Macelleria Falorni, the oldest butcher in Italy, founded in 1729! They even have their own cheese cave for aging their pecorinos. Would have been rude not to try the prosciutto and salami platter, the veal tartar, the roast cinghiale and their special savoury gelati - melon and prosciutto and pecorino and fig! 

Having tried the famed food, onto the famed wine! We opted for the high-tech version of wine tasting, whereby you buy a prepaid card in the gorgeous local wine cellar and wander from section to section pouring yourself tastes of the enormous range of wines on offer. Chianti wine (which you will often see in squat glass bottles encased in straw nets, called 'fiascos' in Italian) has very high acidity and a lot of tannins, which makes it quite heavy drinking. We were embarrassed to note that after trying a huge variety of them we hadn't really loved a single one (although in Florence we had a gorgeous Chianti with dinner one night, so maybe they just taste better with food??). Ah well, it was very fun, and the dessert wine at the end was exceptional!

The next day we hit the incomparable Florence. Having sorted a fantastic parking/sleeping spot for the van, we headed into town for (of course) some more Tuscan food.

Good thing we ate and drank lots, we needed the fuel to sustain the continuous oohing and aaahing that Florence necessitates. It really was just so stupidly beautiful. The cathedral, completed in 1426, is entirely covered in green, pink and white polychrome marbles and has the largest brick dome ever constructed (it was thought until it was completed that such a dome could never support itself, but Florentines hated buttresses so much - because they were an invention of their southern Italian enemies - that they just. made. it. happen.) It was such a ridiculously ambitious piece of architecture at the time that there was quite literally not enough timber in all of Tuscany to build the scaffolding it required. Lets be honest, it was worth it. 

It was really pretty. But, that's not really all that surprising as all of Florence was so damn pretty.

Elspeth and I visited David (and many other priceless artworks) in the Gallery of the Academy and marvelled at the muscular bottom along with everyone else.

Florence also featured the best gelato we had in Italy (which, considering our extremely impressive tasting efforts, is a very difficult title to achieve). That evening we had a delicious dinner at a gorgeous little bistro where we misunderstood how the wine worked - they brought out an enormous bottle of Chianti (the delicious one mentioned above!) and we thought "well we're paying for it, so may as well finish it!" and quaffed the whole thing by the end of the dinner. The waitress come out at the end to check how much we'd drunk so she could charge us accordingly and was very surprised that we'd managed to finish it off - this is what our teenage years were preparing us for!

Florence also features a pretty covered market called the San Lorenzo Mercato where they sell leather goods and tourist trinkets outside and a gorgeous range of food inside. One of the most popular food stands is the Da Norbone sandwich stall which serves traditional tripe, porcetta and beef sandwiches. The sandwiches are dipped in the meat juices before serving and eaten with copious amounts of red wine or beer. It was, of course, superb.

Speaking of copious amounts of alcohol, while in Florence we also met up with friends of friends of friends who drank grappa for fun (!). A Hocking family friend (more like honourary Hocking) Jess has moved from Whangarei to the Seychelles, and on the way has fallen in love with a Florentine (who hasn't?). Their friends took us out for a night on the turps. Nick made an especial fool of himself after one too many shots. When a friend of our hosts started conversing with him, he quickly replied "Oh, I'm sorry, I only speak English." Excruciatingly, the gentleman replied "I am speaking English" in perfect English. HAAAAA. Nick, oh Nick.

These same friends had organised for their Bulgarian mechanic pal to swing by to check out a really horrible clunking noise that had doggedly plagued us since Naples. After a (life threateningly) quick spin around the block, with Nick flying around the back seat, Punky the mechanic pronounced the noise as nothing to worry about, at least not for the next four months, thereby taking a big money-shaped weight off our shoulders! 

After a final wander through Florence, we hit a Florentine institution called Il Latini for a last taste of the Florentine specialties of melting hot liver on crostini, ribollita (a kale and white bean casserole) and thick sliced Tuscan meat in delicious sauces. We shared our table with an absolutely dreamy businessman from Milan, who chatted with us for the whole meal, and the waiters gave us free (and outstanding) Moscato after our meal after learning we were from NZ - could Florence be any more amazing?

However, the rest of Tuscany called and we were soon on the road again (spoiler alert, it continues being amazing!).

Pisa, which we had been told was a bit of a waste of time, turned out to be absolutely stunning. The church that the tower is the tower for (they don't attach church towers to churches in Italy) is absolutely beautiful. Its claim to fame (other than being a masterpiece of medieval architecture, holding an amazingly well-preserved mosaic from the 1300s and having one of the most famous medieval sculptures in Italy as its pulpit) is that the swinging of an incense lamp in this church was what inspired Galileo to formulate his pendulum theory! 

Secondly, the baptistry, which is a rotunda-like building with an enormous bath in the middle, was amazing. The alter is said to be one of the sculptures that kicked off the Italian Renaissance. The design of the roof was changed halfway through construction, meaning it is a pyramid on the inside and a dome on the outside. For some reason which is unclear to me, this made it "acoustically perfect." A staff member demonstrated this to us, singing a set of scales in the centre of the building, and all three of us thought for a large portion of her singing that there were one, two or three other people singing with her, but it was just the absolutely insane ringing of her voice through the space. So amazing!

Both of these buildings are on quite a substantial lean, but not nearly to the extent of the world-famous leaning tower. The inadequate foundations and soft soil on one side of the tower mean that, even after millions of dollars and decades of restoration work which have corrected it by at least 45 cm, it is horizontally displaced by almost four metres (a 4 degree lean!). The foundations were so flawed that by the time the second story was built, the tower was already leaning in a big way. But instead of knocking it down and re-doing the foundations, the architects just compensated for the leaning lower floors by building the sunk side higher! Basically, they thought the best plan was to build the tower in a banana shape in the hopes that no one would notice it was at risk of toppling over completely. Good one guys! We didn't go up it, and now having read that the Italian government vacated the houses and apartments in the path of the tower for safety reasons in 1990, I'm very glad we didn't! 

Nick thought that it looked rude and we had a bit of a row when I told him it just looked like a leaning tower, which is no different in rudeness from a normal tower in terms of rudeness. He disagreed. So, the below. 

Of course we mustn't forget that we also had delicious Italian food (why not?).

We also went to the Camposanta, the monumental cemetery in Pisa. Originally built to house soil from the hill where Jesus was crucified, it became the cemetery of Pisa's upper class, many of whom were buried in reused Roman sarcophagi.

It has a terrifying fresco (one of the only ones that survived a WWII bomb which set the building on fire) of the 'triumph of the master of death' which was rather disturbing (detail from google as no photos).

By this stage, all the morbidness had made us hungry for gelati, so we headed off into town for delicious ice cream, and to meet another friend of Jessica's who was lending us her beach house for a few nights (yay showers!!). After a quick handover - she was a brain surgeon, and said her day had been very Gray's Anatomy - we were off to Viareggio, a short drive from Pisa. Within a few hours we were settled, having ogled at the view of the Tuscan hills and coast, showered and prepared for bed (in a real bed! in a real room!). Easy as pie - or is it easy as pizza?

A real bed in a real room was a PARTICULAR luxury for Elspeth, who, I have so far failed to mention, was living in a crawl space in the van. Let me try to demonstrate to you how little space she had available to her.

Here is the van with (if you squint) me standing up inside:

The back seat of the van folds down to create a small double bed which Nick and I sleep in. Where I'm standing in this photo, there is a small sink/gas burner. Above the front seats is a storage space for pots, pans and food. And above the back seat/bed, there is a storage space for clothes and towels etc. That's where Elspeth slept. When it was time for bed, we would slide out a bit of plywood which would extend that storage space over the sink area and she would pull herself through the small gap that remained between the two storage spaces, drag herself on her stomach to the back of the van, turn around (while unable to fold her legs underneath her because the space was too small) and then put her head on a small pillow, which couldn't be normal sized as otherwise her head would touch the roof. Very difficult to photograph, but we attempted it.

Nick testing out the dimensions in the early stages of the bunk design process:

Further experiments (bearing in mind that this is without the added floor height of a mattress):

Elspeth at nigh-nigh time in her completed bunk bed:

As you can imagine, she was very, very happy to have a break from her cubby and have a full sized grown up's room to call her own!

[shockinghocking]

Rome is Where the Heart Is

Having had a few days in Amsterdam to recover from the hell-flight from NZ, Elspeth arrived in Napoli ready for pizza, aperol, gelato, wine, pasta, cheese and all other foods and alcohols in a way that only a Hocking can be. We were born ready. Without even stopping to drop off her bags, snacking on prosciutto, we called into an extremely famous pizza restaurant in Napoli - L'Antica Pizzeria Da Michele. It is most well-known for being one of the most memorable 'eats' in Eat Pray Love.

Oh, and for being a very very strong contender in the 'best experiences your mouth will ever have' category of the world records. People refer to it in a serious way as the sacred temple of pizza. I kid you not. The Condurro family who run it faithfully stick to their papa's instruction to them, which is that they must only make margherita and marinara pizzas (the only 'true' Napolitan pizzas). They are so exceptionally good. 

We then trotted back to Luke's to drop off Elspeth's bags, and wandered the streets of Naples checking out the sights and the atmosphere. Almost as important was to ensure that neither of us missed a single dog or cat patting experience (Hocking failing). Fluffy one in a violin shop!

After a well-earned aperitivo of aperol spritzers, we were off to an amazing dinner on the main piazza, which included an all-time-best vongole and an old Italian man snoozing into his long white beard at the dinner table.

The next morning we dodged a student protest, scoffed some pastries, downed some espresso and received a call from the long-silent mechanics: the van was back in action, fully recovered after its misguided volcanic experience! Nick trotted off to fetch it (braving the Naples train system, which, while more comprehensive, is even more dilapidated, unreliable and slow than Auckland's). Elspeth and I went to the Naples museum, filled with the art, artefacts and mosaics from Herculaneum and Pompeii. There is an R18 room in the museum which houses the ridiculously large collection of pornographic objects that they unearthed from just those two Roman ruins. Good god, they were a filthy people. Case in point:

That is indeed a winged penis with a penis (its tail is also a penis). Just what we all wanted as a wind chime. After many giggles, we picked up our bags from Luke, gave him a much-deserved bottle of wine and raced to the car to meet Nick, who was braving the Napolitan traffic madness to rush us off to Herculaneum for more ancient wonders. Herculaneum was a fishing village on the coast which was also devastated by the eruption of Mt Vesuvius, much smaller than Pompeii but much wealthier, with an amazing density of lavish houses. Because of the way it was destroyed (science!), it is even more intact than Pompeii, with wood, upper-stories and even food remaining for archaeologists to dig up.

Ancient Herculaneum in the foreground, modern Herculaneum behind:

These guys had way better taste than those nasty Pompeiians:

Also of note is that Herculaneum has an even MORE gruesome story than Pompeii. For a long time, it was thought that basically everyone in the town had been evacuated before the town was destroyed, because there were no corpses. Oh no no. In the 80s it was discovered that about 300 of them had fled to the boat sheds at the coast, which they sheltered in while they waited for rescue boats. Not so fast, said Vesuvius and that night a pyroclastic surge of ash and hot gases surged through those boat sheds at a speed of 160 km/h. The temperatures of 500 degrees were enough to instantly kill everyone there, shattering their teeth and fracturing their hands and feet. It was so hot the skeletons are damaged where boiling hot brains and blood burst out of their bodies and sizzled through their skin. OH SHIT.

Here's us at the boat shed. Our brains remained intact.

OR DID THEY? 

YOU BE THE JUDGE.

Having had our fill of gore and phallic imagery, we roadtripped up to Rome, stopping for pizza (of course). The grand tour of the eternal city began with running into Brendan, Elspeth's flatmate from Wellington, who was swanning through Rome at the same time! First stop, the Vatican - full of treasures, many of which are animal sculptures, so it was high on our list of must sees.

It also has this sculpture, which Nick thought looked like a man holding his broken-off scrotum.

The art that is not of genitalia or animals is also very good.

The Sistene Chapel (which Nick still calls the sixteen chapel) was awesome, and so was St Peter's Basilica.

The alter is 20 metres high and weighs 93 tonnes (although the church is so damn big, the whole thing could still fit in the top-most part of the central dome). 

We all agreed that we deserved a big pasta (and why not a bottle of red?) after all that solemn introspection.

We spent the rest of the day testing out how strong our feet and legs were, wandering through heaps of Rome's gorgeous sights.

Our little legs took us to the Spanish steps, fountains (although the Trevi Fountain was closed for repairs so we had to be happy with this non-iconic one):

The 'Alter of the Fatherland' in honour of the first king of unified Italy:

And Piazza Venezia:

Next we headed to the old Jewish ghetto for an astonishingly delicious meal that consisted almost entirely of artichokes. A gelato to wash it all down and we could consider ourselves ready for bed.

After a slow start the next day, we were foiled at every turn in our attempts to see things: Italians really don't do Sundays. We visited the Roman pyramid, which was built for Gaius Cestius in around 12 BC (during which the Romans were in the middle of a fad for all things Egyptian). Because it was incorporated into the later fortifications of the city, it is one of the best preserved ancient buildings in Rome.

Next was lunch in a restaurant which has been built into an ancient Roman landfill. The proprietors have burrowed into a rubbish dump, and a glass wall at the back shows the trashed vases for wine, oil and fish sauce that were chucked away by the Romans, becoming a hill. On the cards was cacio e pepe, a classic Lazio dish which (like many of the best Italian food) is made up of only three ingredients: pecorino romano cheese, pasta, and pepper. It is absolutely heavenly.

Stuffed to the point of hibernation, we rested in a park in the shade for a while, then tottered off to the afternoon's entertainment: the pantheon. On the way was an unscheduled stop in what turned out to be the extremely famous (and of course extremely beautiful) church of San Luigi dei Francesi, in which Carvaggio painted his baroque masterpieces of the life of St Matthew.

The Pantheon is a crazy building. Another one of the best preserved Roman buildings in Italy, it was built sometime around 12 BC and is still the world's largest unreinforced concrete dome. The dome is made with stones that get successively lighter (the top being made of pumice), and which are honeycombed inside to ensure it does not collapse. It has "perfect" dimensions, with the height to the window in the top of the dome and the diameter of the interior circle being exactly the same, meaning the interior would fit perfectly within a cube. The light from the small hole at the top moves around the room over the course of the day in a reverse sundial form, and the floor is designed so that during rainstorms, any water that falls through is funnelled away. The whole exterior of the dome was covered in bronze when it was built, but that was removed in the 1600s to be melted down to make the alter (pictured above) in St Peter's basilica!

We spent the rest of the day wandering through the most picturesque streets we could find, drinking Italian beer in the park and returned back to the van for a dinner of prosciutto and cheese.

Our plans for the next day were an attempt to re-enact an Italian food tour that Nick and I had done when we first came to Rome a few years ago. The Jewish restaurant had been a recommendation of theirs, and we still have extremely vivid memories of the most amazing day of food even three years down the track. We took the subway to Testaccio, a suburb of Rome that used to be the haunt of meatworkers and where some of Rome's most famous dishes originated from. First stop was the bakery for delicious pastries (cornetto are the ultimate breakfast food) and espresso. 

Next was the market, which has been upgraded since we last called in, but is still home to some third generation fruit and vege sellers, cheese sellers and sandwich makers.

We treated ourselves to a snack of absolutely insane sandwiches, with the fresh bread soaked in stew sauce before being loaded with an incredible lamb filling. The sandwich man (Sergio!) was absolutely lovely, making sure we were suitably impressed with how delicious it was. He's another guy whose family has been in this trade for a few generations - there's no other way to get a boiled meat sammie tasting that phenomenal.

Next was the deli, the most amazing of places. We couldn't have been more indecisive, excited or panicked if we had been Augustus Gloop having to choose what to take from Willy Wonka's. We tried 30 year old balsamic vinegar, gorgonzola so soft it was eaten with a spoon, salami that melts into nothing in your mouth and prosciutto sliced so thinly it was see through. We ended up buying a very large range of goodies, including some pizza bread with anchovies and capers and another with onion and artichoke. Delightful.

Suitably stocked up for the trip, we hauled ourselves into the van and pointed it north: we were going to Tuscany! First stop was Orvieto, a small town just inside the border of Umbria, precariously situated on some amazing vertical cliffs, which are finished with defensive walls of the same stone. 

It also has one of the most amazing cathedrals we've seen - begun in 1290, it is made of stripes of travertine (what the terraces we swam in at Pamukkale, Turkey were made of!) and greenish basalt and covered with incredible sculptures.

Of course we were starving after an hour or so without eating, so we treated ourselves to incredible handmade gelato while appreciating the view.

No rest for the wicked, we were on the road to Tuscany, with Siena to look forward to!

[shockinghocking]

Pompeii and Circumstance

From the warm waters of Amalfi, we reached the ugly, graffiti’d city of modern Pompeii. Having found some much needed pasta and deep fry, we cheekily asked the proprietors if we could sleep in their secure car park, and did so, even though we were fairly sure they didn’t understand what we were saying!

We were up bright and early to get to Pompeii’s only attraction to speak of: the ruins of the ancient city. Pompeii was a large Roman city, much bigger than either Nick or I expected, with around 20,000 residents a few years earlier than the eruption (numbers had dropped to around half that by the time of the eruption as there had been a terrible earthquake around 15 years earlier, followed by fires, looting and food shortages). Because so many of the buildings had been damaged in the earthquake of 62AD, the ruins in Pompeii have provided archaeologists with huge amounts of information about building and decorating techniques in Rome, as there were so many half finished building sites and renovations which have been preserved. So basically, in 79AD, Mount Vesuvius erupted. The heat surges of around 250 degrees C killed most of the residents of Pompeii, after which they were covered in 25 m of volcanic material which fell from the sky. The site wasn’t excavated until 1748 (and a lot of the wall paintings, sculptures and art were so sexually explicit that whole buildings were immediately covered up again!) and even now, only a third of the site can be seen - it would still take several days to see everything!

Of what we DID see, we particularly liked:

The public baths, complete with wonderful sculptures, cubbies to leave your clothes in and the pipe work for transporting heated water:

The mens section of the baths also had some nudie pictures as decoration, including the only known Roman portrayal of lesbian sex.

The cafeterias with their counters in which the day’s choices were stored and served, along with little nooks for money and change:

The ridiculously garish wall decorations on everyone’s walls in their houses. Seriously, who would want brilliant blue walls with murals and patterns on them in a small bedroom?!

The vineyards, gardens and farming areas, where experts have taken plaster casts of the root systems of the plants which were in the ground at the time of the eruption and then replanted the exact same types! They had huge amounts of wine grapes (in vineyards that are amazingly similar to modern Italian ones), and barley, wheat and millet were also commercially produced. They’ve also found evidence of garlic, onions, walnuts, figs, beans, carob, peaches and pears!

The brothel (of course), where there is a pictorial menu, in which you could choose what services you wished to receive (!), fully intact stone beds, enormous penises over the doors to ensure you could find the building you were looking for, and Roman graffiti on the walls. On the outside of the brothel is “Theophilus, don’t perform oral sex on girls against the city walls like a dog”, one that says “weep you girls. My penis has given you up. Now it penetrates men’s behinds. Goodbye wondrous femininity”, and one in a room saying “here I fucked many girls.” One accuses a prostitute of giving him an STI. Apparently the services of a prostitute cost the same amount as a glass of wine!

And of course the plaster casts of the dying Pompeiians, although we couldn’t find very many of them! We found a dog, thrashing as he died, the donkey driver, found crouched with his hands on his head next to his donkey cart as he tried to escape, and a stretched out man.

After leaving Pompeii, we decided we’d drive up Mount Vesuvius to see the crater. We arrived at the summit road and started our ascent in the trusty van, commenting that even for Italian roads, this was in particularly bad repair, especially considering this was a major tourist attraction! But upwards we climbed, on what was basically a vaguely paved goat track through a pine forest up the volcano. Eventually we reached the end of the road, with no crater in sight, but a great view of the Bay of Naples. Before we got a chance to work out where we were or how to get down when the van was showing major and understandable signs of distress from its unexpected bushbash up the face of a volcano, an enormous army monster truck burst out of the scrub and screamed to a halt next to the van. Nick, at this stage, had wandered down the path in the other direction, so it was just me against the monster truck man, who was about three seconds away from an apoplexy he was so mad. With the help of a very amused tour guide, it became evident that this track was open only to official tours which were conduct on these enormous back-terrain six-wheeled army vehicles. We were expected to leave immediately, but Nick was nowhere to be seen – the driver was yelling and shouting at me, with me standing underneath the window, screaming back in Italian “I know, I’m sorry! I know! I can’t! One minute! I know!” and the tour driver saying “HOW on EARTH did you get up here?!?” and the truckload of American tourists all craning their necks to see what the fuss was about. Thankfully, Nick reappeared and the driver switched from screaming to merely holding down the horn and revving threateningly while we crossed our fingers that the van would start. We were in luck! We slowly followed the monster truck back down the goat track, bouncing and smashing, with him holding the horn down to try and hurry us along. A stressful 20 minutes later, we emerged from the forest and drove as fast as we could past the monster truck, without daring to make eye contact in case he waved us over to give us another piece of his mind! All’s well that ended well, and we had a budgeter’s dinner, thinking that we should probably save a bit of cash considering that the van was in a pretty dire state!

The next day, we thought we’d try the ascent again by the proper route, but half way up a horrendous clunking noise began to develop in the front wheel, which was getting louder and more distressing by the minute! We immediately turned the car around and drove as quickly as possible to the suburbs of Naples to try work out what to do next. After a lot of research on Nick’s behalf, we managed to work out that there was a fairly reputable mechanic on the other side of town who spoke English. We slept where we’d stopped that night, but decided to move the van to a secure campground the next day (a Sunday, so no mechanics at that point), which was on the side of the city closer to the mechanic. It was a terrifying drive as it was a truly dreadful sounding noise, but we made it, and left the van safely at the campground se we could see the city.

First on the list was pizza! We’d been in Naples for more than a day and still hadn’t had a pizza, which is entirely unacceptable. We thought we’d start with (one of) the most famous pizza restaurants in Napoli, Sorbillo’s. The extended family who run this pizza restaurant believe that they are the only family in the world where all 21 descendants of the grandparents have become pizza chefs (I’ll believe them, to be honest). The pizza is absolutely unbelievable – after about a half hour wait to get a table, we were literally blown away by the deliciousness. Seriously – Naples would be worth a visit solely for the pizza even if it wasn’t as fun as it is!

Next up was a taster plate of some of the bombastic baroque architecture and interiors that Naples is home to. Nothing screams south Italian powerhouse to me quite like eye-watering, incomparable church interiors. There is quite literally nothing else like this concentration of it anywhere else in the world.

Starting with my absolute favourite building of the whole trip, the Gesù Nuovo, which due to the inconspicuous exterior…

  …and the mind-blowing interior showed me the literal meaning of that expression ‘takes your breath away’ and brought tears to my eyes:

There was also the San Severo chapel, which (since we’ve started picking favourites) houses both my favourite AND my second favourite sculpture of the whole trip: the Veiled Christ by  Giuseppe Sanmartino (no photos so google image):

and the Release from Deception by Francesco Queirolo:

How ridiculous are these sculptures?! You weren’t allowed to touch them, so I maintain there is a very good chance that that is real rope, and a real veil.

This apse and this gorgeous play of filtered light on a sculpture are from the same church, but I don’t even remember its name! Some deliciously over the top affair, I’m sure.

After a great evening of window shopping – we didn’t realise until we got to northern Italy how much cheaper things are in Naples, should have gone proper shopping! – ogling beautiful leather boots and amazing menswear, we returned to our campground, ready for the big drop-off at the mechanics. 

The van made the distance between the mechanics and the campground, thank goodness, but we were told that, contrary to what we’d been told, the van wouldn’t be ready for at least a few days as they were too busy to start on it. With a creeping sense of foreboding (especially because we were supposed to be meeting Elspeth in Rome in a few days), we packed our little knapsacks and left our van in the hopefully-capable hands of the Napolese mechanics.

We headed to the Castel Nuovo (which means the new castle, hilarious considering it was finished in the 1200s) for a peek at its ominous bulk.

  Next was a hot walk to Castel dell’Ovo. The names are confusingly similar-sounding, but the second one means Castle of the Egg. Virgil, the great Roman poet, was reputed to have put a magical egg in the foundations of the original castle: if the egg is ever to break, great catastrophes will befall Naples. 

From the top of the castle, there are absolutely beautiful views of the Gulf of Naples, Mount Vesuvius (the fabled wrecker of vans) and the surrounding city.

  After a great lunch of cooked Napolese cheese, fried zucchini and pork cutlet, we were recharged and ready for an afternoon of wandering the beautiful alleys and backstreets of Naples.

  Check out the beautiful Romanesco broccoli we found at the local fruit and veg place!

  We had also been rescued in our vanless state by a fabulous American-English couch surfing host, who lived in a palazzo in the middle of Naples’ old town. It was amazing to have a gorgeous view and bedroom to go home to, not to mention a shower! Luke took us to a birthday party of one of his English-teacher friends, where we were treated to an amazing meat ragu (8 litres of it, and it had been cooking for four hours!) and a hilarious and fun night!

Having called the mechanic multiple times over the last few days, we had been given increasingly frustrating date ranges as to when the van would be finished. In the end, Elspeth decided Naples sounded so wonderful that she would just have to make an unexpected detour from Rome to come and see it for herself, and we could all wait for the van together! With Luke very generously offering Elspeth a place to stay as well, she was eased into van-life (although thrown headfirst into Italian life – Naples is bloody intense!) with a bedroom and a shower and the Hocking sisters’ grand tour of Italy began!

[shockinghocking]

A Boasting Post about the Amalfi Coast

First stop (we prioritise in this van) in the beautiful Amalfi Coast was a pastry shop run by one of Italy's most famous patisseriers, Salvatore De Riso. And with good reason! This guy was the first Southern Italian to be admitted to the prestigious Academy of Italian Master Confectioners...

So beautiful (although I have a pathological fear of wet sponge cake, so wasn't overwhelmed by our little mascarpone tower which had a rather sodden feel to it).

De Riso's is in the gorgeous little town of Minori, which we spent quite a lot of time at. Apart from the stunning beach and harbour...

...it is most famous for the Basilica di Santa Trofimena, a church dedicated to a Sicilian girl who was killed, squashed into an urn and thrown in the sea. She washed up in Minori and the locals built her the church.

We stayed at Minori for most of a day, lounging, reading our books and swimming.

The next day, we paid a visit to Ravello, a stunning town which has a reputation as a destination for artists, writers and other creative types. Virginia Woolf, Truman Capote, Greta Garbo, Humphrey Bogart and Tennessee Williams all spent time there, presumably drinking the delicious lemoncello and looking at the incredible views. Richard Wagner was reputedly inspired by the gardens of Ravello to write the opera Parsifal.

Just to bloody well top off the pedigree once and for all, it was to the ancient town of Ravello that the devil transported Jesus as his second temptation, in order to demonstrate the extraordinary beauty of the world's earthly kingdoms. THIS PLACE IS VERY PRETTY, GUYS. Spoiler alert, it wasn't beautiful enough to tempt Jesus, but I presume that's because he's the messiah.

We spent the morning ogling the view and strolling through Wagner's inspiration, the Villa Rufolo, a palazzo built in 1250 on a stunning ledge over the view, remodelled and landscaped in the 19th C by a Scotsman called Reid. 

Next up was the tiny fishing village of Praia, tucked in a minuscule cove in the cliffs, it's tiny beach with more dinghies than sunbathers.

After that, wanting to see some of the bigger towns, we jumped in the van and started looking for parking along the coast. It simply did not exist. We drove the length and breadth of the Amalfi coastline looking for somewhere to leave the car, but with absolutely no luck. The van's roof means that we are more than 2.5 metres high, ruling out most covered parks, and the coast's rugged topography means that there's barely room for two-way roads, let alone street parking. As the afternoon turned into the evening, our search for a park turned into one for a place to stay. We chugged into Sorrento and called into a designated camper park, where we were told it would be NZ$37 for a night's parking. We told the guy there was no way we could afford that and he seemed to accept that we were being honest with him, telling us the best place to try would be the small village of Massa Lubrense. Best advice he could have given us. After literally seven or eight hours of driving up and down the coast looking for parks, we gratefully pulled in to the tiny port at Massa Lubrense, had a very large amount of red wine and chatted with the extremely friendly proprietor of the local bar. Every trip has its down days, but the friendly Italians, fantastic wine and gorgeous views around every bend meant it definitely wasn't a write off!

The next day, we thought we'd get some exercise by walking from the top of the cliffs to the little beach at Cala di Mitigliano. It was extremely off-road walking (once we found the unmarked track!), with a very steep handmade staircase through vineyards and lemon groves down to the coast, with stunning views of Capri the whole way.

We had bought a picnic of mozzarella salad, prosciutto, melons and homemade lemonade from a gorgeous Italian man at the top of the cliff, and so spent a whole wonderful day exploring the little beach, its caves and the little abandoned lime-works, eating delicious food and reading. Oh and creating a Nick-shaped sandcastle.

The next day was some touring of the bigger and more famous sights on the coast. Positano, said to be the jewel in the crown, was first. John Steinbeck (who wrote my least favourite book ever (Of Mice and Men), but I digress) was a key factor in popularising Positano, which was a painfully poor fishing village, as a tourist destination, writing that "It is a dream place that isn’t quite real when you are there and becomes beckoningly real after you have gone." It is very, very beautiful.

Onwards to Amalfi town, the coast's namesake. Unbelievably, this tiny town at the mouth of a ravine, completely surrounded by cliffs, was once a formidable maritime power (it started using money in the 800s while the rest of Italy were still bartering) that rivalled the empires of Pisa and Genova. In 1343, the whole town basically fell into the sea and disappeared after a tidal wave and the local area never recovered. The surviving medieval architecture is gorgeous, with the stunning Cathedral Sant'Andrea (housing the body of the disciple Andrew) being the centrepiece.

The port and surrounding buildings were just as stunning as the Byzantine church, and despite the American tourists complaining at length about the steepness of the stairs throughout the town, the windy little streets were gorgeous too.

Having eaten a pizza each on the promenade and dipped our feet in the water, we waved goodbye to the little town that had been so ravaged by geology, making our way to the most famous geological ravaging in the world: Pompeii!

[shockinghocking]

Having a Hoot at the Bottom of the Boot (alternative title "Getting a Feel for Italy's Heel")

I've got a lot of Italy titles to come up with over the next few weeks, sorry (not sorry) for starting out so weak. DON'T GIVE UP ON ME, GUYS. We docked in Bari quite a lot later than expected due to the time difference between Greece and Italy which, like suckers, we hadn't accounted for. By the time we had disembarked, braved the southern Italian road insanity and found a car park, we were starving. Enter pasta with pork cheek. Siiiigh. Apparently we were, even this early on in our Italian sojourn, to be exposed to the reality of Italian service. In an Italian business that serves food, service is one of two extremes: you're either treated as a member of the family, with the owner playing you piano solos and plying you with complimentary dessert wine, or you are roundly and completely ignored. Not because you're a tourist, but because your waiter quite simply has a myriad of better things to do than take your order, bring your food or take your money. This experience was well and truly in the latter camp, but the sweet piggy cheeks made up for it. After an afternoon of 'personal admin tasks', we treated ourselves to an incredible Italian espresso

And then wandered into a fabulous dinner of meatballs and cacio e pepe.

Having been occupied for most of the day, we hadn't put our minds to somewhere to sleep. We asked the attendant at the carpark whether we could stay there - no luck. Finally we decided that we would find a nice tree-lined major road, park there and get up before the parking fees started. Within minutes of pulling up and shutting the curtains there was a strange light being shone into the driver's seat - I thought 'security guard!', Nick thought 'someone scoping the car!' After staying very still, we saw the torch-bearer jump back into the drivers seat of his car, which had been stopped at the lights. Very suspicious. After much deliberation, the plan was: attach alarms to the doors. We had bought some alarms, designed to kiddie-proof cupboards, which consisted of two pieces which create an alarm noise when separated. If we attached them to the two front doors, we would be sure to wake up if someone managed to open them. We settled down to sleep. A few hours later, in the middle of the night, Nick throws himself into the front of the van, still pretty much asleep, at the sound of the alarm! In his not-so-logical half second between hearing the alarm and having to act, he decides that the best course of action is to scream at the top of his lungs at the intruder, on the basis that no matter what weapon you have, you'd get such a fright from the apparent madman you'd awoken, you'd probably choose flight over fight. I, terrifyingly deep sleeper that I am, hadn't been woken up by the alarm (!!) and so awoke to the sound of Nick hurling himself at the front of the van, howling, before turning around and saying quietly "oh, one of the alarms just unglued from the door and set itself off." Needless to say, we needed our espresso and pastry in the morning. We wandered the gorgeous old town of Bari, seeing the relic of Saint Nicholas (real life Santa!), the old Roman roads that ran through the town and wandering through the squares and alleys. We also had our first experience with the absolutely adorable three-wheeled trucks that are everywhere in southern Italy.

Then we were off on our next adventure. My dad's school friend Fiona and her husband Bruce were in Alberobello, a beautiful southern Italian town which is famous for its 'trulli' houses (singular being trullo). They let us park on the drive of the trullo they were staying in with their friends Harry and Liz and we spent an amazing few days with them. Alberobello was ridiculously pretty. The trulli are dry stone (no mortar) and conical shaped. As well as making them look like gnome houses, these two features were designed to let their long-suffering residents, most of whom were serfs bonded to the feudal lords who owned the land, dismantle them when inspectors came so they could avoid the crippling taxes associated with houses. The things people will do to avoid tax! Anyway, they are gorgeous. The symbols at the top and painted on the roof tiles are magical, added to keep the house healthy and prosperous.

We took it pretty easy for the few days we were there, wandering the streets, eating the delicious food Bruce, Fiona and Liz cooked, scoffing prosciutto and our new love burratta and drinking a lot of red wine. 

In a stroke of luck, we caught the town's festival, celebrating their patron saints Cosmo and Damian.

We also took a trip to Sassi di Matera ('the stones of Matera'), the oldest continuously inhabited town in the world, first settled in the Paleolithic era. It's where The Passion of the Christ was filmed, as well as basically all other Biblical films because of how ancient and badass it looks. Most of the ancient shops, churches and houses and built into caves in the cliffs, some of which are still lived in.

We even had lunch in one of the restaurants in the ancient city, which was almost completely underground. Amazing. After a sad goodbye to our fabulous and generous travel buddies/hosts, they headed to the airport to catch their flight to Sicily and we meandered down to Locorotondo, a beautiful white town on top of a hill with views across the surrounding valley. It's like a giant wedding cake!

After a stroll, we stopped in at the stunning Martina Franca to gaze at our first encounter with southern Italian baroque architecture and real Italian focaccia.

Onwards to Lecce, the small city often described as the world capital of baroque. It was absolutely beautiful. The cathedral could have been someone's crazy doodle, with animals, people, patterns and columns covering every surface - except they were all made of stone.

The rest of the town was just as pretty, with ancient piazzas, windy backstreets and churches everywhere.

After Aperol spritzes (an Italian institution), amazing pasta for dinner and a good night's sleep, we stopped off at a likely looking hairdressers to get much needed trims. Only in Italy could that result in what my adorable hairdresser described as "asymmetrical punk glam, let me take a selfie with you for my blog!"

We both felt very Italian...

Next stop was Otranto - even further south, but an essential point on our itinerary, as we had read about its hilarious church. It did not disappoint. Featuring a mosaic floor tiled by a monk who had very little artistic skill, very little knowledge of scripture (it features Roman legends and gods as well as mythical monsters) and had obviously never seen an elephant before, we were in stitches for half our visit.

  The town was pretty too!

We then headed to Campomarino, a series of beautiful beaches which are an Italian favourite for summer holidays and are apparently packed with domestic tourists for the period. Weirdly though, the end of September apparently isn’t counted as summer: despite it being a gorgeous 25 degrees and the water being, if not balmy, at least as warm as NZ water in summer, there was absolutely no one there. All the accommodation was boarded up and the shops closed, even the supermarkets!

  We went for a walk on the beach, then headed a wee way inland to a bigger town called Maruggio for a delicious dinner of pizza, pasta, ridiculously cheap house wine and little fried goodies.

  After a peaceful seaside sleep, we lay on the empty beach for hours reading and picnicking before a long drive to Castelmezzano in the Lucanian Dolomites – the southern mountain chain in Italy. We managed to snaffle what looked like the last car park in the town, allowing us to spend the entire evening ogling the view from different angles…

  We ended up spending the whole of the next day in Castelmezzano and its neighbour, the just-as-precarious Pietropertosa (the two of them are connected by a flying fox!). 

Pietropertosa had a great little hiking trail up to the fortress overlooking the towns and the surrounding chasms and peaks. We paused at the top in the drizzle and found ourselves seemingly serenaded by a choir of angels! A beautiful and very clear choir was singing, but there was no one around and we were miles away from anywhere! The only (non-magical) explanation was that the formation of the mountains was directly funnelling the sound of a church choir from Castelmezzano a few ridges away! Pretty eerie!

Next on the list was Padula, home to La Certosa di San Lorenzo, with a contested claim to the title of the biggest monastery in the world. It’s really old (like basically everything in Europe) and was shut by the Italian government at the end of the 1800s, later used as a holiday camp for teenagers and, in WWII, a concentration camp for POWs. It was extremely creepy, very empty and dilapidated but very beautiful.

Padula was right next to the Cilento e Valle di Diano National Park (they love long names in Italy), so we ventured into the very steep and wooded park for a little walk. It was absolutely full of lizards and also weirdly like New Zealand! 

Well, except for the fact that there are wolves! We didn’t see any, but we did venture too far into a cave and alarmed the colony of bats, which caused them to swoop terrifyingly at our faces until we ran out as fast as we could!! 

On the other side of the park was Scario, a gorgeous harbour town, where we drank wine on the beach and had one of the best dinners we’ve had on the trip – fried calamari, white truffle pasta and tuna in balsamic reduction. It was absolutely amazing, but we were so drunk from all the wine on the beach by that point we forgot to take any pictures!!

After a morning swim to deal with the hangover ramifications of the wine, we headed to Agropoli, another pretty coastal town, where we had a beautiful spaghetti vongole (spaghetti with clams).

We also saw someone walking their miniature pony on a leash down the enormous staircase that linked the old town with the port. From the top, we could see that he had been taken to the little beach at the port and was having a swim. Italians and their pets…!

Onwards to Paestum, home to the best preserved Greek temples in the world. The story goes that the Spartans fled to the south of Italy after being beaten and set up the town, which has survived basically intact. It was rediscovered in 1830 when a highway was being built through the area. Instead of stopping, they built the highway and THEN investigated, finding that they now had traffic running through what had been a very well preserved amphitheatre, and had split the ancient site effectively in two. Aaaah well.

We parked up at another pretty beach and had an amazing dinner of prosciutto, salami, red wine and cheese before drifting off to sleep to the sound of couples making out in the cars parked next to us (fairly common occurrence, to be honest. We tend to accidentally choose local hook-up spots for our campsites, which is great).

After a slightly disrupted sleep, we arrived in Salerno, which is such a fun city. We wandered around the old town and accidentally went to an Italian wedding in the Basilica of San Matteo (where we also saw the relics of Saint Matthew, the guy who wrote the gospel).

After gorging ourselves on calamari pasta and pork with rocket and walnuts...

...we went to pick up a mattress for Elspeth’s visit and to get a new family for Nick, as he was feeling lonely.

After an enormous dinner of pizza and deep fried dough balls, we were ready to see and be seen on the Amalfi coast!

[shockinghocking]

My Big Fat Greek Adventure

Our first stop on our return to Greece was an unbelievably expensive series of toll booths, which ended up costing us around $30 for a three hour trip. Our pockets cruelly emptied, we arrived in Lekhovo, the town at the base of Mt Olympos. Those of you playing at home may remember that we have already been to a Mount Olympos in Turkey, so we thought we would complete the set and check out the legendary home of the Greek gods. Unfortunately, the mountain refused to come out of its clouded hidey hole all day...

Instead we had to satisfy ourselves with pottering around town and having a swim at a cute little beach nearby.

Refreshed, we trustingly followed the GPS towards our next destination, which rapidly landed us in the middle of a goat farm, stuck behind a long yelling train of goats and sheep.

Fortunately, we managed to escape without arousing the suspicions of the goats and by evening we were in Meteora.

Directly translated, Meteora means 'suspended in the sky' (presumably where meteorites get their names from too), which is fitting seeing as it consists of a series of gravity-defying Greek Orthodox monasteries on enormous stone pinnacles stabbing upwards out of the earth.

The pinnacles were first inhabited by hermit monks in the 9th century and the first of the monasteries was built in the 1300s -  the only access back then was by a long rope ladder which was drawn up if there was any sign of danger, protecting the monks for centuries. The one we saw was presumably to remind us of how lucky we were they'd built steps in the intervening centuries.

Up until not so long ago, visitors were hauled up the vertical cliff into the monasteries in nets, the ropes of which were, terrifyingly, replaced "when the Lord let them break."

We started our exploration at the monastery of Agiou Nikolau Anapafsa, where we were blown away by the gorgeous frescoes and even more beautiful view.

Next we saw the nunnery, Agias Varveras Rousanou which you enter through a little tiny bridge between two huge pinnacles.

Our last stop was the highest monastery of all, the Megalou Meteorou which, although we took the plebs entrance by way of the stairs, can be accessed by priest flying fox!

The monasteries have seriously gruesome frescoes of early Christians being tortured and killed in terribly inventive ways, which was supposed to make monks and visitors realise how lucky they had it, even when they were being persecuted by the the Turks while Greece was part of the Ottoman Empire.

With our leg muscles suitably aching, we recharged on souvlaki and hit the road again. We had read that the infamous battlefield Thermopylae where 300 Spartans had held off the million invaders was nearby, so we called in to have a look. The battlefield was extremely uninteresting, featuring a decaying statue...

However a wrong turn getting there led us to a very bizarre abandoned thermal resort, complete with a sulphuric hot spring and hot waterfall that gave Thermopylae its 'thermo'!

A quick dip sorted us out for the windy road through beautiful mountains to Delphi, which sits in the most gorgeous location on the slopes of Mt Parnassos overlooking the Gulf of Corinth.

No wonder the Greeks built their most important religious monument here...! We spent a happy day roaming through the amazing ruins. They include the Temple of Apollo where the priestess got high on hallucinogenic gases which seeped out of a small crevasse in the bedrock and give her prophesies

A cottage which basically housed all the gifts the Athenians had got for Apollo, a mysterious and beautiful rotunda building called the Tholos with no known purpose:

And a basically completely intact running stadium where the Python Games, bigger even than the Olympic Games, were held to celebrate Apollo throwing out the native people's god, a giant python, from the mountain so that the Greeks could build him a temple there.

The museum at Delphi was also amazing, with some of the best preserved Greek artefacts and the oldest known written music in the world!

Next up was sprawling, crazy Athens where we saw more used needles and people shooting up heroin in our first hour than I've seen in the rest of my life put together. However, we rallied and relocated to a beautiful leafy suburb where we could safely leave the van and commute into the centre.

And the centre wasn't too shabby when you got out of the heroin dens!

Our first tourist stop was the Central Market and spice streets, which were amazing. Although we got a few strange looks for gaping at everything, we managed to keep down our breakfast and even build up an appetite for lunch despite the sheep's heads, skinned rabbits and dripping tripe aplenty!

Good thing too, because lunch was amazing -  we stumbled through unmarked doors to a big room below street level where we were instantly handed three plates of food and a carafe of wine (the barrel of which proceeded to quietly drip on my arm for the rest of the meal). It was amazing food, and no dithering over menus allowed!

That evening we trekked up Athens' tallest hill for a view of the city and then sampled another Athenian institution, the open air cinema, before getting the last train back to the van!

The whole next day was needed for the wonderful Acropolis museum and the incredible Acropolis itself, which were as beautiful and awe inspiring as expected!

Then there was a painfully early start to get the van safely locked away and the two of us onto a ferry heading for Santorini. The ferry took us past six or seven picture perfect Cycladic Islands on the way, and after eight hours we were zooming around Santorini and watching the sun go down on Vlyhada Beach while drinking wine.

The only way we could go to Santorini and stay within budget was to spend one night sleeping on the beach, which in theory was a romantic and carefree travellers dream, but in reality was rather uncomfortable and only manageable with a litre of wine down the hatch (check out our classy homemade cups! (a water bottle cut in half, for those with less-than-perfect-eyes)).

We were feeling fairly seedy by 6am the next morning.

Nevertheless, we managed it and the sight of the village of Oia literally blinding in the sun more than made up for it.

After two more days of exploring Santorini's lava plains, iconic cubist villages and brightly coloured beaches and relaxing by the pool, we were sold on the Cycladic lifestyle!

All too soon we were watching the tiny island recede from the back of the ferry. However, once we reached the Peloponnese on the mainland (via the gorgeous Corinth Canal)...

...we had an unexpected gem to discover in the form of Nafplio, the oddly named city which was very briefly the capital of modern Greece. It was super beautiful, packed with amazing food (including the local speciality of small deep fried dough balls with praline, meringue and ice cream!) and had a gorgeous explorable fortress towering over the harbour and town.

Unfortunately we struggled with team injuries during our time in Nafplio. I slipped while in jandals and had to perform emergency surgery to remove the end of my toe:

While Nick decided to go rogue and pick his own cactus fruit rather than buying them from the fruit and veg shop, ending up with hundreds of hair-like prickles in his hands:

We clearly needed some recovery time, so the next few days were spent on a gorgeous windswept beach called Diakopto, surrounded by lemon groves and clucking chickens, cooking stir fries (ultimate homemade fusion - making spicy Sichuan stir fry with souvlaki meat from the local grill) and drinking wine.

Then the time had come to say goodbye to our trusty fave (which we ate every single day we were in Greece), the souvlaki...

... and drive the trusty little van onboard the car ferry to Bari, southern Italy, for pasta-fuelled adventuring!

[shockinghocking]

Grabbing the (Istan)bull by the Horns

Our drive to the big smoke was a night time one, with terrifyingly large amounts of huge trucks travelling all around us. An idea of the complexity of the highway...!

After truck stop meatballs for dinner we found ourselves crossing the bridge between Asia and Europe -  surely the only bridge between continents in the world! The next morning we visited the stunning Blue Mosque. It was built in the 1700s to rival the Aya Sofia, the most magnificent church in the world, which stands next door. It is absolutely gorgeous from the outside, a completely perfect mosque.

As it is a working mosque, I had to cover up, which did not, unfortunately make me look or feel like a glamorous oriental princess but like a pin headed crayon.

However it was all worth it to be standing in the middle of the stunning courtyard with its towering minarets and then the glittering interior made up of hundreds of windows and tens of thousands of patterned blue tiles (hence the misnomer the Blue Mosque, its real name is the Sultan Ahmet Camii). It was, of course, absolutely gorgeous.

Tip-toeing off the hand woven silk carpet onto the street, we emerged onto the ancient hippodrome, where chariot races took place when Constantinople was the capital of Byzantium, the eastern Roman empire. In fact, chariot racing was so important to ancient Constantinopleans, the city's worst riot (more a civil war) was linked to rivalry between two sets of chariot racing teams, leading to 30,000 deaths.

Lots of the monuments still remain, such as the serpent column, plundered from ancient Delphi (the original location of which we'd see in the next few weeks!) but now missing its three serpent heads. There's also an obelisk, pillaged from Egypt with amazingly well preserved hieroglyphics, although the Byzantines thought it was too unwieldy at its original height so smashed off the bottom third.

Next was a quick peek into the ancient, chaotic Grand Bazaar, the shopping centre to end all shopping centres, and a nibble at different varieties of baklava after lunch.

Then we were off to meet the gorgeous Sinan and his sister Jansu, our hosts and guides in this 15 million person city. First up on the list of 'things we would never have found on our own' was Kadikoy, a vibrant, pumping district near their place on the Asian side of Istanbul. Cool shops, great bars, conversations about Turkish politics and Islam, waterfront strolling and lentil soup awaited us!

After a dreamy morning of fresh baklava, Turkish coffee and a ferry commute across the beautiful Bosphorus...

we were back on the European side of Istanbul and heading into the Aya Sofia, which was built in the year 537. The Blue Mosque was all about the stunning, perfectly proportioned exterior -  the Aya Sofia (aka Hagia Sophia aka Sancta Sophia aka Shrine of the Holy Wisdom) is all about the unbelievable interior. The outside (it was turned into a Mosque in 1453, hence the minarets, now it's a museum):

The inside is so incredible it is said to have completely transformed the history of architecture. The dome is so massive that from the floor to the middle of it is more than 55 metres, it is supported by an incredible row of windows and there are no visible columns, instead being supported by a series of semi domes around it. This gives it the most beautiful feeling of light and space. Added to this is incomparable mosaic work, most of which is amazingly preserved.

If that wasn't enough, the most illustrious architects of the Ottoman empire constructed an amazing series of tombs for Ottoman sultans in the grounds of the church, which are gorgeous in and of themselves.

Our architecture tour continued underground with the Basilica Cistern, the enormous cistern built to ensure the water supply to the equally enormous Topkapi Palace - complete with mysterious medusa heads which predate the cistern by hundreds of years.

After a lunch that consisted of pistachio and rice pudding and more baklava and Turkish delight than you can shake a stick at...

... We went via the fish markets and some raki to bed!

The next few days were filled with bars and restaurants with Sinan and Cansu, shopping, wandering, spotting Ataturk and cruising the Bosphorus, not to mention my hot date with Pharell.

Not exhausted yet, we had the Topkapi palace, a place with more scandal, intrigue, concubines (each sultan having around 300 living in his palace harem), eunuchs and death than most other royal residences put together - including cages where the ruling sultans would keep their brothers and sons for years to ensure no competition for the throne...! Unlike European palaces, Topkapi, which was the residence of the Ottoman sultans, is a whole series of buildings set in a huge park. The kitchen building holds the enormous collection of Chinese dinner sets collected by the sultans on the belief that they changed colour on contact with poison. The Imperial Council Chamber held the huge clock collection - some of which are so complex (showing Islamic time and date, Western time and date and astrological patterns on a single small face) that a clocksmith would only be able to complete one in his life.

The outer chamber had an amazing collection of European and Ottoman arms and armour. Then came the inner treasury which housed the most ridiculous amount of priceless objects. These include one of the world's largest diamonds, talismanic shirts, relics of Muhammad such as beard hairs, footprints and teeth, Moses' staff and a dagger with a hilt of emeralds.

One last bout of shopping at the amazing Grand Bazaar, a big goodbye to our amazing hosts...

...and we were on the road again - heading back into Greece to see the south, the Cyclades Islands and the Peloponnese. 

[shockinghocking]

More Turkish Delights

After dragging ourselves away from the pool at Attila's, we made the long drove out to Pamukkale, our first deviation from the coast in Turkey. We tackled the ruins of the ancient Roman spa-town first, stopping at the baths. Here, Romans used to swim in the warm calcium-filled waters that are still renowned for their healing properties. Nick braved the heat and soaked in the water while floating past the columns and pedestals of the ancient spa.

Also in the town is a remarkably well preserved Roman theatre, which prompted lots of ooh-ing and ahh-ing. 

To finish off the day was Pamukkale's centrepiece, the reason the Romans were there in the first place: the travertines. Travertines are terraces made from carbonate minerals which are left by the water flowing over the slopes. Surprisingly, you can still walk and swim in the terraces and we had an amazing evening wandering and wading!

After Turkish pizza and good conversation for dinner, we spent a few hours driving and slept in the shade of trees around a mosque. Good thing it was shady too, as by the time we reached Fethiye on the coast, it was 45 degrees outside and the van was completely overheating. After cooling off in the sea, we set off for Kabak, with a stunning drive along the coast.

However, the drive up meant that to get back to the ocean, and therefore where we we staying, we had to go down. To get to our hostel, we had to trudge a miserable half hour down a fairly sheer cliff in what had got to 46 degree heat (an experience which leads, I can tell you, to nausea, exhaustion and being wet like you've just had a shower).

Nonetheless, after a dip in the pool, a long swim at the cove and an organic buffet, we felt amazing once again!

After a few days of swimming, playing with kittens and learning backgammon, we headed to Kas (with more beaut beaches on the way)

Kas had unbeatable eggplant.

It also was a great place to eat baklava, buy second hand books in English and drink cheap wine on beach loungers under the stars.

Olympos was next on our itinerary (the Turks have an Olympos too!), where we stayed at the famous tree houses - although we really just stayed in the van and used the facilities (for free no less). Olympos has a great beach with gorgeous ruins crumbling all the way to the sand, but the real draw is the mountain which has been literally on fire for thousands of years. Legend has it that it was here that the chimaera was slain, a goat-lion-lizard monster that was killed by the hero Bellerophon astride Pegasus, but whose flame-breath continues to seep out of the rock. Scientists think that maybe this isn't entirely true and that it has something to do with methane gases. It was pretty damn weird!

After a fairly uneventful drive with stops in Antalya and Beysehir, we arrived in Konya, the 'Bible belt' (Koran belt?) of Turkey. It's most famous for being home of the whirling dervishes, proponents of a particular type of Islamic mysticism, and we were lucky enough to get to see them whirl! The whirling began with their founder Mevlevi, who would get so joyful with his love of god that he would do ecstatic whirls in the street. The dervishes whirl for 15 minutes at a time to droning Islamic hymns, with graceful foot movements and often with their eyes shut!

After Konya, we drove to the amazingly, incredibly, beautifully weird Cappadocia. We stayed in Goreme and spent days marvelling at the landscape. Towering cliffs, pinnacles and 'fairy chimneys' are everywhere you look, made out of soft stone that, centuries ago, was hollowed out to make churches, communal spaces and homes by Christians fleeing persecution. It is UNBELIEVABLE.

We also went to two underground cities, which were similarly (and exceptionally skillfully) carved out of the earth. It is estimated that there could be hundreds of these cities in Cappadocia, most of which haven't yet been explored by archaeologists. Most of the time, the villagers would live above ground, but in times of danger, they could all move beneath the ground into the cities where every one of their needs was catered to. The two we went to got to about 80 metres below ground and could house about 20,000 people. From the surface, they couldn't be detected, with ingenious ways of hiding exits, entrances and air vents. They also had great protections, with massive stones that could be rolled over entrances with holes to stab people on the other side. Damn they were amazing!

That evening, we had wines in a disused cave with some friends we'd met way back when in Selcuk (they slept there too!)

After a night of wine drinking, we had more wholesome pursuits lined up for the next day - a big walk and picnic through the Ilhara Canyon.

At the conclusion of our walk, we were initiated into a gang of small boys who took us to their secret swimming spot (I've never been so cool).

After a few more days wandering in and out of dream-like landscapes...

...we were on the road for Ankara, the capital of Turkey! Stopping only briefly in Ankara, we managed to befriend the minister of sports (who took us out for breakfast) and see sculptures at the Museum of Anatolian Civilizations, including this one which was made 7500 years before Christ!

We also visited the stunning Safranbolu, a World Heritage listed Ottoman town, which features incredible houses, mosques and a gorgeous caravan stop from the silk road.

Last stop before Istanbul was a flying visit to the beautiful Black Sea - neither of us had ever seen an inland sea and thought it would be a good opportunity to take a peek. Looks just like a normal sea, who would have thought?

Not half bad seafood either!!

With that, there was nothing for it but to head to Istanbul!