Italy: Florence and Bologna

by Miss Penny Black

Irritatingly, my laptop has died for the second time on this trip. So while I’ll still be able to update it will have to be when Luke isn’t using his laptop. It also means limited facebook and everything else since I hate using my phone for anything that involves typing more than 10 letters. First world problems, eh?

But on with the show.

We booked three nights in Florence, which turned out to be enough time to get a bit of a feel for the place but it was certainly not enough time to see everything. We also had a bit of confusion regarding our accommodation – we arrived to find a note on the door with my name on it. Apparently the toilet in our room was broken so they’d booked us in at another hotel a few blocks away for one night then we’d be staying at another hotel for the second and third nights. Fortunately they were no further from the city, but all the checking in and out and extra taxis cost us money.

Fortunately our hotel was near a laundromat. And you know what makes spending an hour at a laundromat better? You guessed it.

We didn’t really do much homework on what there was to see in Florence before we arrived. I’d heard of the Uffizi Gallery and Luke was keen to visit that, but otherwise we just strolled around, took some photos and tried to stay out of the most crowded streets. Fortunately Florence is like Rome in that regard – the tour groups all seem to walk the same paths so if you want to avoid them it’s not difficult. Only the main piazzas and places like the Ponte Vecchio (Florence’s most famous bridge, lined with jewellery shops) are jammed with people.

On our first night we didn’t do a great deal. After a long nap (Italy seems to have brought out the nonna in me and I’ve had even more naps than usual) we took the advice of Guy I Met On The Train and Taxi Driver From The Station and ate at a restaurant that specialised in meat dishes and particularly a t-bone cut that is in season at the moment and also famous in the region. One serving was big enough for two. In fact it was probably big enough for four. The piece of meat must’ve originally been Flintstones-worthy but was cut into 5 pieces (each of which was a regular steak size but about 3 inches thick) and the ‘t’ bone was upright in the middle of the plate.

After a day of walking around town and taking photos (and perhaps eating the odd gelato) we spent part of our second evening at the Mayday Club, a small, quirky bar that we found on Tripadvisor which had a glowing recommendation from our friend James. It was indeed an interesting place, but I think we were there too early as we had it to ourselves for over an hour. The drinks were lovely though – I ended up having two glasses of strawberry wine and a cocktail, which ruined my plans for some night time photography.

Funk-tastic!

We did a lot of walking in Florence. We walked over both sides of the river and up and down many side streets. We ate some really great food in quiet piazzas and I bought a necklace and some earrings from a little boutique. The Duomo turned out to be much more interesting than I’d suspected… in fact I’ll be honest and admit that I didn’t actually know what it was before we got there and then we rounded a corner and POW! Huge marble cathedral in pink, green and white! It was a bit optical-illusion-y, in that from some angles the statues and detail appeared painted on and the whole thing looked like a huge paper sculpture.

I couldn’t get far enough back to fit in this building with my 10mm lens. It’s huuuuge.

The Uffizi Gallery, which I *had* heard of, was interesting, although no photography was allowed (obviously I did take a few sneaky photos on my phone because I’m planning on going home, printing them out and selling them as the real thing… I mean *why* are we not allowed to take photos after we’ve paid heinous amounts to get into these places? Hrumph). There were a few paintings I recognised and a few that were amusing and way, way too many Catholic artworks. Which is what they did in those days – I get it – but I’ve had enough. No more old art galleries for us on this trip. We’ve both come to the same conclusion.

Mountains of gelato!

On to Bologna. I don’t really like jamming two cities into one post. Most people get reader fatigue or something after about 500 words and I also like to make lots of posts so I can say ‘wow, look how many posts I’ve made’, which is stupid but there you have it (115 now! In 6 months! Pretty impressive, huh? If only I’d put all these words into a thesis I’d be a doctor or something by now).

So Bologna. It was pretty cool too. We’d decided to spend another 3 nights somewhere between Florence and Venice and Bologna was easy to get to and so decision made! Plus it was going to be another surprise city since neither of us knew anything about it. Actually, this whole trip is kind of dispelling my ideas about myself as a knowledgeable and worldly person. There’s so many places I know nothing about – but that’s the way of things, isn’t it? The more you learn, the more you realise you don’t know.

You realise you don’t know that fountains like this could be paid for by city councils rather than, say, feature in men’s magazines.

So Bologna.

It’s a city that exceeds every other in one respect: porticos. During the 16th century (possibly.. don’t google that. We went to a gallery exhibition on the history of Bologna but my memory is a bit hazy because I’m writing this about a week after but just go with it) when every other city in Italy (maybe Europe?) was telling people to get rid of their porticos, the governors of Bologna mandated that every house had to be fronted with a portico and they had to be at least 4 metres (well, obviously not in metres but you know what I mean) wide and high enough for a person on a horse to ride under. Which means that Bologna has over 40kms of weather-proof footpaths and that is a wonderful thing indeed.

Halfway up the world’s longest arcade.

One of these walkways goes for 3.4kms without missing a beat – that’s 666 archways, 519 stairs (we counted), not to mention a great deal of ramps, to the top of a hill just out of the city. From the top there’s lovely views over the countryside. For once our pleas to friends on Facebook was early enough to yield results we could actually act on. So thanks Nikki for that piece of advice.

One of the many thousands of water fountains dotted around Italy. One of the many things I love about this country. This one was at the top of the hill. Perfect!

Our friend Mauricio recommended a gelateria where we had a dark chocolate gelato that was … I have not the words. Like pure cream but almost bitter, dark and divine. We hiked to the other side of town to have it then on our walk back we found another of the same store within a block of our hostel. D’oh!

Speaking of our hostel, it was possibly my favourite from this trip. Not that it was all that special in any kind of luxurious way, but we had a room to ourselves, a four poster bed (handy for drying clothes), marble floors, a well equipped kitchen and it had this lovely old, faded elegance that lent a decadent air to our evening sessions of cooking pasta, drinking wine and watching Archer in bed. I think this is my favourite way to travel. Up at a reasonable hour, walk around lots, eat some great food, retire to bed to relax, watch something funny, write a bit about what I did that day and get a great night’s sleep, uninterrupted by the snores of 4 strangers (dorm accommodation is not my favourite thing).

The only other thing I have to mention about Bologna is the colour of the place. The whole town matches superbly in shades or ochre, yellow, salmon (normally my least favourite colour ever), umber, cream… it was another one of those eye-popping cities. Combine the amazing colours with the fresco’d, mosaic’d porticoes and it was a visual feast. Despite all this prettiness, Bologna is full of students rather than tourists and it was nice for a change not to be fighting through the crowds. It was also charming to come across young lovers sitting on railings, leaning in alleys, kissing and canoodling. Italians seem to do that a lot. Speaking of romance, next we’re in Venice!

A fountain in Florence. All the lens flare!

15Sep2013

Italy: Rome

by Miss Penny Black

If you don’t want to hear about food and fashion then this is where you get off, sorry folks!

Crowds at the Trevi Fountain.

After our midnight arrival from Istanbul and surly mini cab driver who waited around at the airport til 1am hoping for more passengers after saying we’d be leaving in 10 minutes (do not even get me started on how much I hate Rome’s airports and all who dwell within them – it’s a long story) we eventually got to our hostel and grabbed a few hour’s sleep.

Half the hostels here seem to have a daily lock out policy – that is, you must be out of the hostel between 10am and 3pm so they can clean the place and it probably discourages some kind of nefarious activities that I can’t quite imagine people wanting to do around midday in a bog-standard hostel. So this resulted in us being up relatively early and making our way to a couch surfing meet up, where a guy had offered to do a free 2 hour walking tour of the ‘non touristy’ bits of Rome.

Exploring the back streets.

Luke and I were, as is always the case, the first people on the scene. Eventually a group of about 15 people gathered and our tour guide, Alessandro, turned up. To say the guy looked flustered and disorganised is to put it mildly. He seemed like he’d had a big night out and his heart wasn’t in it. He’d explain something as ‘You know about Romulus and Remus, right?’ and if one or two people nodded their head he’d gloss over the story with ‘and so on and so on’, which was not exactly helpful. I know a bit of Roman history so I could explain a bit to Luke but our hopes were not set especially high in the beginning.

Apparently there are enough churches in Rome to go to a different one every day of the year.

But then Alessandro started getting on track and telling us really interesting things and the tour turned out to be really great. We saw through the keyhole of the Knights of Malta‘s establishment, some beautiful and unusual churches and a garden with interesting forced perspective and saw a rock, supposedly hurled by the devil at some guy who was praying. Oh and we saw a church for a saint whose name I missed but who lived under some stairs for a while so his shrine has stairs. I called him Saint Harry Potter.

Our feet were getting quite tired after a while so we stopped for gelato, which helped.

Tomato gelato, anyone?

Then we stopped for antipasto plates and wine, which was fantastic. We tried food in combinations I’d never had before – like parmesan and honey, which totally works. There was also zucchini flowers stuffed with fresh cheese – I’ve fried my own flowers with mince before but had not thought to have them fresh.

Delicious!

My favourite bit was when Alessandro told us that only in Rome can you eat Jewish Roman cuisine, but right now Roman artichokes weren’t in season and they use other artichokes and they ‘ruin everything‘. That’s right, an artichoke grown 100kms away will make your dining experience a complete waste. There’s something so delightfully Italian, whimsical and fussy about this statement and the casual but slightly depressed manner in which it was delivered. It as probably my favourite Roman moment out of all our time there.

Antipasto plate.

The tour was both improved and slightly ruined by the fact that it was a couch surfing thing and so we all tried to both listen and chat throughout. When you meet up with a group of people that you know you have something in common with and many of those people have not had a decent chat with a person in days it’s really hard to shut them up and couch surfers are, by nature, extremely social creatures. Not to mention interesting. Two of the guys had been sleeping in Termini station because they couldn’t find anyone to host them. Termini station is like.. uh.. hard to describe. It’s really big, old, busy and quite a large number of people live there. Not middle class backpackers, either. It’s about as full-on as European train stations can get. Kind of like a refugee camp/train station.

Despite the tour being touted as two hours, Luke and I regretfully tore ourselves away six hours into the as-yet unfinished tour to go have a nap and rest our poor feet, which were unused to so much walking.

In the evening we went for a short stroll to a nearby fountain to get some long exposure shots, which didn’t turn out anywhere near as well as I’d have liked, then had a drink at a bar that looked more like a roadside kebab van. The drinks were nice though, and the weather in Rome was perfect for sitting out in the evening.

As we sat I contemplated what I’d seen so far of Italian fashion. Italy is definitely a place that can intimidate the visitor in terms of style and flair. Particularly if said visitor is wearing trainers with holes in them and the same two dresses for weeks. Women in Rome are seriously striking and dress beautifully. They wear completely inappropriate shoes and enormous sunglasses. Their hair is dead straight or perfectly curled. They smoke endless cigarettes and throw the butts carelessly into the gutter. They walk tiny dogs, huge dogs, and push prams containing designer-dressed babies. I can’t decide whether I’m delighted, amused or horrified. Probably a mix of all three.

There’s this crazy paradox to Italians. So focused on fashion and appearances and being skeletally thin, yet the passionate, almost worshipful attitude to food and drink. Not that I’m complaining. Well, the only thing to complain about is not having enough time, money or space in my bag to go properly shopping.

Next stop: Florence… or do you call it ‘Firenze’?

9Sep2013

Turkey: Ephesus and Selcuk

by Miss Penny Black

So far in Turkey we’ve managed to stay in a range of pretty lovely hotels and apartments. Maybe it’s just because we’re still slightly awed by the regular appearance of toilet paper in the bathrooms post-Africa, but everything’s been pretty good up til now. Selcuk, however seems to have conspired against us in the fact that, for each of the 3 nights we’ve spent here there’s been some kind of extremely loud event happening right outside our hotel window.

Night one was people busking with something that sounded awfully like bagpipes, night two was a concert with huge speakers pointed directly at our windows (and less than 100 metres away) and today there’s been a great deal of industrial noise which has now abated, no doubt to lull us into a false sense of security for this evening.

All that aside, our bathroom door requires pliers to open from the inside and breakfast consists of slices of cucumber, tomato and a hard boiled egg. I like eggs, but not every morning for two weeks.

But the reason we’re here is not the dubious charms of Wallabies Hotel but Ephesus, one of the largest and most-intact Roman-period archeological sites in the world.

Romans built things for keeps.

Lucas visited yesterday, Luke and I went today as yesterday we spent all day planning our next leg in Italy.

Ephesus is a short bus ride from Selcuk – in fact if it wasn’t for the heat it’d be more than walkable. Maybe 4kms? We took the bus because we’re lazy. We also took drinks from town – apparently a bottle of water on site can be as much as $5 (AUD) but a litre of peach iced tea was about 50 cents (AUD) in the local shop. BARGAIN. I’m probably going to cry when I get home and can’t live on it like I do here.

But Ephesus! Lucas had warned us that the best plan was to walk through the ruins to the top of the hill then wait for a break in the tour bus groups and walk between them, thereby seeing the ruins without crowds of people in every shot.

I’m pretty sure this says something about buying carpets.

Boy was he right. At some points on the way up I had to almost shoulder people aside just to get past and the walkway was several metres wide. Also, for the prospective visitor – wear shoes with grip. That goes for all of Turkey, in fact. They have this thing about paving everything in super slippery marble. I’ve nearly fallen several times and watched at least three people nearly fall while we were there.

Still, once we’d found our space and realised that the groups don’t go off the main track, it was possible to look at the view, touch the inscriptions and get some nice shots.

Look at the colour of that sky! Perfect day to be out taking photos. No Photoshop required;).

I used to love Ancient History. Mostly because I loved my teacher (in a platonic way (see what I did there?) hrm… are brackets within brackets ok?) and he made it really interesting. He’d tell us stories of Greece and Persia and Rome as though it was some kind of soap opera, which in many ways it was. The whole subject is also full of pointless yet interesting details that my brain latches onto like a mouse onto cheese. And yet coming to places like this, while I appreciate the antiquity, history and probably know somewhat more about it than half the people there that day, it just didn’t really do it for me. Maybe it was the heat, maybe it was the number of historical sites I’ve seen this year but I couldn’t help wishing I had my friend Oli by my side, someone who was much more knowledgable and passionate about the subject than I could currently be and who would fill me with his enthusiasm.

This building was destroyed by an earthquake nearly 2000 years ago and is in the process of being rebuilt.

Column detail.

This is our last night in Turkey and it’s been great. We’ve had fun traveling with friends but tomorrow we’re saying goodbye to Lucas (for now) and heading to Rome via Istanbul. Lucas doesn’t know where he’s going but will work it out at the bus station tomorrow.

Since Luke and I have done the touristy thing in Rome already, this time it’s going to be about the food. I’ve already got a few places picked out. Roast pork, red wine and gelato here we come!

9Sep2013

Turkey: Pamukkale

by Miss Penny Black

We headed from Antalya to Pamukkale, a bit of a one-horse town half way to the coast. The Romans built a very large city there, Hierapolis, at the top of the travertines. What are the travertines, you might ask? Well, it’s a bit of a complex answer and I didn’t really know until we got there. Even when we got there it wasn’t quite obvious what the place was about.

The travertines are white cliffs of calcium carbonate that is constantly being deposited by the hot springs along the top of the cliffs. The town of Pamukkale is at the bottom of the springs and you walk up the travertines to get to the Roman ruins.

Everyone takes their shoes off to walk up the hill because it is mostly white and almost entirely covered with running water. From a millimetre deep to ankle deep. There are pools built into the slope which you can sit in (the bottom is quite like clay sludge but white) or walk past. Although it sounds as though it might be slippery, the surface is very easy to grip and the deposits of calcium make beautiful patterns.

One of the less-white bits. The water is occasionally diverted to let the sun bleach different areas.

I visited twice. First Luke, Lucas and I walked up the first afternoon and looked around (it’s 20 TLR/$10 to get in) , enjoying the novelty of the place and the views at sunset where the white cliffs turn a gorgeous pink.

Pink – but not this pink. Since I got Photoshop re-installed on my laptop I’ve been going a bit crazy with colour. It was very beautiful in real life though!

Then Lucas and I walked up the following morning but he kept going to the ruins and I sat in one of the pools with my kindle observing the other tourists and, surprisingly, being asked to be in a photo with a couple of young fellows from Istanbul.

Obviously not a photo of me, but it gives you a bit of an idea what the pools are like. I don’t know if you can tell but there’s water running down the cliff-face. Sunglasses are NOT optional.

I have done some calculations based on my observations of the people there and determined the following:

10% of people were there to swim/bathe.

10% were there purely to walk the length and take photos of the view.

80% were there to take pictures of their girlfriends/be photographed by their boyfriends in the smallest bikinis available, perched in precisely the same back-arched, one-knee-drawn-up, reclining position that seems incredibly popular everywhere in Turkey. I like to think of it as the ‘men’s magazine’ angle.

In fact everywhere we’ve been the numbers are pretty much the same. Go somewhere scenic, get your girlfriend into as small an amount of clothing as is socially acceptable in the situation and then snap away – preferably at an angle where she’s on one side of a busy thoroughfare and you’re on the other so traffic grinds to a halt and everyone has to pause and admire the impending melanomas.

Nevermind, I’m just jealous because tanning in Australia is a life-threatening hobby whereas everyone here seems oblivious to the existence of hats and old age.

The beginning of the walk, where you take off your shoes. There’s a channel for the water to run into where it goes down to a duck pond in a park. It’s maybe hard to see here that the whole slope is covered in water. Made for a cool feet on a hot day!

Behind Luke you can see a bit of Pamukkale and the aforementioned duck pond, in which you can paddle about in those swan-shaped boats that work like pedalling a bicycle.

Pamukkale wasn’t a terribly endearing place. People start shouting at you the second you get off the bus (to eat, buy, stay) and it’s obvious that most people here survive off tourism, which must contribute to the general sense of desperation. However I was really charmed by the travertines and I would say they’re definitely good for at least a day’s visit and it’s really worth being there for sunset. There’s only about 5 minutes of magical light but it’s worth it, and despite the signs saying it’s only open til 8pm people were up there under floodlights quite late. Although because it’s all white hardly any heat is absorbed and the pools cool swiftly at sundown leading to very cold feet by the time you climb down.

I’m glad we went and it was nice to have two opportunities to walk up the hill. With my growing issues with chlorine in pools (massively itchy skin afterwards) but my deep love of water and swimming, I take my chances where I can get them and the travertines were certainly unique!

9Sep2013

Turkey: Antalya

by Miss Penny Black

I was going to write a post about the charms and loveliness of Antalya but first I’m going to rant at you (in a nice way!) about the Turkish bus system.

We’re about 20 minutes out of Antalya, heading for Pamukkale and, quite possibly, in a bus from the future.

When you get on and the bus is on time, smells nice and there’s nary a hole nor tear in any of the seats you think ‘hey, this is nicer than home’. Then you see the screens in the back of each seat and you think ‘hey, this is as nice as the better domestic planes at home’. Then you realise there’s wifi, the screens connect to the internet and there’s a guy handing out ice-cream and cake and drinks and you think ‘Hey! I’ve been magically transported into a Utopian future from which I never wish to return!’.

Lucas checks out the features.

Really, nice one, Turkey. You win at public transport.

Now, Antalya.

It was like a present that you get out of the blue, expecting nothing and then suddenly, hey wow! There’s something really great in front of you and everything about it is a pleasant surprise. Well, nearly everything. Because I was sick in Istanbul, Lucas and Luke booked this bit of the tour and based a stop in Antalya on a photo they saw. Lucky for us because it turned out to be clean, charming and our lovely accommodation was only a few minutes from the beach.

Our room is up on the left. In the courtyard was a little pool and some beanbags.

The ‘old town’ part where we stayed was a maze of cobblestone streets but the buildings were a weird mix of European and Oriental features. There were blossoming explosions of bougainvillea festooning the hotels and at night the sleepy, hot streets came alive with people out partying.

POW! Bougainvillea.

Antalya is on the southern coast of Turkey, at the apex of a bay that is surrounded by steep granite peaks. The little beach we went to was down a steep set of stairs and was more rock and pebbles than sand. Lucas and I rented a snorkel to share and there were lots of little fish to look at… when one wasn’t gawping at the leathery old people who were tanned an astonishing shade of coffee-brown and wearing white bikinis.