Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Torino

En route to Lyon I stopped into Turin to break up the seven-hour journey.  Why aren't there more tourists in Turin?  It is a charming, spacious city, not unlike Paris at first glance, with broad boulevards, beautiful architecture—from medieval fortresses to grand belle epoque buildings—miles of colonnaded arcades, and a comprehensive tram network.  Maybe it was just that I was there on a Sunday, but it's also peacefully quiet; no traffic jams or swarms of people.  And like I say, no tourists.

High water and fresco vandals

I experienced the acqua alta—high water—in Venice after all, and I'm glad I did.  Having occurred for hundreds of years, it is a quintessential part of life there.  It is not a result of rising sea levels (though this will severely exacerbate it).  Of course, it was nowhere near the magnitude of the 1966 floods, but locals were wearing their colourful gumboots (Venice is the place to shop if you're a fashion-conscious pig farmer), wading obliviously through six inches of water in the lower-lying areas.  More commonly it was less than an inch, most places were in fact dry, and the water table dropped again with an hour.

For four nights in Venice I lost track of the days, like I had taken a vacation from my holiday.  The city feels unmoved by the passage of time, like it is still its own republic, separate from Italy, the rest of the world, and modernity.  It's a strangely affecting place and, in all my travels through Eastern and Western Europe, incomparable.

So when I arrived in Verona, only an hour away, I was rather too bedazzled to fairly assess one of Italy's prettiest little cities.  That it was raining again dampened my enthusiasm, too, but the second day was beautifully clear and sunny, a cool, Autumn day (as in fact, they all have been since), and I discovered the stunning Romanesque Basilica of San Zeno.  If you remember your Shakespeare you'll know that Friar Lawrence married Romeo and Juliet in the crypt (looking on would have been the preserved body of Zeno who died in 380 AD).  Also preserved are superb frescoes, dozens of them, dating back to the 12th century.  They are still brilliant and in large sections intact, despite being damaged by time, war (Allied bombing), and 18th-century snot-nosed brats—there is a great deal of graffiti, often dated, etched into the plaster.  The architecture of the building is reknowned, with a beautifully decorated ship's keel ceiling as well as a stunning facade.  Apparently.  It was masked by—that's right—scaffolding for restoration work, rendering it unsuitable for shooting.  At least the scaffolding screens were sympathetically painted with the facade's likeness.

The not-so-happy-go-lucky-anymore traveller

For my last night in Venice, I decided to indulge myself and spend a night on the Grand Canal.  This was too wet and unsolid so I decided to spend a night beside the Grand Canal instead.

On the morning of this last night I moved across town from my old hotel in the pouring rain, carrying my camera bag and harnessed to a heavy backpack under a nylon poncho, a bit like wearing a circus big top, squeezing through narrow people-dammed passages barbed with umbrellas.  I was interrupted by some university student with, "Excuse me, sir, will you sign a petition?  It's in English.  It's against drugs."

"No," I said, irritated.  "I take drugs."

Friday, October 23, 2009

How to find a Bird in Space

The layout of Venice, evolved over a thousand years, was unplanned and has grown organically by the needs of the city, the district, and each street itself, resulting in numerous short, narrow medieval lanes that dog-leg and reticulate between canals and campos.  There are umpteen ways to get from here to there, yet surprisingly, it is not that easy to get lost.  Heading in the general direction of somewhere will get you there, guided by signs tacked to the buildings pointing to Rialto, San Marco, or Alla Ferrovia, and a glance at a map now and again is enough.

I found my way to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection today, which includes a number of Picassos (I don't care much for Pipe, Glass, Bottle of Vieux Marc, but I do like On the Beach), Jackson Pollocks (meh), Salvador Dalís (pff), and three of my favourite pieces of sculpture in one place, which I was very excited to see: Giacometti's Standing Woman, his Piazza, and Brancusi's Bird in SpaceStanding Woman is about four feet tall (130cm), but I was very surprised that the figures in Piazza are only about eight inches tall (20cm).  Things look so different in books.

The problem with taking a 12-week holiday

... is that you start to think about how it's ending soon when there are four weeks left—when many people begin their holiday.

Mind your bocconcini

I found a cheap place to eat in Venice, an otherwise very expensive city, where the quality of the food is still good. It’s self-serve, like a cafeteria, but the atmosphere is still cozy and it’s become my regular place for dinner.  On the table they have complimentary wine, which sounds very nice but is the worst wine I've ever had.  It's thick and tastes like olive oil.

The second night I was there, I picked up a plate of pasta fresco al pomodoro and a bowl of salad. The salad had greens, tomatoes, olives and bocconcini, those delicious little balls of mozzarella. I sat down and ate half before it occurred to me that there wasn’t any salad dressing, so I went to the salad bar and picked up some olive oil and balsamic vinegar. When I got back to the table and started eating again, I noticed there was no more bocconcini. I thought there was more. I went up to the cash register and said, “Mi scusi… er, when I got up from the table, someone ate all the bocconcini out of my salad.” Though the lady seemed to speak English well, it was obviously not perfect as she asked me to repeat myself, which I did.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “You want more bocconcini?”

“No,” I said. “I want justice.”

This prompted the manager’s appearance. Now we were getting somewhere. I explained the problem to him, but after some confused arguing we didn’t seem to get anywhere at all. He actually asked me to leave!

“I’m the victim here!” I said, and stood my ground. This only resulted in the carabinieri, the military police whom I’ve heard are best avoided, so when they grabbed me by the arm—I didn’t know what else to do—I screamed, “rape!”

That sorted things out.

Thursday, October 22, 2009

How to shoot

The explosion of digital photography has put a little camera in every tourist’s hands. Thirty years ago cameras would not have been so prevalent because you had to know how to use one. Today, they are almost completely automatic.

Here’s a tip for my readership: the correct stance for taking a photograph is to put your feet together, bend your knees and stick your bum out, lean forward with the camera held at arm’s length, and grimace.

This must appear in the manual, as most tourists seem to know it.

Wow.

Venice is fantastic. I don’t know where to begin.

The 1500-year old city is vast—when you wander the sprawling sestieri (districts), it just keeps going—yet it never feels bigger than a large town. And there is not a single modern building in sight.

Venice is a tourist’s feast. The canals are as picturesque as you have been led to believe, and are never clichéd. The art is such sumptuous gluttony that another Tintoretto invokes an offhand, “oh, more paintings.” And the shopping (for those inclined) is comparable to Paris (both in scale and price).

Yes, Venice is expensive. The average price of a simple trattoria meal is €20. I was fortunate to find accommodation in a resedenzia for €50 per night—a simple room with no breakfast—because it is off season, and that is as cheap as you’ll find.

Visiting in the off season is the way to go. There are still plenty of tourists, but they don’t overpower the city as they do in peak season. Trying to pilot the narrow streets swollen to bursting with mile after mile of people is an arduous way to relax, as Mai Li and I found in Florence one year when we unwittingly arrived on a long weekend.

After catching a vaporetto, a public ferry, down the length of the Grand Canal the first morning of my arrival, I spent the entire day in Piazza San Marco. I took some furtive photography—disallowed—of the dazzling golden mosaic-tiled ceiling of the Basilica San Marco, now the cathedral of Venice but which for 700 years of gobsmacking opulence was the private chapel of the doge (duke and elected head of state).

I depleted the next three hours spending not enough time wandering the warren of rooms in the doge’s palace, the seat of the Venetian government. The walls and ceilings of every room are filled with paintings by Veronese, Tintoretto, and Titian, culminating in the cavernous Sala del Maggior Consiglio (Grand Council Hall) which hosts Tintoretto’s Paradiso, one of the world’s largest oil paintings. It is a mindboggling experience. One room that did stand out for me was the Chamber of the Magistrato alle Leggi, which, to my surprise, is today used to exhibit several works by Hieronymus Bosch.

Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Whew!

I caught the bus back from Montenegro to Dubrovnik, in the south of Croatia, then caught the ferry up the Adriatic Sea to Rijeka in the north, a 22-hour trip.  I booked a cabin for the night, a simple room with two bunks and a bathroom with sink and toilet; no window (an outside cabin costs more).  From Rijeka I had originally intended to stay a night in Rovinj or Poreč in Istria and catch a fast catamaran to Venice, but the service stopped running in early October.  Poreč has some remarkably well-preserved Byzantine mosaics which I was disappointed to miss.  So, instead, I had to kill seven hours in Rijeka, a pleasant-enough-but-not-terribly-interesting town, waiting for a bus to Trieste, from which I boarded a train to Venice.  Which is where I shall stay put for a while!

Kotor

The old Venetian walled town of Kotor is much more interesting than the similarly sized old Venetian walled town of Budva.  Bounded by the Bay of Kotor, the Škurda River, and Mount Lovćen—the “black mountain” that gave the nation its name—it is arguably more beautiful, and with a permanent residential populace it feels more authentic.  Pick-up-sticks-like marble streets open into numerous little plazas for drinking coffee at the cafes, and at only four hectares (ten acres) in size, it is easy to get both lost and found.  I didn’t get time to climb the thousand-odd stairs which run up the mountain on the city walls to a fortress overlooking the turquoise Adriatic fjord on which the city sits.  For 400 years the city fell under the control of Venice, hence the appearance around town of the winged lion of St Mark and the variety of Renaissance palazzos.

Interestingly enough, there was an article in the Sydney Morning Herald about Kotor just the other day.  Click here.

Monday, October 19, 2009

Black mountain, black lung

I met one Montenegrin who didn’t smoke. He was Australian.

At a café on the beach in Budva, when the waiter asked if I needed an ashtray and I said no, he was momentarily stunned. Then he walked away and said, “Good for you.”

Stari Bar

Stari Bar—“old Bar”—is four kilometres away from Bar, an uninteresting port city on Montenegro's south coast. The once populous ancient city is today four hectares of vine-shrouded ruins and piles of stones, a consequence of war and earthquakes, but numerous buildings, already being used to host small concerts and events, are being restored in an effort to develop the site as a historic tourist destination. Those buildings completed are impressive, including an 18th-century Turkish bath house, a Renaissance palazzo and a mediaeval church. Already very pretty in its wild state, it is easy to see what a beautiful drawcard it will become, though with evidence of Illyrian settlement dating from 800 BC the several sites being offhandedly worked with shovels and wheelbarrows raise questions about how much archaeological oversight there is.

I was fortunate to get a lift for the 45-minute drive from Budva with the owner of the hotel where I was staying.  I clambered around the peaceful ruins for four hours, between thick flowering bushes alive with clouds of ecstatic bees, and, lulled by the sound of the river in the valley below, napped on the stone wall of the citadel overlooking wild pomegranate trees and a stone terraced olive grove at the foot of the diagonally-tilted, striated limestone mountain.

Border control

There were only a dozen or so souls on the 3PM bus from Dubrovnik to Podgorice, the capital of Montenegro. I was getting off at Budva, the centre of the action on the Montenegrin coast in peak season. In October, though, stripped of its tourist gloss under gray skies, it is somewhat bleak (as noted in my previous entry).

At the Croatian-Montenegrin border, a policeman boards the bus and collects passports from each of the passengers. He takes them into the border control office to stamp them and then gives them back to the bus driver, who returns them to the owners, a bit of a random process of sometimes checking photos and other times actually passing off the responsibility of distribution to another passenger. The bus travels two minutes up the road, stops at another border check, and we do the same routine all over again. Why? Old bureaucratic communist habit? And what is in between these two stops? No man’s land?

Sunday, October 18, 2009

Budva, Montenegro

There is a certain look of desolation in Montenegro's off season which exposes the communist 1970s Tito hangover it still can't shake.  The promenade to Budva's Stari Grad, the old town in the centre of the Montenegrin Adriatic coast, is bounded by impermanent single-storey aluminium and concrete shops and weed-strewn lots.  The pedestrianised street is paved with concrete blocks, and a cracked basketball court next to a fibreglass waterslide held up by rusted scaffolding is used as a go-kart circuit.  Half the shops and most of the bars, tacky ones in the shape of pirate ships between palm trees and dead neon signs, are closed due to the off season.  "Fisherman's Pub" is decorated with the typical pastiche of hanging lifesavers, floats and fishing nets.  Though trite, these are used and faded objects taken from actual fishing boats; it's an authenticity that deserved recognition thirty years ago but which is now an eastern bloc curiosity.

Past all this, moored next to the walls of Stari Grad is a bank of expensive cruisers. Inside the old town of 17th-century walls it's suddenly upmarket with expensive watches and jewellery, cafes and restaurants... yet it's a bit like a shopping mall.  There are almost no residences.  Compare this to Split, Dubrovnik, and Kotor, further north on the Montenegrin coast, where the character difference is distinct; they are still residential towns, and there is a life buzzing around the tourists.

Apparently, Budva in the summer high season of July and August is a different thing entirely.  The swarms of bikini-clad girls and crazy nightlife every night are enough to distract one from, well, everything else (including perhaps a good night's sleep).

Saturday, October 17, 2009

The winter jacket is out

In one day, the Adriatic coast went from Indian summer to early winter.  Eight degrees has fallen from the thermometer and the wind has taken off a couple more.  Though the rain has moved on, the temperature hasn't climbed above 14°C in three days, and considering that I'm only going north now, I better get used to it.  All of Europe is under an Arctic chill.

Chamber music

I won't bore you with the details of the makeshift raft, disappearing coastlines, and invoking Poseidon himself to escape the maelstrom, but there was afterwards a moment of peace when I was able to see the Sorkočević Quartet perform by candlelight in Dubrovnik's tiny Church of St Saviour (an odd name, as I thought there was only one saviour in Christianity, and that he hardly needed to be canonised).

The orchestra, comprised of flute, violin, piano and contrabass viola, performed:
  • Handel's "Largo"
  • Albinoni's Trio Sonata
  • Sorkočević's Symphony No. 4
  • Overture to Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro"
  • Beethoven's "Coriolan Overture"
  • Overture to Rossini's "Italian in Algiers"
They also performed an encore, which piece they announced but the name of which I didn't catch.

The atmosphere was intimate—there wouldn't have been more than fifty people in the audience, already more than half the little chapel's capacity—and the sound was warm and clear.  The small plan and high ceiling of the church are perfect for the acoustics of chamber music.  My favourite was the Cariolan Overture, which they performed with the dynamic sympathy required for Beethoven.  I thanked them afterwards for a wonderful concert.

Wednesday, October 14, 2009

Deluge in Dubrovnik

The storm front over Dubrovnik lasted for two days. The rain held off during daylight long enough for me to walk the stout 2km-long city walls, but that night after dinner I was trapped by the deluge.

I ventured out in the downpour that evening wearing only shorts, a T-shirt, and a light rain jacket because all my clothes were at the laundry.  I found a cozy little vegetarian restaurant in the old town called Nishta: wooden roof beams, gold script on purple walls, lounge music and candlelight.  The food—apart from being a simple relief from meat and potatoes—was delicious.  In Sydney, I eat much more vegetarian than I have been able to in Europe, so the ratatouille hommus wraps and tempeh burritos went down like a king's banquet.

The rain was so heavy that the restaurant had closed the outdoor tables in the little stone laneway.  When I got outside, torrents were cascading down the stairs of the perpendicular lanes and flooding the little street two inches deep.  I stood on a raised step with my back against the building, propped my umbrella up and waited in my bare legs for the rain to ease.  It got heavier.  I pressed myself into the building and waited some more, and after ten minutes, it got even heavier.  I couldn't believe it!  It was like the Adriatic was upturned.  I was reasonably safe on my raised step against the building, and all I could do was laugh.  I was stranded like Maitland livestock.

Tuesday, October 13, 2009

The secret to stylish backpacking

Those who know me will know that I'm a bit of a fashion plate.  Looking good when travelling is tricky, and even harder when backpacking.

You know what the secret is to looking good?

Email me if you do.  Today I was wearing shorts and an anorak.

Monday, October 12, 2009

Summer is over

It's been an Indian summer in this part of the world.  The pleasant, sunny days I've had in Croatia are usually finished by September, apparently.  But there's now been an announcement that the fun is over.  Thunderstorms woke me in Dubrovnik at 7AM this morning.  The rain held off for most of the daylight hours as I walked the city walls, but now at 8PM as I write this it has returned, and it is pissing.  Notwithstanding the afternoon storm in Mértola, Portugal, I've had almost no rain at all on this trip (which was in karmic order after being practically rained out of Eastern Europe last year).

If this low pressure in the Adriatic keeps up by the time I reach Venice next week, I might just experience the notorious acqua alta, where the pedestrian areas of Venice are submerged.  I have an umbrella and a rain jacket, but I didn't bring any fishing waders with me, so I'd probably make the call to skip it and move on.  After running out of time in 2007, that would make it the second time I failed to reach Venice.

Saturday, October 10, 2009

Contaminated

I sound like a travel brochure.

I have to read something different. I’ve spent seven weeks reading nothing but Lonely Planet guides, and it’s infecting my writing. Lonely Planet is an excellent resource for information, but the writing—industry travel writing in general—is not prose to aspire to.

Long Island iced teas, filo pastry and women

When I got off the bus from Zadar to Split, I was mobbed by women wanting to take me home. I must have said no a dozen times. They only wanted me for my money.  In any case, I had already booked ahead for accommodation.

There must be many empty private rooms outside of peak season; wearing my backpack, I continued to be approached walking into town. “Excuse me, do you need a room? In the palace, very cheap.” They are civil, and a polite “no” resolves the matter; they are certainly nothing like Lisbon’s hash peddlers.

Lonely Planet says that Diocletian’s Palace is “one of the most imposing Roman ruins in existence.” It’s no overstatement. Built by the Roman emperor as a retirement villa, the intact, three-storey walls, roughly 200 metres on each side, encapsulate Romanesque and Gothic mansions built into tall Roman arches and Corinthian capped pillars by wealthy merchants in the Middle Ages, and today is a labyrinth of narrow stone lanes filled with jewellery stores, market stalls, museums, windows adorned with laundry, restaurants, and weed-strewn dead ends.

Split may be even more relaxed than Zadar. After a rather busy three weeks of driving through Portugal after scrambling to get to Andalucía on time, followed by a three-day Italian blitz, I decided to take advantage of the coastal Dalmatian atmosphere and spent three days in Split doing nothing much at all. The harbour is fronted by a long promenade knows as Riva, populated with open air cafes. It’s a beaut spot for people watching against the background of the Adriatic sipping a Long Island iced tea.

The weather in Croatia has been sunny and pleasant in the low to mid twenties. Despite having spent many hours in the sun without sunblock over many weeks, I haven’t yet been sunburnt, which is a bit of a mystery to me. My Irish skin is like filo pastry. I only once lathered up, when I sat in the baking Andalusian sun to watch the bullfight in Ronda, which I’m pretty sure would have otherwise done me in.

Sea Organ

Zadar’s Sea Organ is a unique and inspired installation. The swell of the sea pushes air through organ pipes built under the broad stone steps of the waterfront promenade. You can’t see the Sea Organ; you can only hear it. The sound is projected out the fluted risers of the steps, so the best way to enjoy the music is to lounge on the steps and watch the boats drift on the sea, especially as the sun goes down. The intensity and timbre of the notes surge with the waves, so a passing ferry sends a new song into the organ. It is peaceful, enjoyable and utterly brilliant, and the only one of its kind in the world. The designer deserves a special mention: local architect Nikola Brašić. It warrants stopping in Zadar just to see it

I’ve attached a 30-second recording of it here.

Croatia

The mood of the Dalmatian coast makes me think of it as an enormous Manly (a beach suburb of Sydney). Zadar has a calm, chilled vibe, quiet except that there is plenty of life. I always base myself in the old, historic centre of each place that I visit, but there are very few hotels in Zadar’s old town. My hotel was a half hour walk away. Most tourists here stay 3km away in the newer part of the city where there is plenty of accommodation. High season in Croatia is July and August, the northern summer, but October seems pretty low-key.

Zadar is a very youthful place; there is an abundance of people under 25. If this is representative of the Croation population, reflecting on the possible reason is disconcerting: the “ethnic cleansing” of the Homeland War, as the Croats call it, took place when they were all children. But there is a distinct feeling that that is history now, and the place feels ready to surge into the future with the youth at its helm.

The harbour is busy with ferries en route up and down the coast, and the marinas are filled with fishing trawlers, sailboats, and runabouts. The place is very genuine. Few of the yachts are as ostentatious as the showboats in Sydney’s Darling Harbour. I strolled along the peaceful waterfront at night back to my hotel, and quietly envied two skippers on cabin cruisers moored alongside each other, chatting over the gunwales and looking out to the moonlit Adriatic.

Wednesday, October 07, 2009

Adventure!

Constant travelling place to place is a continual cycle of anxiety, triumph and departure.  You venture into unknown territory, not uncommonly getting lost, and establish yourself in a strange place.  After orienting yourself, things become familiar and you’re comfortable enough to enjoy the novelty and newness of everything.  You even become a minor authority and pass on recommendations to fellow travellers.   Then you move on—sometimes it’s bittersweet when you leave a favourite place—and the anxiety begins anew.  It’s a slow-burn adrenaline rush.

I’ve stuck largely to my planned itinerary on this trip, adjusting it only slightly to stay a day longer in Mertola or Tomar, or dropping a destination like Elvas or Viseu because I try to do too much.  I think Croatia and Montenegro will be even more fluid, as it was planned with the least rigour and because my itinerary has now gained two days.  I had planned to raft Montenegro's Tara Canyon, but I have just learned that the rafting season is now over.  October is late, but some years the water is still strong enough for rapids.  It must have petered out.

This is boring

As amused as I was that I could say I’ve been to Pisa but didn’t see the Leaning Tower, my reporting responsibilities overruled my sense of humour and I got up early on the morning of my flight to dash up to the Piazza dei Miracoli.  Lonely Planet compares this square, which also features Pisa’s Romanesque cathedral and baptistry, to Venice's Piazza San Marco as one of Italy’s most memorable.  Having spent a full fifteen minutes there and not (yet) having been to Venice, I can say with complete authority that that’s rubbish.  It’s boring.  Apart from visiting these monuments there’s nothing to do.  The piazza is all grass, surrounded by a wall and a street.  There is no reason to linger, and indeed, nobody does.  It is surprisingly sterile.  And though I probably would have entered the cathedral had I had time, I don’t go in for tourist compulsions like climbing the Leaning Tower.  I climbed the Eiffel Tower once, but only after I’d already been to Paris before, and I didn’t find it especially memorable.  It’s not even good for a photograph; high panoramas or distant landscapes are also boring.

The art of photography is similar to the art of writing well: the writer should suggest the whole with just a detail, and allow the reader’s imagination to complete the picture.  Landscapes are too vast and any subject is lost in the innumerable details.  A good photograph doesn’t have too many competing subjects.  There seems to be an inverse relationship between scale and interest: panoramas make as dull pictures as an entire chapter of description makes dull reading.

Hello?  Are you still there?

Monday, October 05, 2009

The Odyssey

First there was Tartarus.

It is not easy to get from the Siena train station, 2km out of town, to the historic centre. Usually I prefer to walk if I can, but Lonely Planet obscured the position of the station on their map with the reference listing. They say in the guide, “buses Nos 8, 9 and 10 run between the train station and Piazza Gramsci” at the edge of the pedestrianised old town. This is not entirely true, as it suggests a shuttle which goes to and fro. What they neglect to state is that the number 10 does not simply return to the train station. It continues on to tour the outlying Siena suburbs in a 40km loop, for which I waited 20 minutes to do on a bus with no shocks helmed by Slayer’s ex-drum roadie working the pedals over roads patched more times than a chain smoker gone cold turkey before being returned to the spot where I boarded. I understand that getting lost is part of travelling, but this is one time that the otherwise reliable Lonely Planet has failed.

I got off the bus where I got on and walked the two kilometres to the train station, where I found that the 18:41 train didn’t arrive or even exist, despite being posted on the timetable. The missing 19:18 must go to the same destination. So, I tried to catch the 19:41 which, according to the departures board, was leaving from platform 1 TR. At 19:38, when a train berthed at platform 1, naturally I boarded. But you see, Siena train station has six platforms, 1 through 5. It’s perfectly logical: there is a hidden platform, actually in the dark, at the far end of platform 1 and obscured by the building, called “Platform 1 Tronco (truncated).” When the train I boarded wasn’t moving by 19:45 I realised that it was indicating a different destination, and after some scrambling noticed somebody running into the dark at the end of the platform and boarding a train—my train—which promptly departed.

So, I finally caught the 20:18. In the end, it took me an hour and forty-five minutes to get to Siena and five hours to return. I was aiming to get back before sunset so I could at least get a photo of the one thing I can now say I have not seen despite having been to Pisa—the Leaning Tower.

Five lands

I was very excited to get to Cinque Terre, a clutch of villages clinging like barnacles to rocky slopes above the Mediterranean. Not only have I wanted for many years to go, but hiking six kilometres of precipitous footpaths between coastal Italian villages was a complete change from driving highways for three weeks between inland Portuguese cathedrals. Exactly as prescribed by the proverbial practitioner.

From Pisa it is very easy to get to Riomaggiore, taking under two hours on the train, including wait time changing at La Spezia. I then walked as far as Vernazza, only reaching quattro of the cinque townships as I ran out of light by 7PM and decided to abandon Monterosso. The walk is renowned for its prettiness: the path strings along cliffs between clusters of orange, green, pink and yellow buildings, with turquoise waters and beaches of ocean-rounded stones below.  There is the crash of the breaking surf and, as if a distant shower of fireworks, the cracking, crumbling sound of the tide rolling the stones like racking billiard balls.

In Corniglia I ate a pasta specific to the region (I bet every region in Italy has a unique shape of pasta), the name of which I can't recall, in pesto made with local basil, a specialty here. Simple and delicious. Italian food is all about quality and simplicity, and what a delight it is after weeks of Portuguese meat.

The human bookcase

Flight routes to Croatia all end in September. The only feasible route for me to get from Portugal to Croatia in October is to fly RyanAir and stop over for three nights in Pisa, Italy.

This time, I avoided RyanAir’s excess baggage fees by wearing a fleece jacket stuffed full of six language phrasebooks, a book on philosophy, numerous maps and all my travel guides. I looked like a cross between a Series 4000 mechanoid and a geodesic dome.

It is ridiculously easy to get from the Pisa airport to my hotel. The airport and the train are not exactly modern, but the train trip takes literally five minutes, and my hotel is less than a hundred metres from Pisa Centrale. This was intentional; I am making two day-trips by train to Cinque Terre and to Siena, so I wanted to be close to the station.

Saturday, October 03, 2009

All right, already.

I have seen more convents, cathedrals and castles than I can now distinguish. Germany and Portugal have so many castles between them that in my mind’s eye they all look alike; as I review the photos, I can’t tell which one is where without cross-referencing the date on my itinerary.

While the German castles on the Rhine were built by robber-barons, many of the Portuguese castles were built by the mysterious Knight Templar monks, such as the ruins of the castle at Constançia, or the castle ruins at Monsanto.

And I’m over them.

Goodbye Portugal. Hello, Italy!

Roman mosaics

And, of course, all this discussion of photography made me look through my photos, and so many I want to share, so here is another.


Conimbriga is the largest excavated Roman site in Portugal, and the mosaics unearthed are the most complete (albeit restored) and impressive that I have ever seen, and having a penchant for Roman mosaics I have seen many.  This one depicts horsemen on a hunt.  My favourite (though much less detailed) is a mosaic of a maze with the minotaur at its centre.

Memory

Speaking of photos, I bought a 320GB external USB hard drive for my laptop to back up all my photography.  It is the most feasible solution.  I initially anticipated I would take about 100GB of photos, but at the rate I’m going I will need double that.  The online site I have been using for backing up photos is a nice idea in theory, because of the redundancy protection and the fact that I could have everything stolen and still have my photos, but in practise it just isn't workable. The upload rate of broadband is typically a quarter of the download rate, so I have only backed up about a third online.

Where are all the photos?

Some weeks ago I promised I would upload some photos from time to time.  This is just too arduous.  At this stage, halfway through my trip, I have about 6,000 photos.

But nevertheless, here is one.  It's not grand photography; it's simply a good example of the variety on a Portuguese menu.  Click on it so you can read it.


Portuguese monasteries

Beginning with the Mosteiro dos Jerónimos in Lisbon with its ornate stonework, I did the monastery circuit in Portugal—Batalha, Alcobaça, and Tomar. These towns host architecturally astonishing abbeys that are perhaps the most significant in the country.

The monastery at Batalha was built to commemorate Dom João’s victory in the 1385 Battle of Aljubarrota. The defeat of King Juan of Castile in a contest for the Portuguese throne was one of the most consequential battles in European history, given that it assured Portuguese independence prior to their initiation of Europe’s imperial expansion and colonisation across the globe, the so-called Age of Discovery, with Vasco da Gama’s establishment of a sea route to India. The elaborate architecture and sculpture of the convent at Batalha (which means “battle” in Portuguese) reflects the importance of this event.

At Alcobaça, the interior of the severe but grand Romanesque hall church contrasts its Manueline façade, while the gigantic kitchen of the abbey itself is indulgence manifest. The chimney is three storeys tall and is large enough at its base to envelop a car. A small tributary was dug from the nearby river and diverted through the kitchen to supply the monastery with fresh fish. Hardly a monks’ existence.

The massive, 12th-century Convento do Cristo in Tomar, the headquarters of the legendary Order of the Knights Templar, is the most atmospheric—and the largest. I spent four hours hurrying to see everything. The highlight is the staggering charola, or Round Church. An octagonal rotunda with a ceiling perhaps ten metres tall containing a central structure connected by arches—the high altar—is intricately decorated with sculptures and paintings. Legend has it that the knights attended mass here on horseback.

Thursday, October 01, 2009

Shitfaced

What was I thinking?  Last night with dinner I drank a bottle of wine and finished off the night with three martinis.  I was absolutely hammered.  This morning I got up at 11:00, too late for the hotel breakfast (of slices of ham and cheese with bread), and felt awful.  The smell of car exhaust and cigarette smoke, already my two least favourite flavours of air, made me sick.  I had reached Porto a day early to fit in more sightseeing, but I can't say today was terribly productive.

Mmm... pig stomach.

That'll teach me to consult my Portuguese phrasebook before ordering dinner.  "Buchos," I learned after it arrived at my table, is pig stomach.

The Portuguese love meat (as pretty much all Europeans seem to).  Pork features a lot on the menu.  And just about everything is served with deep-fried potatoes.  You won't go broke in Portugal as a cardiothoracic surgeon.

In Monsanto I had a nice steak of black pig, and in Coimbra I had a delicious goat boiled in red wine called chanfana.  A full dose (portion) of anything on the dinner menu typically serves two, so unless you're very hungry a half portion will usually do.  Breakfast is almost always slices of ham and cheese with bread, which gets a bit boring, but apparently the Portuguese don't go in much for breakfast.

Bloody Italians

American tourists have a reputation for being loud, but they are not the worst.  That dubious honour goes to throngs of Italian tourists, always in large and vocal groups, yelling at each other like they're all on the other end of a mobile phone.
The quietest?  Japanese.  I watched one tour group led by a woman speaking seemingly to herself, followed by a silent train of tourists with wireless receivers stuck in their ears.

Why Europeans wear shoes

What do you do with an empty bottle in Europe?
You smash it.  Duh.

Another good idea which the RTA will never have

In Portugal, they don't use speed cameras to generate revenue.  They use them to trigger stop lights.  They're called velocidade controladas, "speed controllers."  People might not obey speed limits, but they obey red lights.

Another method is sheep.  I was stopped on the road to Monsanto by a shepherd moving his flock between paddocks.  The road was shoulder-to-shoulder with sheep.  The ebb of the flock flowing around the car, surrounding it like water, was very peaceful.  I bleated at them like an idiot out the window.

Then I got back to speeding.