Provence

The last main part of our trip has been hard to get to, but well worthwhile now that we are here. The trip from Venice to Milan was challenging, and involved a few forced marches with our full luggage load, but that was nothing compared to the emotional travails of the Milan to Nice / Grasse leg.

The day began well with an extremely positive taxi experience getting back to Milan Centrale Stazione (no more walking!). The train took a while to find because we were given wrong information by several people, and the platform signage was still showing the details of the train that had left 2 hours ago. Without being particularly salubrious for a first class carriage, the trip itself was interesting and smooth for the first 4 hours of 5. However, as we approached an hour out of Nice an Italtrens person informed us in Italian that the train would go no further then Ventimiglia – the last stop in Italy – due to a rail strike in France. Luckily a very nice and patient young tri-lingual Frenchmqn who had put up with being the 6th man in our 6 man cabin for the past few hours both translated the initial information and then helped us work out the next steps – which consisted of everyone piling onto a local train to Nice 2 hours later. When we finally got to Nice and found the hire car place, it was closed on Sunday. Handy. We had to hire a different car for 24 hours and the go back to get the one we had booked the following day.

The GPS managed to finally get us to the villa, albeit rather indirectly – as the roads are so close and convoluted that it has difficulty at times working out which road you are on and occasionally gives apocryphal directions. But we got there to find our French hosts most hospitable indeed – the villa was well lit, warm, and they went out of their way to provide us with some provisions to survive the night.

The villa is fabulous. Beautifully set on a hillside looking over a valley filled with similar types of character-ful homes and towards the Medieval city of Grasse, it is three stories of all the Provencal style we could want, inside and out. The terraced gardens have two pools, as well as olive trees, and a couple of stone and wooden outbuildings. All of the rooms are large, spacious, comfortable and have windows opening as doors to the main view. Clearly it is set up mainly for summer, but it is warm and comfortable now – and with the rainy weather of the last few days, a great place to hole up.

Driving around here is interesting, to say the least. The roads are so complex and intricate and just plain weird that any modern town planner would be shot just for thinking of it! I've come to the liberating conclusion that driving around here is much the same as building in Venice – you do whatever you want in front and don't pay the slightest attention to what is happening anywhere else. This may not prove a viable long-term approach, but it is working for the moment.
Tomorrow we meet up with our last companions – my friends Espen and Ragnhild (and their daughter Marie) who are flying down from Oslo for the weekend. It will be great to see them again, the last time I saw them was in 2001 in Norway, and we are looking forward to sharing some better wine than when we were post-grad students together in Brisbane.

Aidan and Lauren are travelling pretty well. They have their ups and downs, and a lot of it is not thqt interesting for them, but they have done well. Lauren has been pretty tempestous, and we are probably not looking forward to the last flights home, but all things considered they have been good and hopefully they have got something out of being dragged aroud the world!

text for Ciao Veneto

The text for the Ciao Veneto post is in black text for some reason - there seems to be something in the text that it doesn't like because it won't let me even repost it for some odd computer only sense making reason.

Anyway - to read it, just click and drag over where it looks like there should be text and you will be able to read it!

Milano

We traveled by train today to Milan, where we have just one night on our way to Nice. The train itself was great, it was the getting to and from that were more challenging.

The morning involved a range of complex set pieces including Fay and Aidan getting a train to Venice, the rest of us taking the hire car to the mainland part of Venice (Mestre) - where we were supposed to get a train into Santa Lucia to get the train to Milan. However, dropping off the hire car involved some hefty luggage moving dodging traffic and trains from the depot to the train station (apparently 1.5km is close enough!). Fay and Aidan then got the train back out to Mestre to meet us, as Milan train stopped there - but we then had to run from one end of the train to the other as the first class carriages were at the front, instead of at the back where they were on eveery other train!

After that, the journey went well.












I think most people would have taken us for locals.



Where we stayed in Milan is about a 30 ｗalk from the station. We know this for a fact. Tomorrow we will take a taxi back. This is the view from our room - at least we didn't have far to go for dinner!

I don't know what the internet access will be like where we stay in France, so I will update this as soon as I can. For the moment, I sign off with one piece of high art, and one of low art. You can interpret as you prefer...

Ciao Veneto

And so our stay in the Veneto region of Italy comes to an end with the coldest day in the last three years. Apparently it didn't get above 0 degrees today in the town where we are staying, and it was foggy with low visibility all day. However, we did a drive up to Vicenza, about 45 mins drive away, and it was fabulously clear and blue there (but foggy within 10 mins when we headed home).

We've had a bit of everything for our stay. Initially a grey overcast day for our first day, then three glorious blue days in Padova and Venice – then snow on New Year's Eve and the cold, foggy day today.

Our accommodation was not bad, probably a 7 out of 10. The villa itself was nice – plenty of rooms and once we figured out how to control the heating both relatively warm and not too expensive to keep that way (as heating is extra). The log fire was smoky, but still much much better than not having one! The setting wasn't as rural and scenic as we hoped – though that sort of rural, hilly landscape was only a few minutes drive away the other side of Monselice (the nearest town and rail station).

Padova is about 20 mins by train, and Venice about an hour. Padova and Vicenza, like Monselice on a smaller scale, are quite typical from my experiences of historic European cities. There are spectacular buildings and squares etc – and each city seems to have its own particular claim to fame – a famous architect, the home of some famous person, or whatever. The individual buildings tend to merge into one amorphous impression of age and grandeur of vision – the angled, diffused light within gives all of them a cathedral feel, and the scale is often hard to imagine.

Venice was a bit different. Unexpectedly, it was really interesting and impressive – and even more unexpectedly one of the main reasons was its sense of genuineness. It certain ly plays up to its imagery (and it relies on people being prepared to pay ridiculous amounts for mundane things on the basis that 'it doesn't really matter how much it costs given where we are'). That said, the image is very clearly based on a reality that really is right there to see. The whole place is a totally disorganised mish-mash of design, textures, materials and shapes. It gives the impression that every planning decision was made totally in the moment with virtually no thought for any consequence, and so every decision is a simple and direct solution to the immediate need – and nothing more. I loved the colours, variety, novelty of it all. To get more than a very superficial impression of the place though, I think you need to spend at least a month there to get to know it – and so that is my new plan, though I know now how or when such a month might be possible. Not for a while at least – it is not a place for small children!

Having a Ve(ry)nice time

Hi, and unfortunately just a quick note, as I have not been able to get internet access in rural Italy for the last few days, and am at internet cafe in Venice for a few mins before the train leaves.

We"ve had a fabulous time in Italy for the last few days. The accommodation is quaintly rural, and pretty comfortable without being luxurious. The weather has been spectacular for the last few days, clear blue skys and sunny, though very cold. We have spent a day in Padova, and the last two days in Venice, and the conditions are perfect. Venice turns out to be a lot more interesting than I expected - there is a genuineness to most of it that belies its description as a tourist honeypot. If this is the quiet time, you would not want to see it busy! It also has a familiarity even though we have not been here before, which is a little unnerving.

Weve got some great photos, but no time to put them up now. Will do so if and when I get the chance.

Jen and Pam leave tomorrow morning, and we then follow by train to Nice with an overnight stop in Milan. My mum will continue to travel with us, which is great.

Got to run.

More news and pictures when I can.

Going out for pizza

Tomorrow we go to Italy, as I need pizza.

We may also look at art and architecture, so long as the service is fast enough to give us enough time.

Traveling around Austria with kids has been an odd combination of the extraordinary and the everyday. The Austrian part has been, in the main, extraordinary. The traveling with kids bit has been the everyday part. Getting tha balance right for everyone has been a challenge, but one that we are getting better at. The hotel in St Gilgen had the amazing pool setting, which was great for the kids, and the setting was so spectacular that it kept us happy as well (and the restaurant and bar set up was pretty nice as well).

Tonight we are in a Eurohotel near the airport in Vienna, something of a come down from the Hollweger Hotel, but serves the purpose for one night. Lauren's snoring is the main issue at this point!


We fly into Venice tomorrow morning, and then drive down about an hour to a hamlet called Vanzo. Accommodation there is a villa, and so we hope to have plenty of room for everyone. Justine's best friend from high school in Washington (Jen) and her mum (Pam) fly in 45 mins before we do; and my mum (Fay) a couple of hours later.

It's all white now

Well, it's officially a white Christmas. It snowed in the mountains around St Gilgen last night, down to several hundred metres above the village itself. This morning we took the cable car up to the top of the Wolferhorn, where the snow was fresh and deep. It was Lauren's first experience of snow, and while she knew what it was an enjoyed it, she could only take it for a short time.

Aidan and I stayed up a little longer, and by the time we left it was virtually a white out with fine powdery snow and fog reducing visibility to only about 10m or so, and the cable car was floating in all white for a while.

Since being back in town it has started snowing at the village as well, and looks like doing so for a while. Might make getting out tomorrow tricky, but is beautiful to look at. Sitting here with a glass of red watching the snow fall and build up on thee village is very relaxing. Heading down to the bar for a coffee and cake to fill in some time, and then our last dinner with the Wolfes and Blebys this evening.

It's definitely all white now.