Buon Giorno Italy

When I was young, about 11 years old, I had a ideal friend from Italy called Julie. She had come to Australia out with her Mum and three brothers when she was about 2. One morning Julie’s Mum, Gemma came to pick me up to take me to school. She was buzzing and Julie explained that she’d had a dream that I’d picked her lotto numbers and she’d hit the jackpot! Being highly superstitious, she was absolutely convinced her dream would come true and once school was completed later that day she took us straight to the news bureau to lodge the magic winning numbers that I dutifully picked for her. While she had the much anticipated winning ticket in her hand we excitedly asked her what she would spend her money on. She stated she would take Julie and I to Italy, see her family again and we would go to Naples and eat as much pizza, pasta and ice-cream as we could manage! It sounded like paradise. Predictably, Gemma did not win the lotto (apparently I picked too many of the same numbers) and I never got my trip to Italy.

But all was rectified as we cruised down

off the motorway and into the small town of San Remo, which reminded me of the small town next to Philip Island and reminded Nick of the brand of pasta. The Ligurian coast was lined with beaches, and as the mountainous region nearly immediately began as you drove away from the coast we were pretty much limited to the coastal road (we were not about to attempt to take Lentil up narrow Italian streets at an angle of 35 degrees), not that I was about to complain. The Ligurian coast was familiar to us all after a trip to Kangaroo Island in South Australia where a bee-keeper keeps the only colony of genetically pure Ligurian bees. Apparently their Italian counterparts got a taste for other bee varieties and have been cross-breeding for years.

Our general plan was that we would be crossing northern Italy in about a week (not pizza devouring in Naples unfortunately) and to do that we would drive through the Po Valley. “I drove through the Po Valley in northern Italy” sounds rather nice doesn’t it? Hrm, well the Po Valley, as our guide books says, is “decidedly unpicturesque”, and trust me, it lived up to

all it’s non-expectations. Things improved greatly however when we arrived at Lake Garda, a quiet, peaceful lake with lot’s of small yachts and fantastic sunsets. We enjoyed the lake for two nights at a caravan park with what looked like the European Retirees Club and their caravans. Lake Guarda was also a good base from which to head into Verona, the town of Romeo and Juliet. Something tells me that if Shakespeare had visited now he would have painted Romeo and Juliet as two coffee sipping, mobile phone chatting teenagers who shopped at Emporio Armani and Calvin Klein as were most of the teenagers in Verona today. Sadly, a while ago the Veronese council had chosen a nice looking house with a adorable balcony and called it Casa di Giulietta (Juliet’s House) and it is now a tourist hotspot. Groaaaannn, we decided that such an obvious grab for tourist dollars was seriously lame and did not deserve a visit.

Of course we would not go to Northern Italy and not go to Venice! We had been informed that Venice was a bit of a theme park, and it certainly was that, but we had fun and Phoebe did too. As

Lentil is not a submarine we stayed on the mainland and caught the train over. When we got off we just started to wander, which in hindsight was probably the way to see Venice as attempting to navigate leads to disaster! It is honesty one of the biggest labyrinths I think I’ve been stuck in. We wandered around what turns out was the daggy bit which was nice and quiet, pretty shabby really, but in that kind of dilapidated way that is endearing. After lunch we stumbled across the real action! That is, the Grand Canal and then St. Mark’s Square. Deciding we were a bit tired we sat down for a rest, but some pigeons decided our resting spot would make a good toilet and poor Nick copped the worst of it I’m afraid…yes right on the head! Phoebe had a small spatter on her back but I got away scott free. Needless to say, this put everyone (well, mostly Nick) in the mood for heading back to catch the train. Heading back however was made enjoyable for all the markets and streets we had to pass by. If you wanted to part with a serious amount of cash, Venice would be a great place to do it. I however, took advantage of the excellent window shopping

We ended our time in Italy at the beautiful city of Trieste, which looking at a map of Italy you might not believe was actually part of Italy. In fact, Trieste has at various times been part of neighbouring countries/empires and therefore has a very interesting architecture and culture. It was finally annexed by Italy after World War 1 once the borders of the Austro-Hungarian Empire had dissolved.

A storm which had started the morning we left Venice had whipped itself into a fully-fledged electric downpour by the time we arrived in Trieste. All of a sudden the bright sunny days we had been enjoying so much in France and Italy had turned grey, freezing, wet and miserable. The following morning in Trieste as we went for a drive, we noticed that there had been some significant mudslides and police were buzzing around the place. But besides that, it was a Sunday, and most of the town was enjoying a day off, which meant it felt nearly deserted, which was not altogether such a bad thing.

We left that evening to go to the next town, which happened to be in Slovenia!

More Source:

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Submited at Sunday, October 10th, 2010 at 2:00 pm on Europe by hilman
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