Venice

We are in Venice now .... and our holiday in Italy is nearly over. Venice is a very interesting place. It is built on the water. There are canals instead of roads. In the part where we are staying there are no cars. If you want to go somewhere you have to either walk (in the narrow alleyways) or catch a boat. There are heaps of tourists here...all getting lost. You can tell they are tourists - they have their maps in one hand and their cameras in the other.

Here are some of our favourite pictures of our time in Venice.

The bridge in the background, Ponte Rialto, is famous all over the word. The gondola (the long boat) is a famous icon of Venice. We are planning on going for a gondola ride on our last afternoon in Italy.

 Check out all the tourists. They are everywhere...so many people. 

 John and Amy in San Marco Square. There are lots of special buildings in this area.

 We met this interesting character at the beach. He was selling hats and scarves. We thought he had an interesting way of carrying the hats.

Amy and I near Grand Canal.

We leave Italy on Wednesday at lunch time. We get home to Australia on ANZAC Day. Even though we have had a wonderful holiday it will be great to be home again and I will see everyone at school on Monday.                             

Ciao!!  

Cinque Terre, Bologna and Parma

John, Amy and I travelled from Turino to La Spezia. From La Spezia (where we stayed) we were able to visit the Cinque Terre coast. There are five little villages along the coast. In the olden days you could only get from one town to the next by foot or boat but nowadays you can travel by train or boat. The path along the coastline was closed as they had lots of landslides. We decided to go along another path (up and over the hills) from the first town to the second town. It was VERY hard work...from then on we took the train from one town to the next. My legs were extra sore for the next couple of days.

Here I am at the top of the hill. The view was very special but I don't think I would ever do that climb again. The walk was only about 500 metres from the first town to the next but it took us over an hour. It takes about 2 minutes on the train.

All of the towns are perched on cliffs like this. Only one of the towns has a beach for swimming. The water was way too cold for me to go in but some people went for a dip.

From La Spezia we were able to catch a train to Pisa. It was on Saturday and their markets were on. They were quite good and we bought a few bits and pieces. After the markets we went to the tower. Have you heard of the Leaning Tower of Pisa?

John and Amy are in front of The Leaning Tower of Pisa. It is beautiful and yes, it does lean over. It's made of marble. You can climb to the top of the tower but we didn't. They have a big church in the same area too. In one of the other buildings, the baptistery, a man demonstrated the echo in the building. He was just calling out different sounds (like oh, ow and oo) and it sounded just like music. It gave me goosebumps. 

We also went to Lucca. It has a wall (4km long) around the outside of the "old town". This was to protect it from their enemies. We hired a 4-wheeler bike to ride around the top of the wall. The bike got a flat tyre though. 

                   Amy and John in our bike - before we got the flat tyre. 

We are now in Bologna. (the home of spaghetti bolognaise...yum) It is also home to the first university in the world. It was founded in the 1088. James Cook Uni (in Townsville) is 40 years old - that is a bit of a difference.

Bologna has two big towers. The shorter one has a lean on it. It is made of brick and is not nearly as fancy as the one in Pisa. You can walk to the top of the taller one. There are 500+ steps. We did not climb this tower either.

We went to a place with about the same population as Townsville today. It is called Parma. (like parmesan cheese). It is a lovely place with lots of very good restaurants. We had a delicious lunch and wandered around their antique markets. I bought an old clock for my clock collection.

Here is Amy's "spag bog" that she had for lunch today....they don'y say that on the menu though. She said it was delicious but there weren't any tomatoes in it like the one we make at home. Of course she put parmesan cheese on it too.

Here is one of the Easter displays from a shop window. The shopkeepers go to a lot of effort to make the shop windows look pretty. 

HAPPY EASTER to you and I hope everyone is having/has had a terrific holiday. I am not sure if I will get around to blogging again before the weekend.

Our last few days in Turino

Over the last few days we have been exploring more of Turino. Today we jumped on a train and travelled to a small nearby town called Alba. It is well know for truffles (which are a type of mushroom and very expensive) and wine. No tours were running though cos it is not tourist season so we just wandered around, had a yummy lunch and did some window shopping. All the shops close around lunch time and then open about 3 o'clock.

We didn't really take many photos today but this is where we had lunch. I would give our lunch today 4 out of 5 stars.

When we got back to Torino we went to the Cinema (movie) Museum. We had tried to go on three other times. Once it was closed and the other times there were very long queues and we didn't feel like waiting. They had a special exhibition about Academy Award (Oscar) winning actresses + lots of other interesting things....like animation, special effects, movie posters, how olden days 'moving pictures' were made and optical illusions. I am not a big movie buff - I always seem to have trouble staying awake :) but I found it quite interesting.

 Look...Amy can stand on her head - or, is it an optical illusion??

Amy with some pictures of famous actors/actresses. She is next to Heath Ledger - a famous Australian actor.

John and Amy with one of the movie props. I am not sure which movie though ... oops!

We are heading to a town called La Spezia tomorrow where we can do a famous walk along the Cinque Terra coastline. There should be some good pictures from there.

Our Latest News

We have been staying in Turin for the last few days....and having trouble with the Internet connection in our motel room. It seems to be fixed now, thank goodness.
John celebrated his 50th birthday. We went out for dinner and had 6 different courses. They were all small so I wasn't too full at the end of dinner.
We went to a big supermarket today called Eataly. There was lots and lots of groceries, gelato and drinks to buy. John was most impressed. Amy and I bought some organic chewing gum. Yuck!! It tasted like eating candle wax.  We came home and threw the rest in the bin - it was that bad.
We have been to another palace. You could not take pictures inside but John took a cool panoramic shot. Very spectacular - I wish I was rich like these people. The palace we went to today was just their holiday home.
We went to an Egyptian museum the other day. It has the biggest collection of Egyptian artifacts outside of Egypt. There were some mummies that were 4000 years old. There were lots of school kids there with their teachers. It made me think of everyone at The Willows.
We are going to Milan tomorrow. Just for a day trip. Amy wants to see all the very exclusive (and expensive) clothes shops. Don't think we will be buying anything.

This is one of Turino's streets.  Many of them are tree lined like this. It is just coming in to Spring so many of the trees are still getting their new leaves.

 Here we are ready to go out for John's birthday dinner.

 This my favourite of the 6 courses. It was an asparagus flan. YUM!!

 John in Eataly. (the big supermarket). Here is in the wine and beer section.

This is the panoramic view John took of the palace. It was one of the Savoy's holiday homes. They were the royal family from this area.

 They love Easter in Italy too. Lots of the shops have special window displays for Easter like this one.

 This is at the Egyptian museum. This is the casket they put the mummy in. It is covered in gold.

Not all of the mummies were fancy. Here is another one of the mummies. The dead person's body is wrapped in the cloth bandages. They then drew the face on the bandages. I think this mummy was about 3000 years old. I can't  really remember though.

 Here are some more mummies. They were three sisters who died about the same time. Food poisoning or something like that, they think.

Here are some everyday items that were put in the crypt with the mummies to help them go to the after life. There were things like chairs, food, bowls, clothes and even beds.

Our Italian Bike Ride

John, Amy and I went bike riding today. I have not ridden a bike for about 30 years so it was an experience. Amy was a bit worried to start with but soon got the hang of it. We rode from Desenzano to Sirmione. (both towns on Lake Garda) It was about 12 km there and back. There was a bike path for most of the way so we did not have to worry about the traffic....just the pedestrians. They drive on the opposite side of the road over here - the right hand side and the driver sits on the left hand side of the car.....that's back-to-front for us.
There is an old castle in Sirmione. It was built in 1277-1278. (about 500 years before Captain Phillip and the convicts first came to Australia) It is really good condition. I have never been in a castle before so that was pretty cool. We walked to the very top and looked out over the lake. 
We had lunch, pizza and pasta again, bought a few trinkets and then rode home again. It was harder work on the way home because there was a head wind. 
We are going to Turin (Turino in Italian) tomorrow on the train. We will be there for about a week. It is south-west of where we are now. I am not sure how long it will take us to get there by train.

 This is the castle (and Amy).

The view from the top of the castle. The guards would have had a good view of their enemy approaching. We each tried to count the steps but got different numbers. There were about 165 steps to the top.

Here is Amy and I trying to pull up the drawbridge. Oops, we are standing on it. Maybe that is why we couldn't budge it.

Check out the size of the pizza Amy had for lunch. It was BIG. She managed to eat it all up without any problems. I think she is turning Italian.

Here we are ready to ride back to our hotel. You don't have to wear helmets. Lots of people ride bikes here, especially in the bigger cities, like Rome, Innsbruck  and Florence.