The last week - Ireland

Land of my ancestors. We finished our trip in Ireland.

First up was a dinner with my cousin Antoinette and her family. Her son, Bobby, can only be described as a card. Very energetic, very enthusiastic, emphatically male and 22 years old. Amy, his older sister, is acerbic, but she remembers fondly me teaching her how to slide down the bannister when I visited in 1991. Sophie, the youngest, wasn't around then, and she's still going through high school, which in Ireland has an incomprehensible structure for those from Australia.

I finally had my first proper Irish Guinness, and it was worth the wait. I would return to this elixir when we got back to Dublin.

After leaving Dun Laoghaire on Saturday morning, we drove through Kilkenny on our way to Rossdale in County Wexford. This time we were driving a Mazda, on the correct side of the road.

Kilkenny is officially a city, but it really is a nice, medium sized, town. As we got closer to the coast and the south, the weather got windier and colder. Once we checked into our B&B, we found out very quickly there isn't much to do in Rossdale if you don't play golf. So we played golf.

We actually went to the driving range, where Rose didn't do too well and I got my usual welts on my hands from the grips on the clubs. My slice reared its ugly head on a regular basis. The evening was spent much better, when after dinner, we discovered that the video collection in the sitting room had Aussie favourite Strictly Ballroom, which, for some inexplicable reason, Rose hadn't seen. I saw it in the cinema and loved it, but Rose thought it was silly, despite one of the best chill scenes ever.

The Sunday was spent driving past Cork (which we were warned to stay away from due to crapness) on our way to Killarney in County Kerry. Before embarking on this trip, we sampled every Irish person's favourite Sunday morning excursion: going to mass celebrated in a modern church by an odd looking man with classic Irish hair. His sermon on circumcision was a comedic highlight of the trip.

Killarney has a beautiful national park right next to the city centre, which stretches on to the nearby mountains. After a short wander through this wonderful park, we went and got some dinner. Two plates of magnificent Irish Stew went down a treat.

Then I decided to purchase Rose a tin whistle, which is something I regretted for the rest of our tour around country Ireland. Whenever the radio decided it was too far away from anywhere to get a signal, Rose would decide to attempt to play the whistle, and the resulting noise pollution was almost unbearable. Serves me right for buying it for her.

The next day, between trying to stick gauze in my ears, we drove up to Galway. We stopped in the town for one main purpose - to buy some soda bread and some Kerrygold butter. The best bread and butter combination in the world. I will not argue about this.

Then we drove off to the Connemara mountains, which are some of the most rugged, inhospitable yet incredibly breathtaking mountains anyone could ever see. Mountain sheep wandered on the side of the road looking for feed, and we pulled over to eat our simple yet delicious improvised picnic of bread and butter. While it was difficult to stand up outside of the car, we enjoyed the rest, and Rose enjoyed her home made lemonade.

On the way back we stopped in a local craft shop and purchased a pretty photo of a sheep and a rainbow. The shopkeeper assured us the local sheep were worth three Australian sheep. A monument outside the shop memorialised a place where "nothing happened".

In short, it was lovely to see some of rural and regional Ireland that I didn't get the opportunity to do when I was in Ireland last.

Driving into Dublin I struck some luck, when after driving down the River Liffey for a period, I decided to turn over to the other side of the road, only to find I was turning into the street our hotel was in. After dropping Rose and the bags off at the hotel, I went off to drop the rental car back at the depot.

Driving out there, along the same route I caught the bus to where we stayed in 1991 brought back memories of being with my grandmother all those years ago. The city felt smaller, but still effectively the same.

After sorting out our room (we had been given a smoker's room, and it gave Rose a headache), we started to venture into Dublin. The city has no skyscrapers (tallest building is 16 storeys), but a large spike coming out of the middle of the main street, O'Connell St.

I took Rose to the Pro-Cathedral, where all the memories came back strong and I lost it a little bit. It's a small little place where the cities many Catholics can come to worship, as all the other large Cathedrals in Dublin were, and remain, Protestant places of worship.

Our last Wednesday of our trip was spent with the relos, as we got the Magical History Tour of my family. We were shown where all my Great Grandparents are buried (as well as some other ancestors), drove past Bono's house, the house where my Grandfather was born, baptised and went to school, as well as the Monks family home (my Grandfather's mother's family). We stopped off for lunch, and I had some more scones (I love scones), and did some window shopping.

We also visited the youngest of my Lewis generation, who is only a couple of months old. We had some dinner, then went off with the younger relatives into town, where Bobby took us to a rather comical "college night" where the uniform of short dresses, long straight hair and unbelievable tans had Rose, Amy, Amy's partner and myself all highly amused.

We paid for it the next morning, as we started slowly due to the after effects of a late night. When we did go out we eventually got to the Guinness Storehouse, where Guinness is made. An incredible exhibition of exactly how the lovely drop is made awaits, as well as related Guinness paraphernalia such as advertising and packaging. Near the top of the exhibition, which is shaped like a seven storey tall Guinness glass, you can pour your own pint, which I did with glee, before receiving my diploma and finishing my drink. We also visited a bookshop where Rose bought an Irish cookbook, and I tried not to buy about 50 books on Irish history.

The last day included a trip to Trinity College and the Book of Kells. Since being here last, they've really improved the whole set up as to the Book of Kells' display, and it was a nice way to finish.

I know I've taken my time to write these travel notes, but writing on my blog while away was a solitary activity that didn't involve Rose. Some people have enjoyed reading them, some have seemed to pledge never to speak to me again. Anyway, my thoughts and experiences have been exactly that: my thoughts and my experiences.

I would be lying if I said I didn't wish we were still travelling the world. The first few days in Istanbul seem like decades ago now.

Our favourite place was France, and particularly Paris. I know I'll be getting back to Gallipoli, the UK and Ireland, and Rome one day. I've already pledged any future trip to Poland will include everything but Auschwitz. There's a little town in France we desperately want to go back to.

Anyway, that's it. Photos will be up on Facebook soon - I was waiting to finish these. And this blog will go back to what it was before: me pontificating about stuff I think I know stuff about. Thanks for reading.

Day 48-52 - Scotland

Our bus trip into Edinburgh took us through Lockerbie, where there was still light in the sky at 10:30pm, and the temperature in the surrounding countryside was nearly zero. We arrrived in our hotel not long before midnight.

The next morning did not greet me well, but I managed to rouse myself for a full Scottish Breakfast. In this respect, the Scots are the anti-Italians: black pudding, tattie scones, sausage, bacon, eggs and many other culinary delights. This is the sort of breakfast that makes your heart soar, then go into arrest.

We had one day in Edinburgh, which is probably the most unique place we went other than Venice. The old part of the town, which houses Edinburgh Castle, is on a massive hill. The newer part (only 300 years old!) is on the lower valley in front of the hill, and the main street and shops reside here.

After a walk down that main street, we went back to board the bus to do the bus tour of Edinburgh. The ticket seller engaged us in some small talk, like where we were from and such. Then, with only the slightest hint of cheekiness on his face, he asked me if I wanted to buy bus tickets for myself and my daughter. Smart @rse.


The bus ride around Edinburgh is great, because of it's uniqueness. From the painted on windows to the private park (?), we enjoyed the ride until we went up to the Castle.

Now, Edinburgh was the first place I had been on our little trip which I had previously visited. As a nearly-eleven-year-old, my grandmother and I walked up to the Castle, but I remember being disappointed that most of the Castle was not accessible to visitors.


This time was different, and explored nearly every area of the Castle, which looms large over the skyline of the surrounding area, impenetrable and inaccessible to marauding raiders and armies from the south.

We had some lovely scones, jam and cream in the cafe right at the top of the Castle, and the views all around are some of the prettiest you'll ever see.

Unfortunately, dinner wasn't nearly as good as the mid-afternoon repast. Rose felt like a roast, and we could only find it in one of the pubs near where they used to execute people. I think one of the victims ended up on Rose's plate.

The next day we were off to Glasgow, a short train ride from Edinburgh. After all our travels, this was our last train ride, and therefore the last time we'd have to carry those bags into a train station, onto a train, and then find somewhere to put them. Recommendation - anything more than one large suitcase is too much for train travel.

If Glasgow is more touristy than Liverpool, then it isn't by much. Bigger, with a classy shopping strip, the CBD sort of sprawls to much bigger than Melbourne's, but then the suburbs do not spread for much further than that.

Our visit to Glasgow coincided with a bout of slight illness for Rose, and we spent at least a couple of afternoons resting. But we did manage some high tea at McKenzie's Tea Shoppe, which was more food than two people should eat in one sitting, some more shopping for Sylvanians, and a special visit.

Glasgow is the city in which my mother grew up, and rekindling memories of my own visit there with my grandmother, we went up to Maryhill to see where my family lived before coming to Australia.

There has been some scrubbing-up of Maryhill, but it remains essentially working-class, with the old tenement buildings mostly replaced with orange brick apartment blocks. The shopping strip remains, but the church has lost its primary school. The church was closed when we went past, but a incomprehensible groundskeeper, who may or may not have been named "Wullie", assured us it would be open the next day.

We then walked through Maryhill, along a small creek, to Kelvin Grove Park. It's a lovely place I hadn't been to before, and we walked around and fed some squirrels something they probably shouldn't be eating.

The other side of the park couldn't be more different to Maryhill, as it houses the university and several lovely terrace houses, very much like the ones seen in East Melbourne. Rose wondered aloud why the Lewis family chose the wrong side of the park.

There was plenty of football going on while we were in Glasgow, including an Old Firm match between Celtic and Rangers. The combination of the mutual hatred of these two clubs, along with the fact that Rangers had already secured the League title, made the match an entertaining fusion of attacking the goals and attacking each other. The next day Tottenham beat Man City to claim the final Champions League spot.

The next morning we were rudely awoken by a rather loud fire alarm in our otherwise fine hotel. We had to evacuate, with yours truly donning a towel around the waist, and eventually an anti-hypothermia blanket around my shoulders. This is in case any Scottish bloke tells you a story about the time they saw Ricky Ponting standing outside a hotel in Glasgow at 7:20am wearing a towel and tinfoil.

There's not an awful lot to do in Glasgow, but it did give us a chance to hit the gym for the only fitness work of the trip, and also recharge the batteries before a busy last week in Ireland.

Day 47-49 - Liverpool

Liverpool is not touristy. It’s grey, urban, lived-in and teeming with people. To put it another way, it’s brilliant.

Our hotel was down on the docks, where quite a lot of reconstruction and redevelopment has occurred, giving it a similar feel to the Docklands area in Melbourne. Unfortunately, a large Ferris wheel was right outside our hotel window, and Rose doesn’t need much to prevent her from sleeping.

It was also almost the first time on the trip we’d endured any sort of inclement weather. It tended to rain in secret in London (at least twice when we had popped back to the hotel to grab something), but we got caught in it a little in Liverpool.

We’d walked into the centre of town and then through Mathew St, where the Cavern was (and is again), and where statues of John and Paul sit on the balconies of the surrounding buildings. Other than that, there are the new buildings, and the older ones. The famed Lewis’s Department Store was closing down, so we went in to see if they were clearing any Sylvanians, but the clearing had already taken place. The advertising posters were there, but the Sylvanians were not.

For our first dinner in Liverpool we ventured inland, past the centre of town and the train station, to partake in some genuine fish & chip shop food.

The British “Chip Shop” offers a vast array of take-away food items, from Chinese to Pizza to Kebabs to the old fashioned Pie or Fish supper. The Potato Cakes, called scallops, are massive and spurt oil when pierced, like a striking a deposit of clear vegetable oil. The chips are thick and fattening. It was a great meal, although we felt it for the next few hours as our bodies worked hard to digest perhaps the most fattening meal of our lives.

Between extended bouts of watching an Aussie march to a World Snooker Title, we filled our short time in Liverpool going to the Beatles’ Story, which was entertaining but didn’t tell me much I didn’t already know. The highlight for me was in the post-Beatles exhibition, when in the area dedicated to George, they played a clip from a mid-1970s broadcast of Rutland Weekend Television. George Harrison is introduced by Eric Idle, and starts to play the memorable opening chords from “My Sweet Lord”, before breaking into a pirate song, much to Idle’s fake protestations. Oh, how we miss having a living Beatle not take himself too seriously.

Attached to the Beatles Story is a “3D Experience”, which really is just an excuse to get people wet. But I was more convinced about 3D television after this experience than I was before it.

We had to wash clothes in Liverpool, in your typical suburban laundromat. After walking past 50 men, aged between 16 and 35, riding down a hill on BMX bikes, we washed our clothes, and got called “pet” and “love” by the woman who operated the coin laundry. Rose found it off-putting; I found it endearing. It was also an excuse to have some more English crisps, which are cooked longer and taste smokier, and therefore better, than they do in Australia.

Dinner on Saturday was a little bit more of a struggle, as we couldn’t find anywhere that was satisfactory and didn’t have a minimum 30 minute wait. We finally settled on the restaurant inside our hotel, where I had a curry and lost my black Raider cap.

Our time in Liverpool had been extended by the fact that the match we had planned to attend had been moved from Saturday to Sunday. We carefully planned our Sunday to ensure a quick and speedy getaway from Liverpool to Edinburgh.

We caught the bus out to Anfield on Sunday, to experience one of the great sights and sounds in all of sports. Anfield inside is small, with no particularly poor seats. The only thing particularly poor on this day was Liverpool’s play.

Just before the game, the crowd broke into song, and the two of us, Liverpool fans from half way across the world, joined in with all our might, with our brand new scarves above our heads, adorned with perhaps the greatest motto for any sporting club in the world: YOU’LL NEVER WALK ALONE. It really is the one area that soccer has it over our indigenous Australian game.

After looking frisky for about 20 minutes, Gerrard tried a pass back to the keeper which was intercepted by Didier Drogba, and it was 1-0 Chelsea. The tiny enclave, draped in royal blue and surrounded by what seemed like 5,000 police officers and security guards, went into an absolute frenzy. They did the same when Frank Lampard doubled the lead.

Only when the Chelsea crowd started pointing to the Liverpool supporters, chanting “You are Ancient History”, did the crowd start to get restless, and this elicited a loud response from the home faithful. Overall the Reds looked listless, tired from a physically and emotionally draining loss only three days previous in the semi final of the Europa League.

Apparently the players come out and greet the fans after the last home game of the season, but we couldn’t hang around. Somewhere between here and the train I left behind the match program and book of posters intended for Rose’s younger brother, Deaglan.

When we got to the train station, which was not easy as Anfield is deep in suburban Liverpool and the buses weren’t getting through, we were greeted by some delicious Cornish Pasties (apparently the best Rose has ever eaten), and the news that our long train trip to Edinburgh had just become a longer train and bus trip, thanks to maintenance works on the tracks being done over the Bank Holiday long weekend. After changing at Preston (as planned), Oxenhome & Carlisle, we finally got into Edinburgh at 11:30 pm, exhausted and relieved.

On reflection, after spending time in Liverpool you will know two things: the Beatles come from here, and so does the Liverpool Football Club. Nothing else really matters. I wish the Reds had won, but just being there was great. Actually, being in the city of the Reds, John, Paul, George, Ringo, and Dave Lister, was a blast.

Day 43-46 - London

Anything after Paris and France was going to be a bit of a let down. Unfortunately somewhere had to follow it, and this was London. We arrived on a Monday, spending the working week in what is perhaps the most important city in the world.

Our hotel was near Hyde Park, so after dropping off our bags we went for a wander through. While parks can be few and far between in London, when they do occur they are large, full of wildlife, and closely resemble urban countryside.

We next saw the Wellington Memorial, which contains the London War Memorials of Australia and New Zealand. Both are recent, and reflect this in their design, so one has to know beforehand they are war memorials, or get close enough to see for oneself.

From there we walked past Buckingham Palace, which isn’t really that big from the front and the changing of the guard was inconveniently timed. We didn’t manage to see the guard being changed at Buckingham Palace over the next few days.

What we did see was the Guard Marching Band practising in the open, but with their backs to the street, facing their barracks. Rose was very interested in hearing these guys, while I was more perturbed with the fact they weren’t facing the large crowd.

St James’ Park separates the Palace from the Prime Minister and Westminster, and contains perhaps the first squirrels I had ever seen in the flesh. Rose took great delight in taking many photos of the squirrels in different parks in different places.

The guard was changing at Westminster – the mounted guards. The crowd of normally-sized people prevented Rose from seeing much of the inspection of uniforms and such, but I managed to get the camera above the crowd for some more pictures.

Big Ben didn’t exactly loom over us from that vantage point, primarily because it isn’t that tall. After the Eiffel Tower it seems like you’d struggle to reach terminal velocity if you leapt from the minute hand.

The West End is packed with theatres hosting musicals, which pretty much prevented us from going to one, as Rose has no love for musical theatre. There are also many, many shops on Regent and Oxford Streets, and we walked these many times over the next few days as they led from the centre of London to our hotel back near Paddington.

I had waited until London to have some Indian food, and I wasn’t disappointed, although apparently Bangladeshi-town is the place to go for the best Indian food. We were happy with our choice, and the waiter was more than happy to ensure Rose’s dishes were not too hot.

After weeks of Italian and French breakfasts, I was pleased to see a cooked breakfast and Weetabix. Cumberland sausages are particularly nice, along with eggs, bacon, baked beans and mushrooms. Rose ate my tomato.

The breakfast got us ready for St John’s Wood, site of two of the most significant places in London for me: Abbey Rd Studios and Lord’s. They are about ten minutes walk away from each other, and Rose dutifully stood on a roundabout to take a picture of me walking across the famous zebra crossing.

Our tour at Lord’s was led by a Yorkshireman. If you go to Lord’s, insist on a tour guide from Yorkshire – they were put on Earth to talk about cricket. He showed us Real Tennis, which may be the most ridiculous sport still played on the planet today, and as compensation for not being to enter the Long Room, as it was a match day, we were taken onto the ground surface during the lunch break. No truth to the rumour I was asked for my autograph.

I could have stayed all day, listening to our guide talk about all the greats to have played at Lord’s, but this was a honeymoon and not a bachelor trip. We resumed our search for a pair of shoes for Rose, which eventually ended the next day when we finally found a cheapish place that had shoes small enough to fit her.

St Paul’s is a wonderful cathedral, spacious and grand. Westminster Abbey, on the other hand, is a cluttered mess, trying to fit in everyone important who wants to be buried there. There is a touch of class at the Abbey, with the audio guide being Jeremy Irons, although this means you walk through one of the most famous churches in the world quoting lines from Die Hard 3.

We did the Tower Bridge, and its incredible moving drawbridge, and the Tower of London. We didn’t really leave enough time to properly enjoy the Tower of London, but our “beefeater” guide was humorous and the Crown Jewels incredible in their size and beauty. It was here at the Tower where one feels the history of London, and the English Royal Family, more than anywhere else in London.

The highlight of our time in London was catching up with three people I went to high school with. Julie I had not seen since I was 15, Brad was a good mate of mine and one of most genuine people anyone would ever want to meet, and Tom is a great bloke to have a drink or fifteen with, as I did at my informal 10 year high school reunion in 2007 at the Espy.

It was also one of the few places in London that served a Parma, and considering I medically needed one, this was very good news. Plenty of beer was drunk, but I made sure my original plan to wait until I was Ireland to drink a Guinness was preserved, albeit under some pressure.

Thursday morning, after shaking off some sore heads, we headed down to Madame Toussaud’s, where, much to my disappointment, there was no Ricky Ponting wax dummy. I really wanted to have a photo taken of me with myself.

It’s good fun, however, and the dummies are quite hardy and in some cases, eerily lifelike. After a while, if one of the patrons stands still for a little too long, you’ll start to confuse the dummies with the living people. A hideously out of place fright experience comes after the dummies, and then a cab ride through the history of London.

If nothing else, London is very commercial. You go there to consume. Our last real outing of the time we spent in London was to Harrod’s, so Rose could buy some tea, which she is drinking back here in Melbourne, and some Sylvanian Families figurines, which she has an unhealthy obsession with.

The food in London was mostly pub food, with a great devotion to the hamburger and the hot chip. Aussies should not be afraid to drink Fosters in England – I’m positive it is Crown Lager, and tastes much better than that rubbish in the blue cans we get sold back in Oz. An attempt at high tea at the Ritz was kyboshed by the lack of pounds in my pocket (caused by a money transfer snafu), and by my casual attire. I quickly vowed to be appropriately dressed and cashed-up the next time we were in London.

Our final act in London was to watch Liverpool get knocked out of the Europa League by Athletico Madrid, who had an extra 30 minutes to score the away goal that put them into the final. After this I completely cracked the shits at game of soccer. As usual, I didn’t stay mad for long.

If Paris is beautiful, and it is, beyond description, then London is functional. Apart from the Tower of London, the history of the place is beneath the surface, or contained in gaudy shows like the ones at Madame Toussaud’s, or near the Tower Bridge. Paris seems comfortable that the history and beauty almost need no promotion (when have you ever seen a tourist ad for France?), but London seems to need to promote it in the tackiest was possible (except for the Tower).

It is also described, by one of its inhabitants, as the least English place in England. If so, we were about to see the real England, at the end of a train ride from Euston Station, arriving at Lime St in the early afternoon.

Day 42 - ANZAC Day

Just before we were due to get out of bed for our early morning trip to Villers-Bretonneux, I twisted in bed and my back went into spasm. What seemed like five seconds later, my phone started going off signifying it was time to stop sleeping, not that I had gotten much sleep.


I managed to shave somewhat stiffly when the phone in our room started ringing, but it wasn’t working sufficiently for Rose to hear the person at the other end of the line. After three attempts, they gave up ringing, but shortly after, a knock came on the door to tell us our tour was ready to leave, about 20 minutes before we thought they would come. So much for that shower.

It was bitterly cold as an early morning in Paris met us. It would not be a long drive out to Vil-Bret, but still half asleep, I was trying to use the arch of the seat to stretch my back sufficiently as to stop it hurting so much.

We stopped in a petrol station just after we got off the motorway for a brief toilet stop, before arriving at the Australian War Memorial at Villers-Bretonneux. It was now extremely cold.

The crowd was large but respectful. A public servant asked for some room, and he escorted the Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, through the mass of Aussies so far from home. His staffer’s assertiveness enabled Minister Smith to look more casual, asking a passerby how far she had travelled to be there.

The service was solemn, without being morose. The story of the Aussies in France is one that is often overlooked, as Aussies are beguiled by the myth that is Gallipoli. It is here, in fact, and not on the sand, rocks and shrubs of Turkey, that our great World War I victory was earned.

And so it was, on April 25, 1918, three years to the day since the ANZACs had stormed the beach on the Gallipoli Peninsula, that the Australian Imperial Force liberated the small town of Villers-Bretonneux. The residents of this town are forever grateful: the streets are named Rue Melbourne and Rue Victoria, and the school, built with contributions from Victorian schoolchildren in 1923, has the mantra looming across the quadrangle, “DO NOT FORGET AUSTRALIA”.

At this time of year, the town becomes like a mini version of Australia. Graphical representations of kangaroos, koalas and wombats line the streets, either in front of the town hall or stuck to the windows of the houses that line Rue Melbourne. For the last couple of years they’ve even played an Aussie Rules game here.

After the service and visiting the town, we are taken on a broader tour of the area and its memorials: the AIF memorial, the British Arch with its dour looking brown brick, in stark contrast to the Arc D’Triomphe in Paris and the Wellington Arch near Hyde Park in London, the Canadian Memorial with its bronze elk.

What strikes one about the commonality of these memorials are the names of the fallen AND unfound. Literally millions fell on the Western Front in World War I, a foolish folly of a war fought for little good reason on outdated military strategy, which basically wiped out a generation of able bodied, proud and brave men.

Most of these men were either never found or never identified. It wasn’t long before this war that soldiers were not afforded individual memorials, such as a tombstone or individual grave, but this had started to change. The area of France known as the Somme is littered with them.

Every French town, regardless of size, has a memorial to the fallen of World War I, and a list of names; men of the town who never returned.

At the final town, we have lunch then visit the Great War Museum there, which is heavily anti-war. After seeing the volume of names on memorial after memorial, it is difficult to argue with this sentiment.

Rose is war weary, and we steal naps along our trip, and we get back to Paris just as the afternoon is starting to inch towards evening.

It is great to share an experience like that with people like our tour group, a small collection of mostly Queenslanders, and two Mexicans on their honeymoon. Our tour guide was an extremely affable and gregarious man, who finds everything funny and has a warm demeanour that helps us all relax.

The ground of the Somme is hallowed for so many, and for Australians, where so many more died than near the Straits of the Dardenelles, this is also true.

But the sacrifice made here can be felt, and one spends any time in a place like Villers-Bretonneux, it’s hard not to be proud to be an Aussie. No matter how long we’ve been Australian, or what our thoughts on the machinations and politics of conflict, we have a place where, as a nation, we can share a common bond, brought home by the warm welcome and gratitude of a small Frence village called Villers-Bretonneux.

As I signed in the visitor’s book at the visitor’s centre of the USA Memorial at Omaha Beach, where so many French people had signed the book, echoing similar sentiments towards the Americans as the townsfolk of Villers-Bretonneux had done to us Aussies:

“They shall not grow old, as we that are left, grow old. Lest We Forget”

Day 38-41 - Paris

Our arrival in Paris was eventful, to say the least. Not quite as significant as Charles De Galle’s or as graceful as Rudolph Nureyev.


We drove into Paris while continuing to avoid paying to use a road. Eventually we were forced onto the motorway, but at this stage we didn’t have to pay for it. The road threw us off at a place called St Cloud, leaving us a short but tricky trip to the centre of Paris, and our hotel on Rue Tronchet.

This car ride quickly became a disaster. Paris celebrates France’s love of the one way street, meaning the route Rose had carefully planned from the map in her Lonely Planet guide went out the window (metaphorically, we didn’t throw the book out the window) pretty early.

Then my initiative failed me when I decided to take the car through the roundabout around the Arc D’Triomphe. Quite simply, of Paris’ metropolitan population of roughly 11 million people, 5 million of them, at any one time, are in a car going round the Arc D’Triomphe.

Shortly after that my courteousness and gentlemanly manner while driving obviously irritated the priest behind me, who decided to honk me. A first, to be sure.

When we finally got to the hotel I couldn’t really park, so hurried the luggage out of the car and left Rose with it at the hotel while I went to find my drop off point.

To cut a long and boring story short, two car parks, 30 minutes and one more honking from a priest (he had a nun as a passenger this time), I finally managed to drop the car off. I was drained and ready for a rest.

The cafes that fill Paris are very similar in menu and decor, and it is difficult to tell them apart. We had dinner in four of them, but not on the first night when we found a cosy little restaurant.

Next morning we went off, armed with our four day museum passes and two day tourist bus passes. This is really the way to visit Paris, although it took a while to get the audio guide’s voice from the bus out of my head.

The first museum, at my insistence, was the Musee Louvre. I love all the religious paintings as they tell a story I’m somewhat familiar with. It’s a huge place that it is impossible to get around without better ankles and great motivation, but I saw the Mona Lisa (probably the creepiest painting in the world), Madonna on the Rocks, St John the Baptist, and many other paintings, along with sculptures, mosaics and frescos.

After that we got back on the bus to go to Notre Dame Cathedral, described as the world’s worst tourist trap. We firstly looked under the quadrangle in front of the Cathedral, then went in and looked around the magnificent church.

Then we decided to go up to the spire and lookout area. This is when Rose discovered my situational dislike of heights.

The ledge was narrow, about 12 inches wide in parts when walking around, and although one is always quite safe behind wire, looking down was not pleasant. I politely declined an opportunity to go further up. This would not be the first time on the trip.

After finally descending all the way to the bottom and fighting off quadriceps cramp, we partook two of the footpath crepes Paris is famous for. Rose, faithful to her sweet tooth to the last, had her crepe with Nutella and Banana, while I predictably had cheese, ham and mushroom. Both were delicious.

For our final excursion for the day, we headed to the Saint Chappelle, which has what our possibly the most beautiful stained glass windows in the world. The church is being renewed and renovated at the moment, so some of the glass was unavailable due to repair, but the view was breathtaking none the less.

After that we were back on our tourist bus, which one can hop on and hop off at their leisure. It was a long trip, going around the Eiffel Tower a couple of times, before finally getting us back close to home.

Day two’s main museum attraction would be the Musee D’Orsay, which holds the most impressive collection of impressionist paintings in the world. Continuing on from our visit to Monet’s Garden in Giverny, this was a particular treat for Rose, who loves this kind of art. I was honest in my appraisal, liking some stuff and not others, leading Rose to inform me she thought I had an “eclectic taste” in art. This may be one of the nicest things Rose has ever said to me. No kidding.

The D’Orsay, like the Louvre, is very big, housed in an old train station that had fallen into disuse. We probably spent three hours there before moving on to the Arc D’Triomphe.

The Arc is another large monument, under which lies the tomb of the Unknown French Soldier, who died in the Great War, as it is known in France (although in French). While I did know you could ascend to the top of the Arc, what I didn’t know was the top section underneath the roof contained an exhibition, one half dedicated to France’s war successes (which contrary to popular opinion are many), and the other half dedicated to the Arc itself, and other like Arcs of Triumph all over the world. Anne will be pleased to know the only one in Australia is located in her home town of Ballarat.

Standing on top of the Arc is less daunting than standing on the top of the Notre Dame Cathedral, but we had taken our time getting there, and Rose had enjoyed an ice cream break at Haagen Daas, so instead of trying to cram something else in on Day 2, we enjoyed instead a leisurely walk back to our hotel, via a cafe, before heading off later in the evening to watch Liverpool in the Europa League. Unfortunately, the English Pub we were in insisted on showing a frightfully dull Fulham game before Liverpool’s.

Day 3 started with a trip through the Place D’Concord, where Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette and Robespierre, among others, were permanently separated from their heads, to the Musee D’Armee, which exhibits the military history of France, a great exhibition containing all manner of medieval armour and weapons, and also Napoleon’s tomb, which despite him being cremated, is a massive construction.

Nearby is the Musee Rodin, which is dedicated to Rodin himself, the great sculptor who made “The Thinker”. He was obviously a busy man; the private house is full of his stuff and he was quite prolific.

After a stop at a cafe for some food, we decided on a romantic night in the hotel.

We had to move to a different hotel on the Saturday before ANZAC Day, as our tour for the day required it. As a big, stupid man, I thought we could make it by availing ourselves of the Paris public transport system, specifically the underground.

Too many stairs, having to change trains, and a longing walk from the final train station finished Rose off, and she firstly suffered a nose bleed, and then duly decided to sleep for a few hours, leaving me with the laundry, which, in fact, I was happy to do.

Rose felt a little better after a sleep, and we went out for some food. Rose was captivated by a girl happily tucking into a dish of Steak Tartare, which is quite simply, raw beef. On this occasion, the beef was minced and served with an egg’s yolk.

We had an early start on ANZAC DAY, beginning at 2:30am, so we tucked in early, ready for our big day on April 25.

Day 27-37 - Driving Through France

We spent ten days driving through France. Here are some observations from this trip:


Driving

In the cities, a propensity for one way streets can make things difficult to get around. I struggle to see the point of so many one way streets, including my favourite in Nice, when after taking nearly two hours to get my car, the street I was driving down turned from a two way street into a one way street without announcement.

The French motorways come in to forms: toll roads and free motorways when there is no free alternative to driving on the motorway. Our first day we spent 16 Euro getting from Nice to Aix-de-Provence , which is about the equivalent of driving to Ballarat from Melbourne. After this, we managed to avoid tolls for the rest of the trip.

Driving on the roads between towns can be interesting. Trucks have their own, much lower, speed limits in France and cannot leave the right hand lane. On a motorway, this usually leaves trucks and other slow coaches in the right hand lane, people roughly doing the speed limit (which is 130kmh on motorways) in the middle lane, and guys in very fast cars going very fast in the lane closest to the centre median.

The smaller roads are generally 90kmh, and while some try to go faster, this is not always possible if only one lane goes each way. Sometimes you can get stuck behind a truck doing 70kmh for quite some time before a passing lane gives one the opportunity to pass it.

The French are also strongly committed to the roundabout. While they can be exasperating, they often give the driver the opportunity to either reverse a wrong turn, or check which direction they should be going in.

Parking

Associated with driving is parking. Quite simply, large French cities don’t want you to park in their city. We went around Avignon a few times, Pau for almost an hour and drove through Bordeaux (where we had planned to stay) because we couldn’t find a spot to stop and look for accommodation. In the end, we amended our plans to avoid big cities like Nantes and Amiens and stay in smaller places instead.

Food

The best discovery of the driving excursion was a little town called Castelnaudary, which we had planned to stay in on the first Sunday evening, driving from Avignon. Castelnaudary is the self-appointed capital of a dish called Cassoulet, which is a peasant dish from South East France.

They cook white beans in pork and sausage fat , then cook the sausage and pork and duck (France’s favourite poultry, much more prevalent on menus than chicken) in the beans, then put it in the oven covered with breadcrumbs and shaved pork crackling. It is quite simply one of the better dishes I have ever had.

Overall the food in France is good, but menus don’t vary an awful lot. They like lamb, beef (cooked or uncooked), pork and duck. And contrary to some reports, the food is not too expensive.

Anyway, let’s look at each of the places we stayed:

Nice

A lovely resort town on the Mediterranean. As we went to Nice from Ventimiglia, we stopped in Monte Carlo, and suddenly the train was like a sardine tin. Nearly everyone who got on in Monaco got off in Nice. We didn’t see an awful lot of Nice, except for when I was trying to find a way out of Nice, but it seemed a very pleasant place.

Funny story – the rental car company needed a credit card. I went back to the hotel to get my one. Then they needed 200 Euro credit on it for the guarantee. I had like $110 in my non-holiday bank account. Fortunately my dear Mother had just transferred some money into my bank account, otherwise we may have been stuck in Nice for another three days without booked accommodation. All was well that ended well.

Avignon

Hope of the papacy in the 14th Century, we toured around the old Papal Palace at dusk. It has an old defensive wall around the old city and a charming main street with a carousel. It was here that I discovered the world’s worst beer – Leffe.

Funny story – on the Sunday morning we did our washing in the local coin laundry. In case a man of Algerian heritage smoking and drinking. He was friendly, and tried to continue a conversation with us for about an hour, although neither of us could speak his language, nor he ours. The only he said in French we could recognise was “Sarkozy – Merd!” As our clothes stubbornly refused to sufficiently dry, his seedy mates joined him. When our clothes finally dried, we left in about 0.0008 seconds.

Castelnaudary

Home of the Cassoulet. The town has a small lake, and the carnival was in town. We shared a goat’s cheese salad that was magnificent before I had Cassoulet and Rose had some chicken which was equally good. If we ever get a holiday house in the South of France, it’ll probably be very close to Castelnaudary.

Funny story – early next morning a local market decided to spring up, around my parked car. We barely made it out.

Lourdes

We visited Lourdes on our way to Pau. There were three churches on the spot of the apparitions, one on top of the other, and we managed to get some water in a small vial. There was a long line for people to bathe in it, and many people afflicted with some sort of disability moving around.

Funny story – all the crappers (not urinals) in the Men’s toilets at Lourdes are crouchers.

Pau

I know I’ve been criticised for being overly critical of various places, but I say this with no hesitation – Pau is a dump. Don’t go there. The only good thing about Pau is I watched the replay of St Kilda beating Collingwood there.

Bordeaux Libourne

We did stop in Bordeaux, and have some coffee. I had a B&B in mind, but when we finally found it, no one opened the door when Rose knocked. After touring around for about an hour, we finally decided to split this joint and keep driving, until we arrived at a smaller town called Libourne. We stayed at a lovely old hotel run but two older women who dressed comfortably (wink), and it was a wonderful experience. The room, which was really quite cheap, reminded us both of the rooms at the Windsor in Melbourne.

Funny story – we had dinner at an American themed diner, where we ordered massive burgers and milkshakes with more cream than shake. I think Rose is still eating her burger.

St Leonard de Noblat

A small town just through Limoges, we arrived and stayed at the only hotel in town, which was fortunately quite nice. We walked through the old cemetery; the carnival followed us here as well. I spent 15 Euro winning Rose some cups. For dinner we ate in the hotel restaurant, where we had Duck’s leg in pastry, which was delicious and perfectly cooked.

Funny story – On the way to Limgoes, we stopped in Angeloume and bought some Brie. When we got to the hotel a few hours later, it smelled funny, like it had gone bad, so we threw it out. Later in the evening for dessert we shared some cheeses. The Brie smelled exactly the same. Turns out Rose threw out 4 Euros (a lot) worth of perfectly good cheese. Brie smells that way in France.

Poitiers

A bigger town with a large cathedral and a tiny Statue of Liberty, more one way streets you can poke a stick at, and a hotel in the middle of town with a car park. We sent postcards from there, and reacquainted ourselves with Italian food for the first time since leaving Italy. A very nice place indeed.

Funny story – we decided to go bowling, and we sped off in the rough direction of the bowling alley. On what I assumed was a 90kmh road, I got pulled over by the cops. I was doing 94kmh in a 70kmh zone.

The fine was 90 Euro exactly. The policeman asked from where I was, and I informed him. He then asked for my driver’s licence, and I produced the International one I had purchased for the very purpose of driving through France (and later Ireland) before we left. The policeman told me it was no good here. At this moment I started wondering what the inside of a French lock-up cell was like.

He asked me if I had a driver’s licence in Australia, and I did. It was also in the car, in my wallet, which was in my big bag. I went to open it, but remembered that the key was back in the hotel room.

I only had 50 Euro notes on me as well, so out of the blue, he took pity on me and gave me a warning. I drove off to look for the bowling alley and settle my nerves.

We couldn’t find it, but eventually did. Looking for a car parking space, I took a wrong turn and was suddenly back on the road, about to go past the cops again. Rose thinks we should go bowling more often.

Rennes

Rennes is another bigger city, and parking was again difficult. We had a picnic style lunch planned for along the way, but the road between Poitiers and Rennes was almost all motorways, so we had to have lunch in a nice park in a truck stop.

We stayed in a nice, new hotel that punched above its weight, and went to the movies in the evening, seeing the only movie we could in English, a movie called “New York, I Love You”.

Funny story – They didn’t sell any snacks at the Cinema. No popcorn, no drinks, nothing.

Bayeux

Bayeux is in Normandy, and seems to be the centre of tourism related to D Day. It is also the home of the famous Bayeux Tapestry, which at 70 metres long, tells the story of William the Conqueror’s invasion of England and accession to the throne of the King of England.

After that, we drove down to Omaha Beach and the US War Cemetery there. The visitor’s centre is one of the better done war museums, and the cemetery itself is carefully planned and laid out. A cool wind came in from the coast, across the beaches stormed in June 1944.

Funny story – there is an Omaha Beach Golf Course, because if there wasn’t, the Nazis would win.

Dieppe

Kind of like a northern Nice, this is the resort town on the north coast of France, with its beach devoid of sand but overflowing with small stones and pebbles, and its stalls and games. Parking was again a struggle but inventive, as people just took up any space they could. We played mini-golf which Rose duly won (about time, she had lost bowling) and had dinner at the Casino.

Funny story – the Casino has two roulette tables, one blackjack table and one poker table. And some pokies.

Giverny/St Marcel

Giverny is the home of Monet’s Garden, and a gallery of impressionist paintings from his genre. It took some finding, as we drove to the wrong town to get there and had to drive back. The garden is maintained meticulously, even down to a guy dredging the lack with a net to get the algae out. We bought a Monet print in Giverny, but had very little money after that and a big lunch, so we went down market in a nearby industrial town, St Marcel.

Funny story – Monet’s Garden is basically owned by a large rooster with a sore throat.

The day after Giverney we were due in Paris, so that is where this road trip ends.

Day 24-26 - Milan

There’s not really much to say about Milan, as I managed to get sick there. We were only there for a few days, sort of as a stopping point between Rome and France. The original plan was to commence our drive from here, but the car rental companies don’t like you picking up a car in one country and leaving it in another, and they also don’t miss an opportunity to charge you for something.


When we arrived, we felt like an early dinner, but found this was impossible. Restaurants in Milan open for dinner no earlier than about 7:00pm, and sometimes as late as 8:30pm. We walked what seemed like half way to Paris looking for somewhere that was open before heading back to the hotel, only to leave later.

Rose decided to do some shopping in Milan, but her comically small feet betrayed her again. Rose really does struggle to find shoes that fit her, and this was no exception. She had to leave a very nice pair of red shoes at the shoe shop because they were too big.

There’s not too much to do in Milan unless you are there to shop, and you have sufficient cash reserves. The Last Supper by Da Vinci is here, but I only learned this half way through our time in Milan, and by the time we turned up we found that the rest of the day was booked out as they only let 25 people in every 15 minutes. Ah, well.

I managed to purchase a Torres top for our Liverpool excursion. This seemed to be a bad omen as Torres himself immediately went in for season ending knee surgery.

The cathedral in Milan has a marble exterior which makes it look very different to most Italian cathedrals, and the city has the highest density of Dolce & Gabbana’s stores anywhere in the world.

Other than that, we left Milan after a couple of days where I attempted to get plenty of rest. The highlight was probably seeing Torres score a double as Liverpool beat Benfica in the Europa League. It was Torres’ last appearance for the season for the Reds.

The train trip to Ventimiglia was picturesque, and we got off there to change to a French train to cross the border and get to Nice.

Days 19-23 - Rome

The first task when arriving in Rome was getting from the train station to the hotel. We decided to walk – a mistake we would not make again when returning to the train station to catch our train to leave Rome for Milan. The footpaths and the human traffic made it very hard work.


We arrived on Holy Thursday, and I had no opportunity to go to confession. It would have been nice to go to Communion while in Rome at Easter, but, alas, it was not to be.

Our first dinner in Rome was tremendous. We found a little boutique place near our hotel, which served wild boar. I could not resist, and my temptation was rewarded by one of the better meals I’ve ever had. The vegetables were asparagus, zucchini and eggplant, and I did my best, which was considerably better than Rose’s. She had a beef fillet done with a sweet sauce that she enjoyed very much.

It turned out our only opportunity to see the inside of the Vatican would be on Good Friday morning, bright and early on the other side of Rome at 7:45am. We were greeted at our meeting place by a young lady who worked for the tour company. She demonstrated an incredible ability to look lost, confused, exasperated and slightly annoyed, all at the same time. The other couple who were meeting her there got lost, and so we were a little late getting to the Vatican Museum, and then there was more waiting outside the Vatican Museum, and a little more waiting inside the foyer of the Vatican Museum.

It was certainly worth the wait, although there isn’t much time on one of these tours to look around about 7km of Vatican Museum. Apparently some overly prudish Cardinals had ordered some of the ancient Roman statues have their naughty bits covered up, and one would have liked a little more time to look around the place.

However, the main event is down the corridor, as you enter the Sistine Chapel. Despite being full of people, it is still an amazing place. You can see the famous creation scene, as God leans out of a giant brain to touch the hand of Adam. You can see the Judgement Day scene, with the Cardinal who complained about all the naked people on the painting, so Michelangelo painted him in the lowest corner of hell, with Satan himself as a snake, surrounding the Cardinal and biting his Jatz Crackers. Somehow this greatest of artistic f**k yous has survived five hundred years.

After the Sistine Chapel we went outside, and fortunately the queue for the Vatican catacombs was short, so in we went. The most popular tomb is for John Paul II, who still garners a massive amount of admiration and love in Rome, and all over the Catholic world. The prize for me, however, was a little bit further.

Behind a glass screen is an artistic representation of Christ, and about fifteen feet under that is the tomb of St Peter.

In 1939, during renovations, the floor collapsed, and they were able to gain access to the original graves and tombs on which the original St Peter’s was built. They found a body, which tests proved to be a man of 65-70 years of age, who had the build of an agricultural worker such as a farmer or fisherman, who had both feet missing. St Peter, legend says, was crucified upside down at his own insistence by the Romans, and in order to get his body down from his cross before the Romans tossed his body into the Tiber River or fed it to the dogs, the early Christians in Rome took his body but left his feet. Pretty convincing story, that.

St Peter’s itself is a massive church, with mosaics all around instead of paintings, which mean that people can happily use their flashes on their cameras. Just like in the churches of Venice, corpses, or to be more accurate, one corpse, is on display. It is that of Pope John XXIII, the “People’s Pope”, who was elected as a stopgap and started the Second Vatican Council and changed the church for ever. Even after all these years, he looks in good condition.

The crowds inside St Peter’s and all around were crushing, to say the least. In one corner, a number of small confessionals advertised confession in different languages. I was tempted to wander off, but I was on a tour and couldn’t.

It was still morning when we left the Vatican City, and it was time to do what I call the “Rome Salute”. No, this is not some remnant of ancient times carried on through in the new, modern, Italian capital, but what seems like an endless stream of tourists looking at maps, then looking for street signs, then furrowing their brows and looking generally bewildered. It took us a while to get back to the hotel on foot, and having been walking for hours, we decided to rest.

Our pace in Rome soon began to resemble the pace in Venice – not as hectic, but a little more relaxed. As many citizens of Rome work on Good Friday, services for the commemoration of the Passion of Jesus are generally held in the evening. Our afternoon was spent watching snooker on Eurosport and relaxing. Rose now considers herself a bit of a snooker expert.

Rose then did something very nice to me: she accompanied to the Good Friday service down the road. Let the record show that probably Rose’s first attendance at Catholic services outside of weddings (including her own) and funerals was in Rome at Easter. Talk about being thrown in at the deep end.

Saturday would be filled with mundane things in the morning (laundry) and the ancient Roman area, including the Colosseum, in the afternoon. We took the opportunity to slowly wander down there in the early afternoon.

Rome is filled with people trying to sell you crap. One suspects that many may be illegal immigrants the system here ignores, so they are free to try and make a few Euros in order to live. Almost none of the stuff they sell is of any use, but they are persistent.

They have managed to preserve a massive amount of ancient ruins right in the middle of Rome, and it did seem a great time to go down there, on a sunny Saturday afternoon. However, we were met for our tour by our friend from the day before, looking more frustrated and completely lost than the day before. If all people are blessed with one world class talent, then looking like she didn’t know what was going on was this person’s.

Unfortunately they didn’t provide enough earphones and receivers for the group, which delayed us about an hour as our guide, a French woman, had the limits of her patients tested by a group predominantly made up of Americans. Americans are everywhere in Rome. By the time the extra sets had arrived we were already in the area of the ruins, and everyone was somewhat jaded by the experience.

By the time we got to the Colosseum we were hungry and tired, but the Colosseum is worth the trouble. I couldn’t help but feel sorry and sad that this great arena had been scavenged for marble and other materials for so long, leaving the site a sorry shell of what it once was.

Early on Sunday morning we made the train trip back to the Vatican City for Easter Sunday mass in the square. We had been told that we wouldn’t be able to get a seat, but it started to rain and this seemed to keep enough people away that a seat was easy to get.

We sat in the light rain for a while before a family two rows behind us gave their spare umbrella to us. It was a little broken, but we were grateful for the shelter.

The rain did its best to mar the mass in the open air, with readings and general intercessions in different languages, and a beautifully sung gospel, but the rain did stop for a short while, and at the most appropriate time – from the start of the consecration to the end of communion. Then it began to come down in bucketloads.

The Pope returned after mass to give his Easter address, followed by an Easter proclamation in what seemed like 43,387 languages. By this time we had decided it was time to try and get warm and dry.

Walking through a crowd of people with umbrellas fully expanded isn’t easy at the best of times, but when that crowd is 100,000 people in St Peter’s Square, it becomes nigh on impossible. It took a long time for us to even get to the edge of the Vatican City.

A long, wet walk down Rome’s incredibly narrow footpaths awaited us, as the rain continued to fall, and Rose started losing feeling in her lower extremities. I think we got back to the hotel just in time for a couple of hours of defrosting and drying.

Our Easter Sunday afternoon had been well planned – going to the local Irish Pub to watch Liverpool and Birmingham. Liverpool were once again disappointing, but five pints of beer each wasn’t. And, of course, we managed to have a group sitting next to us that included a young married couple from Mount Waverley.

We planned some shopping on the Monday, but almost everything was closed, so the day became a bit of a wash, which was probably just as well as we were both feeling the after affects of plenty of beer. Two burgers from Burger King always helps that along, and we bought a couple of DVDs to break the monotony. The only disappointment there was that we bought the wrong Bridget Jones movie, but it wasn’t quite as bad as advertised.

Only on the last morning did we really get to experience, albeit for a very short trip, the joys of being a passenger in an automobile in Rome. This town’s reputation in this regard precedes it, and a short trip to the train station (which we had walked with much difficulty on the way in) was certainly enough.

Days 14-18 - Venice

Venice is possibly the last truly unique city in the world. It has 300,000 people, but no cars (except for a car park near the train station, which is basically the entry to the city). The airport is on the mainland, and you need to catch a water bus (or a hideously overpriced water taxi) from the airport to Venice proper.


It is easy to get lost in Venice, but, at the same time, it is almost impossible. On more than one occasion, we followed a lane and ended up almost walking into one of the canals. But you make your way back and eventually find your way. I became so lost once I led us into a industrial shipmaking area, walking over a metal gangway attached to an outer wall over the sea.

We took the opportunity to enjoy a more relaxed pace in Venice, as we were there for five nights. We sampled plenty of food, some very good, some pretty pedestrian.

On the negative side, I tried to order an 18 Euro bottle of wine on one evening, and ended up being charged (successfully, as we drank it completely unknowingly) for a 50 Euro bottle of wine. It almost ruined a carefully planned evening, as we were going to a Vivaldi performance afterward. The beauty of that music managed to take a bad taste out of my mouth regarding dinner, which had left me wishing out loud for the predictability and honesty of home.

We visited plenty of churches. An Italian Catholic tendency is to house fully viewable corpses of holy people inside their churches. Needless to say, this completely weirded Rose out. I was somewhat prepared for this eventuality, but for Rose it was a new experience.

Churches in Venice generally have their walls covered in paintings, some of which depict easily identifiable religious events, and others that require a little explaining. There are more graves and crypts under the floor, and as a rule, the high altars that were used under the Old Catholic Rite remain untouched, as well as unused in the New Order.

Our stay in Venice coincided with Passion Sunday, and it was about time I went to church. The priest tended to do his preaching before each reading, contributing to my confusion, but I followed when I could and responded in English most of the time. Meanwhile Rose did the washing at a laundry that required many visits to local vendors for small treats, in order to garner the needed change for the machines.

We did the gondola thing – I don’t want to ruin it for anyone but everyone in Venice knows you, the tourist, are coming, and the gondola is the one identifiable aspect about Venice known all over the world. The shortest ride available is 80 Euro, which is about $115, but when you are on your honeymoon, you spare the money, even if the ride lasts only twenty wonderful minutes. The added bonus was our gondolier (the driver) looked exactly like my Year 12 Politics teacher.

We each tried a pizza in Venice – and I think they probably try to cater to the tourist’s expectations too much. All pizzas have a thin base, but then the varieties are pretty compatible with those you’ll find all over the English speaking world.

Rose and I also visited the former Doge’s palace in San Marco, one of the districts of Venice. While the palace is full of paintings, sculptures and special rooms, and also a prison, the real interest is in the administrative system used in the Republic of Venice for many years. A council of esteemed male citizens elected a Doge, sort of like a President, who acted much like a modern head of state, with a mostly ceremonial role, while the council made the important decisions and ran the city. This mode of government lasted for 500 years without any great change until a little bloke called Napoleon came through the area.

I have to confess – one evening was mainly spent watching St Kilda beat Sydney on my laptop.

The greatest joy one can experience in Venice is merely being there, walking through the laneways, discovering another square with its church. The church next to the Palace in San Marco is reputed to have the body (not the head, apparently it is still in Alexandra) of St Mark the Evangelist, reputed author of the first gospel written, the Gospel according to Mark. The line was so long to get into this church we gave it a miss.

The story of how St Mark came to be in Venice is a great one. Apparently when still alive, his ship ran aground here and an angel visited him and informed St Mark that it would be here that he would be at eternal rest. For over a millennia his eternal rest was in Alexandra, until the newly formed Republic of Venice needed a patron saint. They didn’t want it to be St Peter, as to differentiate it from the Holy Roman Empire. So they went and stole St Mark’s body and moved it to Venice. The official emblem of Venice now includes the Lion of St Mark, holding a book opened to the page where the message the Angel gave to St Mark is written.

There is only one McDonalds in Venice, although there is a Hard Rock Cafe (which cannot be said about Melbourne any more). Sitting down for a drink during the day is expensive, and having been brought up on Melbourne sized portions in restaurants, one needs to get used to smaller amounts on the plate in Europe generally. It is, however, better for the waistline, as is walking everywhere.

My April Fool’s Day joke was on myself this year, as I got the idea in my head that we were leaving a day before we actually were.

The next day, we were actually on our way, after five days without seeing a car, bus or train, of seeing water transport vehicles with two men on board, little outboard motors, and boxes and boxes of goods, of hearing “Gondola, Gondola” about four hundred times, and of wandering around this beautiful, romantic city that is Venice.

Day 11-13 - Berlin

I got to admit – Berlin was probably the first place we went where I felt that we could have done with another day there.


It didn’t take me long to get in the spirit of Berlin, and of Germany – within three hours of our arrival, I’d already eaten a schnitzel. But that was not before a somewhat terrifying cab ride from the main train station in Berlin, which, by the way, is massive, has four levels and numerous shops. Our taxi driver insisted on trying to strike up conversation in a loud, outrageous voice. All this was fine, but he didn’t speak a syllable of English. The only information we were able to convey was where our hotel was located, although he took us there via what seemed to be Berlin’s red light district, and that we were married and on our honeymoon. It was good fun.

The restaurant where I devoured the aforementioned schnitzel was in a posh hotel, but prices were reasonable, the service was excellent and friendly, and the food was very good. They even insisted on giving us free cucumber soup, which was served cold. I avoided a Rimmer moment.

Next morning we were up, and had a clear plan for the day. On the other side of Berlin from where we were staying, which we later found out was very close to the city centre of the old West Berlin, is the Museum Island, which is a small portion of land surrounded by canals and rivers, on which is located five museums. More importantly, nearby at the corresponding train station, was Rafferty’s Irish Pub. Priorities.

The first museum we went into was the Art Museum, which contained mostly German art from the 18th and 19th Century. One of the great things about Berlin is they sell you a three day pass for about 20 Euro, and this enables you entry into about 30 different museums located all across Berlin. During our two full days in Berlin, these came in very handy indeed.

Anyone who knows me well knows I am not much of an art buff, but Rose is and I was happy to accompany her, always, it seemed, one or two pictures ahead of her. Most of the art in this museum was of a similar theme; there were a lot of landscapes and portraits, and also a lot of Romanesque sculpture. It also encompassed three large floors, and took about 2 and a half hours to get around, so after that we were quite ready for a sit and a cool drink.

Unfortunately, we only really had time for the Pergammon Museum after that. This is the Ancient History museum, or if you wanted to be more blunt (and possibly more offensive to Germans); the stuff the Germans stole from Egypt and Greece. There are entire reconstructions of ancient Greek and Egyptian city walls included in massive rooms. In fact, the Germans don’t really do small museums.

The sheer volume of artefacts stored in the Pergammon Museum is pretty overwhelming, and nearly all of them date before the time of Christ. Another two and half hours and it was time to get back to West Berlin and have some dinner.

A little like Czech or Polish food, there really isn’t anything too light on a German food menu, and this is not ideal for someone like Rose who isn’t a big eater, and likes to have plenty of vegetables on her plate. After trying the sauerkraut in Prague, she decided she didn’t like it, while much to our surprise, I didn’t mind it.

We searched in vain for what seemed to be an hour for an Irish Pub that was advertised in the main business district around our hotel, only to eventually find it and discover that their food menu was more snack oriented. So we went next door into a Bavarian place. I tried to order a litre of beer, because I was in Germany and wanted to drink out of one of those huge steins, but they brought me back a litre of shandy (beer mixed with lemonade), and then made me pay for it. Not the best end to the day.

The next morning we decided to get on the tour bus, as you could get on and off all day, and we had some museums marked that we didn’t have to pay to enter with our free pass. First stop was a Potzdamer Platz, which was No Man’s Land when the Berlin Wall was up. Our tour guide on the bus gives information in both German and English, but forgets to pause between speaking languages, leaving the passengers little time to catch up. He explains about the Platz, and that all the bits of the “Wall” that have been sold would, if put together, make up about three walls.

Near the Platz is the Musical Instrument Museum. This is a fun place, and a school group is being toured through with an expert from the museum playing different instruments as he goes. There are some incredibly complicated and involved organs and keyboards, and more wind instruments that you can shake a clarinet at.

We pass a giant Lego giraffe on the way back to the Platz, and a group of women campaigning for equal pay. They try to give Rose some paraphernalia until they realise she isn’t German. Maybe it was the Dunlop Volleys that gave her away.

Next stop is Checkpoint Charlie. This is a pretty over the top place, and fake soldiers man the place where one could travel from East to West and vice versa when the wall stood. There are large chunks of the wall in various places around here, some hanging on the front of buildings.

From here we walk to the Jewish Museum. Housed under an older building, the Jewish Museum is actually a very modern piece of architecture centred on three narrow hallways called the Axis of Continuity, the Axis of Exile, and the Axis of the Holocaust.

Between different segments of the building are intended voids, and the artistic intention of the building is hard to ignore. At the end of the hallway for the Axis of the Holocaust is a massive, empty room several stories high, devoid of heating and almost devoid of natural light.

Upstairs is the actual museum, but trying to follow a continuity of Jewish history is a little like trying to find a sequential narrative in Pulp Fiction. Needless to say, the events of World War II and the deeds of the Nazis left a massive hole in German Jewish history that is only being started to fill as we speak.

After getting back on the bus we toured more of the area located in what was East Berlin, which was the traditional city centre, and is also where Museum Island is located. After moving through the city centre we landed at the Brandenburg Gate; the ancient gate to the city. It was entirely located on the eastern side of the Berlin Wall, so no one went through it for nearly forty years. I was so excited I went through it twice.

Symbolically, just past the Gate on the eastern side is the Kennedy Museum. It is a private museum so we had to pay, but as far as I was concerned, it was worth it. It is a small yet significant collection of Kennedy items and photographs, and it gave me the opportunity to fill in Rose on the Kennedys while walking her around. My definition of a productive afternoon.

We got back on the bus for the last time and went past the Reichstag, where the parliament of the German Republic sits once more, and also the offices of the Chancellor and the residence of the President. We were also shown a cobblestone line through Berlin which indicates the former location of the Berlin Wall.

Back in West Berlin, we stopped by a German pub and drank some genuine German beer, Rose the regular variety, and me the dark variety, which tasted and drank very similar to stout. Rose had some Roast Pork which she enjoyed, although she didn’t touch her red cabbage, while I had some German Sausages, with sauerkraut.

While dining, Rose remarked that the history in Berlin was “in your face”, and it was hard to avoid. I love recent world history, so Berlin was somewhere I wanted to go from the outset, but it seemed Rose had been convinced by Berlin of its significance. I could have easily spent another day going out to the town hall where Kennedy Platz is located, where Kennedy gave his famous speech where he avowed himself either a citizen of Berlin or a donut, depending on your interpretation of German grammar and expression. You could visit numerous other museums with a three day pass, exploring ancient art, modern art, the history of the Berlin Wall, or many other things.

So that is why I say that three nights, and two full days, is simply not enough time in Berlin. It demands a deeper study. I will return to Istanbul, but only because I am, at some stage, going back to Gallipoli. I’m not done there; I’m not finished. But I know I’ll be back in Berlin one day, because it is required. So much to do, so little time.

Day 9 & 10 - Poland

I’ve got to admit – this blog took me a while to commence writing. I wanted to avoid cliché, and also avoiding writing crap. So here goes.

The train ride from Prague to Krakow via Katowice was pleasant enough. The train station in Prague is sufficiently modern, plus I’m pretty sure the roof doesn’t begin to collapse when they have a hail storm.

We had to change trains in Katowice. The quality of the train stations fell significantly once we entered Poland, and the one in Katowice made the old Spencer St Station appear like Buckingham Palace.

My initial feeling about Poland was it seemed colder and greyer. Our hotel was reasonably close to the train station, but our one bed had to single doonas on it. We stopped by an English themed pub for some dinner. Neither of us seemed game enough to try authentic Polish cuisine, and this continued on the second evening when we had pizza and gnocchi.

The next morning we had breakfast and went to the meeting point for our tour. The town of Oswiecim  is about one hour away from Krakow, and the road is winding and only one lane each way.

It’s not surprising that the road is not a eight lane freeway, as the countryside is mainly dense forest, dotted with smaller towns.

Oswiecim arrives, and the trip was made shorter by a video being shown in the bus during the trip. The documentary was related to the liberation of the Auschwitz camps by the Soviets in January 1945.

Just on the other side of the town centre is the Auschwitz Museum, which was created in 1947 out of the ruins of the first Auschwitz camp. Photography is prohibited inside the buildings, and that is why we don’t have any photos of what was in them. An English speaking guide is provided to us, along with headsets so she doesn’t have to raise her voice speaking to 30 people at once.

On a side note, our group for the tour is mainly made up of middle aged or older English people. We have a World War II veteran on board with his son, and a young teenager with his parents.

The different buildings that made up the Auschwitz A Camp, and are still standing, make up the exhibitions, for want of a more meaningful term. Each of this buildings is devoted to one aspect, such as the deportations of the inhabitants of the camp, made up of Jews, Polish political prisoners, homosexuals, gypsys, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Monks, and Russians, or what happened when they arrived, and so on. Each group or nationality of inhabitants has a building of their own to tell their story.

The most striking room is the collected property of those who died at the camp. A wall of brushes, shaving brushes, combs, and so on. A wall of spectacles. A full room of suitcases, most with addresses written inside in case they were lost and needed to be returned to owners destined never to return. And most harrowing of all, a case, probably two metres deep, three metres high and ten metres long, containing almost two tonnes of human hair, shaved off the prisoners after they arrived, destined to be used in the war effort as socks or stockings. To call it macabre is a gargantuan understatement.

Between two of the buildings is the death wall, where prisoners were summarily executed. One of these buildings was a prison inside this prison, where cellmates were kept four to a room that was a square yard big, thus preventing any prisoner from rest. It also contains the cell where St Maximillian Kolbe gave his life up for one of his fellow inmates after he tried to offer him food. Kolbe was deliberately starved to death.

In another building are the photos of hundreds of dead Polish prisoners, taken early on in the camp’s use when the prisoners arrived. Most look incredibly forlorn, but some have the hint of wry smiles on their faces. The women seemed to last around two months, the men more like six. In most cases they were worked to death.

The last thing we are shown in Auschwitz A is the original gas chamber. Next to it is gallows, created after the war for the express purpose of one execution – Rudolph Herss, the first governor of the camp. A more appropriate setting for an execution of a particular individual one cannot think of.

We are taken inside the chamber. It is dark and cold, and is death made concrete.

How does one turn a place like Auschwitz into a place to visit? The place is teeming with people of all ages and all nationalities. There are no souvenirs, only books, and the cafeteria is modest. We sit around for a little while before our bus returns to take us to Auschwitz-Birkenau.

It is fitting that the Museum is at Auschwitz A. The very worst atrocities happened not here but at Birkenau. Most of the buildings at Auschwitz A were left standing by the Nazis, although some required reconstruction.

Birkenau is where many people met their end. The rail entrance is one of the most famous images of the war, and on the platforms inside, Nazi “doctors” selected those strong enough to work and therefore doomed probably to a long death of hard labour helping the German War effort against their will, or those not strong enough to work, who were all immediately sent to the larger, more efficient gas chambers located at Birkenau. It is said that those entering the chambers thought they were going to get a shower. After they were all dead, the bodies were removed, and things such as gold fillings were removed from the still warm bodies before being cremated. Gruesome stuff.

The living quarters at Birkenau, of which very few buildings remain, were cruel. Prisoners could only use the toilet twice a day, only for a few seconds. As sickness spread, this became more difficult, and sleeping quarters became latrines, only exacerbating the problem.

Finally, we went up to the tower on top of the rail entrance. Just before we enter, I see a young man, probably a teenager, wearing an Israeli flag in the same manner many Aussies wear our flag at the cricket or tennis. This sight picks up my spirits.

The most difficult thing about this place is ensuring an appropriate memorial. Should it be a tourist attraction? Almost certainly not. It wouldn’t surprise me if they bulldozed the place. The memories, for the most part, are too difficult. Another thing I discussed with Rose would be why anyone would want to live here. There are houses 50 metres away from Birkenau.

I know people who were a bit horrified when they found out we were going to Auschwitz, but ever meeting a survivor in Helen Shardey’s electorate office in 2003, along with going to the Holocaust Museum in Elsternwick, I’ve felt compelled to go. Having said that, I wouldn’t begrudge you from keeping your distance. Almost any opinion about this place except glorification is acceptable. Come, don’t come. Commemorate or raze to the ground.

I feel satisfied I went, but unlike Gallipoli, I have no desire to return. One visit is enough. We certainly could have used another day just in Krakow, but we came for one reason only. The next morning we were back at the train station, with another long train trip, this time to Berlin, awaiting us.

Day 6,7 & 8 - Prague

We arrive at Prague around lunchtime on March 19. It’s obviously snowed fairly recently around here, and I can honestly say I’ve seen snow, but it was old snow iced and congealed at the side of the road. My Winter Olympics career still goes wanting.


The drive into Prague was less terrifying than the drive into Istanbul, but drivers still turn around corners when they feel like it, and stopping at pedestrian crossings sometimes happens, and sometimes it doesn’t.

Our hotel, the 987 Prague Hotel, is just on the outskirts of the old town, in the new town. Of course, the new town is over 600 years old, for Australians here the irony is thick. It doesn’t end there.

• The town square isn’t square.

• The old Charles Bridge is being renewed, so the bridge will effectively be entirely new.

• One of the synagogues in the Jewish Quarter is the Old New Synagogue.

On our first afternoon in Prague I am majorly frustrated by the inability to get the internet on my computer. The wireless network provided (and promoted) by the hotel is unsecured, and Windows 7 doesn’t seem to like to connect to unsecured networks for obvious reasons. That is the main reason there has been no update on my blogs since our first few days in Turkey.

Eventually we walk towards the river and encounter a couple of beautiful white swans. In Melbourne one only encounters black swans on Albert Park Lake, and those encounters make me wary of the swans much talked about temper, but the wall of the river is too high for the swans to attack, although they eye me suspiciously.

Only a cursory walk through Prague reveals that they love Casinos, Pizza & Thai Massages. Places for getting these things abound like 7/11s abound in metropolitan Melbourne. Rose and I agree that Thai Massage may somewhat be code for something else. Either way, at first appearances Prague looks like a young single man’s paradise.

We visit the old town square for the first of many times, and marvel at the towers and decorations on the buildings. They love gold adornments on their buildings too, and glorious domes and spires on the top of the churches. One could go to Prague, look up the entire time, and never be disappointed. Sort of the opposite of the Gold Coast.

Night is falling and hunger is growing, so we begin to look for somewhere to eat.

Firstly, a bit of background. Rose is a notoriously fussy eater, caused by her fantastic ability in the kitchen, an incredibly keen sense for identifying ingredients in food she is eating, and an insistence that any food she eats be as good as the cuisine she would produce.

Couple that with my tendency to select places to eat where almost invariably something goes wrong: the food isn’t cooked, they bring Rose a different dish to the one she ordered, or something even more catastrophic. There has only been one real exception to this rule, when we found Bottega in Bourke St the night I proposed.

That has begun to change in the Northern Hemisphere, giving both of us a Bizarro Food World vibe. This continues on our first night in Prague when we go into a restaurant that serves the best Carbonara I’ve had, on a par with the Carbonara that I had when I was 16 in, of all places, Swan Hill.

The other thing to mention about our dinner is the quality of the beer. The Czech Republic is famous for its beer, and this is reflected in most of the souvenir t-shirts and pullovers you can buy here, which refer to the country as the “Beer Republic”. That would probably make Australia the Commonwealth of Beer.

Prague is a little cheaper than Melbourne, but probably even cheaper outside of the tourist area. Of course, the city is so touristy that it is almost impossible for someone to get outside of the tourist area to see for oneself.

Our visit to Prague coincided with a weekend, and we decided on an all-day tour for the Saturday. The meeting place is Wenceslas Square, which is in the new city. Think of it like the Bourke St Mall. It contains, predictably, a statue of St Wenceslas, whose Christmas Carol is known all over the world except in the Czech Republic, and a monument to the two students who immolated themselves after the Prague Spring in 1969. It also contains the balcony where the speeches were made during the Velvet Revolution in 1990, when Communism was finally defeated in what was then Czechoslovakia. The building now contains a Marks and Spencers which our guide assures us is more expensive than the Marks and Sparks one would find in the UK.

Our guide is a Czech lady who seems to revels in irony and bad jokes. Her English is very good, which it should be considering she also teaches it. It seems no one earns much money here, and she is grateful when a South African couple give her a very generous tip at the end of the day.

The other ancient hero here in Prague, other than Good King Wenceslas, is Charles IV, who built the bridge and the university. The bridge contains a statue of him that, if you approach the statue from a certain direction, looks like he has his willy in his hand. It is in fact a document, and the bridge is filled with food stalls and many, many artists offering to draw caricatures of the passing tourists.

We enjoy a cruise of the river between the two man-made waterfalls (they are only about a foot high each, but you wouldn’t go over them) along with some more fine Czech beer. During the cruise we chat with a young American couple. The man is stationed in Germany, hasn’t seen his wife for eleven months, and has never seen his little boy. They are originally from Dallas, and seem to be enjoying the city as best one can dragging a baby walker around over some many stairs and cobbled streets. After this, it is back into the old city for lunch.

This is when both of us decide to partake of the traditional Czech cuisine. We had avoided it the night before, but there was no more avoiding it. Most meals seem to be some part of a cow or a pig, cooked but not fried, along with some cabbage creation and/or bread dumplings which seem to be bread without the best part (the crust).

After some nice light soup, we both have some pork with sauerkraut and bread dumplings. Everything about the dish was underwhelming except for the chest pains that come with eating such food. One needs a good walk after such a meal, but it was nice to come all the way to Prague to sit next to a man from Adelaide. I also talk sport with a man from County Kildare.

The post-lunch portion of the tour involves crossing the river and going to the Castle, which looks quite new except for more phenomenal churches included in the complex. From here, you get the second best view of Prague. The best view comes from the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets across the other side of the new city, but that view is the best only because from there, you cannot see the massive radio signal-jamming tower built by the Soviets.

Included in our price for our all-day tour is a “ghost tour” in the evening, but our budget for the day only allows us the most rudimentary of meals for dinner on this Saturday night. I can now testify that the Big Macs in Prague taste roughly the same as the ones in Melbourne.

The Ghost Tour is quite simply absurd. Our new guide, unlike our acerbic friend from earlier in the day, isn’t quite as good with the English, and her emphasis, designed to build the clearly non-existent suspense, only makes her sound more ridiculous. She has an offsider who runs between stopping places with a backpack, and changes into a ludicrous costume for each place. If he isn’t dressed in a sheet he is dressed in a Goonies mask or a skeleton costume. As it was included free with the all-day tour, we feel like we got our money’s worth.

Sunday morning comes and the excitement of being on our honeymoon is replaced with the need for clean clothes. Unfortunately, it seems the only coin laundromat in Prague is a thirty minute walk away, but we get there and clean some clothes.

For the afternoon, we visit what maybe the silliest museum in the history of museums – the Prague Sex Machines Museum. We simply couldn’t resist. There is a movie theatre in the back showing old porn from Spain in the 1920s, commissioned by the then King (who is current King Carlos’ grandfather). Needless to say the buxom ladies in this film wouldn’t get a job in today’s porn industry.

After a good giggle looking at all the various contraptions built to enhance sexual pleasure, we wander down to the old town square for a birds of prey exhibition. Owls of various sizes are paraded through the crowd, including one who quickly devours two small dead chicks. They don’t eat much, but they shift a lot. We also visit the coldest church ever built. The other thing to note about this church is that it would not be the place to ease into Christianity, which some of the imagery about the church being quite confronting.

At the risk of sounding unadventurous, we went back to the restaurant from Friday night for dinner on Sunday night, only this time we both had carbonaras and drank quite a bit more quality Czech beer. We were serenaded by the great four piece strings and guitar band playing at the venue that Rose wanted desperately to hear more of after Friday night, and sitting closer to the “stage”, we were bound to get some more attention. The leader first asks for a suggestion for a romantic song to play, and then asks our nationality to which we respond honestly. He announces they will play a “Australian Happy Song”, and you know what comes next.

After a rousing rendition of Waltzing Matilda, a Slyvester Stallone lookalike sells me some roses, and we sit and talk some more.

Rose’s verdict on Prague is that it is a little too touristy, but after living behind the Iron Curtain for 45 years, they are only making up for lost time. It’s a fine city, filled with beautiful churches and landmarks. But in case you are not that way inclined, feel free to come for the beer and Thai Massages. Prague has at least a little something for everyone. Now we are off to Poland, for what will undoubtedly be the least “enjoyable” part of the trip.