Paris and Home

21 October, Ibis Hotel, Gentilly, Paris

Except for some early confusion in Nuremburg caused by our train arriving at the assigned platform empty, when it was a through train from Munich, all went fairly smoothly. Seems there was some diversion of trains that resulted in our train being replaced by one originating in Nuremburg. It is interesting that the confusion on the platform was equally shared by German speakers and the rest of us. We put it down to the fact that nobody can understand railway announcements, even when given in their own language.

Our arrival station was Gare de l’Est, a very busy station at the best of times, but it was really hectic as we arrived. We had researched the infamous Paris Metro ticket machines and were ready for all eventualities, except for the fact that their credit card service wasn’t functioning. Forced now to stand in a queue at the only service window, we encountered the usual frustrations, with those ahead of us taking forever to complete a simple transaction. Sounds a lot like old folks whinging, but, really, how hard is it to know what you want before you get to the window? We can even do it in circumstances where we don’t speak the language. For us, the only delay was 10 seconds because the service lady didn’t hit the right key for us to pay by card. We were done and dusted inside 60 seconds.

Delayed by our trials at the station, we had to find our hotel in the dark. The Ibis Gentilly is right on the edge of central Paris, perhaps better described as “in the sticks”. Those who have driven in Paris will know the Peripherique, Paris’ Ring Road. We are just outside it. In fact it is just outside our window, at eye level. We wandered about for a while in dark and somewhat unsafe streets, but finally found the Ibis. We have stayed at a few Ibis hotels in big cities and they have been, uniformly, what we’d paid for. In Paris the rule holds, with clean, small rooms, limited facilities reasonable service and very average locations.

Our visit to Paris had nothing to do with seeing the sights. We were here to complete our pilgrimage to the locations visited by William Armstrong during his leave in June 1918, just before he was killed at Mont St Quentin. We were also here to find the grave of Janita’s grandmother’s cousin, Thomas Chadwick, who was shot down over Paris in September 1943.

With the help of the sexton at Clichy cemetery, we were able to find the Commonwealth War Graves section and following a stone by stone search, found Thomas’ grave. He was an Airforce sergeant, but nearby were Canadian and British graves recording the same date. Thomas, the Canadians and the British must have been operating as a composite crew.

The shooting down of Thomas Chadwick’s bomber in September 1943 was probably a notable event at the time. The plane crashed in flames on the edge of a square that today is the back entry to the Louvre. There is a plaque remembering the event on a building just around the corner from the square.

We know from other family who have visited Paris and sought out memorials to Thomas Chadwick, that there is also a plaque in the church of Notre Dame des Victoires, recording the incident. We found the church, but on entering were confronted by memorial plaques covering almost every available surface, 32000 in total. We spent quite some time searching, but to no avail.

A big part of William Armstrong’s leave in Paris was devoted to entertainment. He visited the Olympia Theatre and the Folies Bergere. Today we found both venues, though they have probably changed a lot since 1918.

We had decided not to play tourist in Paris, but there was one museum that was a must for us, the Musee D’Orsay, home to one of the world’s best collections of 19^th and early 20^th century art. Even though one of the main galleries was being renovated, we still had our fill of our usual favourites, Monet, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh, Pissarro, Cezanne and Renoir, enough to keep us occupied for a couple of hours.

26 October, Home

A long couple of days’ journey home via Guangzhou has left us a little weary and jet-lagged. We had a 15 hour stopover in Guangzhou, made easier by the airline-provided accommodation in the Airport Hotel. Aside from some serious delays in getting a temporary visa authorised and confusion caused by some new immigration processes, our stay in Guangzhou went well. We were able to get a good five or six hours sleep. However, having arrived at 6:00 am, our sleep was during the day, adding to body time clock confusion that will probably take us a few days to recalibrate.

This trip was our first long trip to Europe in a decade. We have generally used motorhomes to get about in the past, but Europe has just become too crowded to allow for that style of travel any more. We opted for a few, week-long stays in small towns and villages within striking distance of larger cities, combined with train and bus journeys through the Balkans and northern Italy. Our accommodation was predominantly in Airbnb apartments, with the odd hotel stay here and there, mainly just before or after flights. We found driving into cities in both the UK and Germany fairly easy to manage. Parking was generally cheap or even free and Park and Ride facilities, where they were available, took a lot of the hassle out of travelling into larger cities.

Car hire in Europe and the UK is very cheap in comparison to Australian rates. Fuel prices are lot higher, but using small efficient vehicles helped us limit these costs on our budget. We found bus travel extremely cheap, but the usual delays associated with bus travel did cause us some minor difficulties. Train travel was a little more reliable, but far more expensive.

We are planning a return trip to Europe early next year via Southern Africa. Given our experiences on this trip, we will probably hire cars and settle ourselves in country towns again.

                                                         

Southern Germany

7 October, Airbnb, Aretsried, Germany  

From Turin we took the train into Augsburg, with changes at Verona and Munich. Nine out of ten for the Italians. Platform allocations were left to the last couple of minutes before departure, which had us pacing Torino station anxiously, but our train left on time and arrived on schedule. From Verona, we were in the hands of DB Rail. For hundreds of kms we crossed through the mountain passes from Italy into Germany, goggle-eyed, on a perfect day with clear blue skies and chocolate box scenes at every turn. It was here things got a little bit shaky. We had to make a 15 minute change in Munich. A bit tight, but, hey, this is Germany.  

The mountain scenery distracted us from the fact that the train was falling behind schedule, first five minutes then, as we got closer to Munich, eleven minutes. Getting off a train to make a connection in less than five minutes might not seem too much of a problem, but these trains are more than 500m long and the platforms are crowded. To cut a long story short, a multitude of errors resulted in our connection being 10 minutes late, so, hot and sweaty after we’d sprinted the length of two platforms, all was well. In Japan, someone would have fallen on their sword!

We’d booked a small car from Sixt Car Rentals, just outside Augsburg Station entrance, but as we were a bit late, the small cars had all gone and we were upgraded to an automatic BMW. Can be lucky some days! Stopping at a Lidl supermarket on the way to the Airbnb, 20 kms from Augsburg, we picked up enough for the evening meal, thinking we’d do a proper shop the next day, Sunday.

Sundays in this part of Germany are a little like they were at home when we were in our teens, when nothing opened. Here, not a single supermarket, even the big chains, even in the cities, opens its doors on the day of rest. Best we could do tonight was a can of soup from a service station, augmented with some pumpkin bought at a road-side farm stall.

The upside of the closed shops was plenty of free parking for our flash hire car and fewer people on the streets. Augsburg was first settled by the Romans in around 15BC. It prospered throughout the Middle Ages as a major trading city. Land-locked as it was, it had the advantage of being situated on an old Roman Road through the Dolomites into northern Italy and beyond. Very little, if any, of the original Medieval City remains and that which does has been significantly rebuilt over the centuries, the latest rebirth being courtesy of US and British bombing during WWII.

One of the wealthy merchant families, the Fuggers is still in business today. Part of their legacy to the city is the Fuggerei, an estate of houses for the city’s poor. Originally constructed in the 1580s, and restored and rebuilt in the original style, following near total destruction during the war, the complex claims to be the oldest social settlement in the world. Today, elderly citizens of Augsburg are housed in 140 apartments where they pay just .88 euro cents a year rent plus some minor city service charges.

8 October, Artiesreid

We gave ourselves a day off today, the first this trip and a good thing too. Well into our second bout of an unpleasant viral infection that has caused us to bark like dogs, we figured it might be wise to have a break and see if nature could overcome what is really a horrid complaint. At this point, late in the day, we are still not 100% but feel better for the rest.

From our bunker, a nice, but totally underground apartment in the small village of Aretsried, we have had time to reflect a little on what is our first extended trip to Europe in 10 years, although we did flit through the Baltic states and Poland a few years back. While Europe is familiar and comfortable to travel in, there are some things that annoy us.

Ten Things We Hate About Europe

1.       Paying to pee. Really? In some of the world’s wealthiest countries, we have to pay to PEE!

2.       No tongs. Yep those things people use to pick up or turn over food. Not one of our apartments has had tongs.

3.       Vege peelers. On the same theme as 2. It isn’t a new invention, but again not a peeler in sight.

4.       “Over Tourism.” Not our term, but one that is a serious issue in many cities. In places like Venice, Paris and Rome, locals have had enough. “No More Tourists” signs are going up all over Europe. And the Chinese haven’t arrived en masse yet!

5.       Showers. Hand-held shower heads are all very modern and trendy, but a bugger to use, particularly if the shower cubicle is so small that the door, if there is one, pinches your bum when you close it.

6.       Hotels without fridges. Now admittedly, this may well be a personal foible, but we drinkers do need a fridge.

7.       Small hotel bathrooms made smaller by the inclusion of some strange second toilet (bidet) which doesn’t flush. (N.B. Can be useful to cool beer if ice is available.)

8.       Bus stations without departure boards. Again more than a little idiosyncratic, but travelling the way we do, it is a major pain to have to run up and down platforms to find your bus. And we aren’t the only ones! Locals have the same issue.

9.       People who speak English. Silly as it might sound, we enjoy transacting everyday business in our extremely limited array of foreign languages. In modern Europe everybody seems to speak English.

10.   Traffic stopping on zebra crossings. What? Yes even in Italy, put one foot on a crossing and trucks, Vespas, cars and trams come to a dead stop. Ah... take us back to Vietnam where they would just scrape you up and drive on. The point is Europe is becoming just too sanitised. No honking horns, no yelling -maybe we miss those early travel experiences.

9 October, Aretsreid

We drove for the best part of 10 hours today just to visit Otzi, the Copper Age man found in the Alps in 1991, now lying in frozen splendour in the northern Italian city of Bolzano. We passed through Bolzano on our way from Turin to Augsburg a few days back, but the economics of staying there just didn’t wash for us so we elected to build this very long 600km round trip into our itinerary instead. Distances of this magnitude are not too much of a challenge in Australia and we had assumed that we could easily handle the trip on the super-slick German Autobahns. Good in theory, except that there were very few suitable Autobahn routes to Bolzano. To make matters worse, our early start meant heavy mist. Despite these obstacles and a few heavy road tolls, we managed to arrive in Bolzano about 11:30.

Otzi didn’t disappoint. For one he was there waiting for us, looking a little like a frozen human toffee. There was a queue to view the mummy through a very small, one or two person-size opening in the specially designed cold room that is Otzi’s new home. Having a good look at the remains of a 5000 plus years old mummy that is so life-like is an amazing experience, but we were also enthralled with the many items found with Otzi. His clothing, weapons and travelling kit were extremely well-preserved and modern forensic science is constantly re-examining these artefacts to learn more about the Copper Age.

Sadly, we couldn’t devote as much time to Otzi as we would have liked, as the long return trip loomed. The weather was perfect and the autumn Alpine scenery made the drive both ways, despite a little tiring, an extremely enjoyable one...

... until, cruising along a nice, straight section of near-perfect German single lane highway, we were side-swiped by a van that, for some reason, merged back into our lane right over the top of us. We were shaken, and more than a little stirred by this insane bit of driving. We were unhurt and, as it turned out, the hire car suffered only minor scratches, but things could have been a lot worse. The driver of the van was Romanian and full of apologies. We photographed everything we needed and headed off home. A very long day.

11 October, Aretsreid

Ducked into Munich yesterday for a quick look around. We had a late start, so by the time we popped up out of the U-Bahn it was noon. We were just in time for the famous Glockenspiel performance on Marienplatz on a very warm day. We are sure it is autumn, the leaves have changed colour and have begun falling, but it really can’t be a temperature-induced reaction.

Munich is a fairly trendy city with an interesting mix of the old and new. We had driven to an inner city Park and Ride located in the area of the Olympic Park. We found the driving easy for such a large city, with wide roads and well-regulated traffic. German drivers do like to go fast, but they are also extremely respectful of speed limits. No limits apply on the Autobahn though and the speeds some cars travel at are simply terrifying. We have been passing a line of trucks in the centre of three lanes, doing 130kph, only to be passed in the far left, fast lane, by a black or grey blur that was a BMW or Merc pushing close to 200kph. Our BMW 3 Series is speed-limited to 210kph, but we haven’t been game to stick our noses out past the middle lane.

Our scenic jaunt today was to Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein Castles. We have referred to the scenery in these alpine and mountain foothills areas as chocolate box scenes and there is probably no more accurate description. Contented cows grazing on deep green, newly-mown fields, weathered timber barns scattered here and there and alpine chalets with window boxes overflowing with flowers wait around every bend, against a background of autumnal gold, red, bronze and green trees.

12 October, Aretsreid

Last day in our Bayern (Bavarian) rural hideaway, so we headed back into Munich to spend the morning at Nymphenburg Palace. This was a good choice because the Autobahn #8 from near our apartment ran almost right into the Palace’s park. Even better, we were early enough to score a parking place right in front. Again we can’t believe our luck. We have normally left Aretsreid on our daily excursions in heavy mist that cleared to blue skies by mid-morning. Today it was perfect from the start.

Nymphenburg was built mainly in the 17^th and 18^th centuries as the summer residence of the Bavarian ruling family. As we learn a little about the history of a place we visit, a special character often emerges as interesting for us. In Bavaria it has been King Ludwig II. Because of his association with Neuschwanstein Castle, among others, Ludwig has been known as “Mad Ludwig”. Poor Ludwig may have been born into royalty as the son of Maximilian II, but some of the expectations of the role seemed to cause him grief. A very nice marriage was arranged for him, but at the last moment he broke it off by letter to his betrothed, saying he loved her more as a sister, the modern equivalent would be ditching a fiancée by text message. Ludwig also had a liking for extremely ornate embellishments. A number of coaches and ceremonial sleighs in the Nymphenburg Carriage Museum are testament to Ludwig’s special artistic flair.

Ludwig sat on the throne of Bavaria for two short years, before dying suddenly at the age of 41, unmarried and childless. His diaries show that he struggled with homosexual tendencies all his life. These traits didn’t wash with the Prussian-led confederation of German states after the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, so Ludwig was declared insane and deposed. During an early morning walk with his doctor he is said to have committed suicide. The book is still open on how Ludwig really died. He and his doctor were found together in a pond, both with their heads above water. The doctor had been bashed and strangled to death, but it seems Ludwig just died.

The park around Nymphenburg was dressed in autumn splendour for us. We wandered off the main paths to the Amalienburg, a small hunting lodge complete with a ballroom and several sitting rooms - “glamping” in the extreme. We found the kitchen particularly interesting. Decorated in a combination of Dutch Delft and Chinese tiles, it worked fairly well on first examination, but a closer look exposed some rather shoddy tile work. The imported Chinese tiles must have come with the same sort of instructions that accompany many Chinese DIY projects today. The two panels are more than a little mixed up.

13 October. Airbnb, Ehingen am Ries

Another little Bavarian village, a whole 90kms from Aretsried, will be our home for the next week. We took a regional train from Augsburg to Nuremburg using a regional Lander Ticket. These little gems allow travel on regional DB lines after 9:00am through to 3:00am the next morning. A single ticket cost us 31 euro and this allowed another person to travel on the same ticket. Our journey today would have cost 25 euro each without the ticket. If we wished we could have travelled on to any station in Bavaria at no extra charge.

The motorway outside Nuremburg is being widened and road works at the junctions caused us and others some grief. We took a wrong exit at one point and had to retrace our steps. Once on the quieter roads, we could relax a little and enjoy the spectacular weather, although coping with our new, manual, hire car, again from Sixt, was a little stressful after our BMW experience.

We have had some great Airbnbs in the past, but this one takes the cake. We may be in the back of nowhere, but at about AUD$70 a night, we have the equivalent of a 5 star suite.

14 October, Ehingen am Reis

Sunday morning in this part of rural Germany is definitely sleep-in day. We set off about 8:30 for the village of Schechingen, to meet with Paul’s German cousins and there was hardly a car on the road.

Crescentia Bihlmaier left the village of Heuchlingen, a couple of kilometres from Schechingen, in 1863 to migrate to Australia where she married Johannes Metzger from the nearby village of Diebach.  Johannes (later John) and Crescentia (later Grace) were Paul’s great-great grandparents. Their descendants in Australia number more than 250 today.

Through the travel interests of the current generation of Bihlmaiers, connections were made with the Australian branch of the family about 10 years ago. Paul’s aunt and uncle, Mary and Pierre de Jabrun have visited the family a couple of times over this period. Over a traditional, huge German lunch, provided by one of the cousins, Anika, and husband Thommy, whom we had met in Australia, we swapped stories, enjoyed a perfect autumn day and made plans for excursions, with family members, around the area over the next couple of days.

15 October, Ehingen am Reis

The small town of Oettingen, just a few kms down the road from our current home is a well-known brewery town. However, according to our friends from yesterday’s long lunch, it is far from the best beer. Despite the town’s less than startling beer, it has a very nice old city centre with some remnants of the original town gates and a main street of restored medieval buildings.

Later in the day we returned to Schechingen to meet Anika for a guided tour of the city of Schwabisch Gmund, an extremely picturesque city. We took Anika and Thommy’s two year old son, Henry for the trip, allowing us to slip back into grandparent mode.

16 October, Ehingen am Reis

It was a long haul into Nuremburg this morning to visit the site of the Nazi Nuremburg rallies of the 1930s. The Museum of Documentation, in German, Dokumentationszentrum, is a fascinating place, situated in one of the incomplete grand buildings ordered by Hitler in his rebuilding of the Reich. Behind the museum is the Zeppelin Field, the actual location of the infamous Nuremburg Rallies. The museum detailed the rise of the Nazi party and, in great detail, the way the party built the cult of Hitlerism.

As we have found in German museums focused on the Nazi era, there is no shying away from the facts. The horrors of the holocaust and the crimes committed during WWII are presented much the same way as they are presented by those who were the victims of the war. Young Germans have learned about their country’s crimes in school now for decades.

Later, we tossed up whether to drive to one of the City’s Park and Ride stations, or just head for the centre of the city and take our chances. We elected to find the main station carpark where we will have to return our car later this week. Despite all the road works around the city, cranes and excavators everywhere, we found the carpark and were only minutes away from the old city.

When we say “old city” in German cities, we really mean rebuilt old city. The bombing damage in places like Nuremburg caused the city to be fairly much reconstructed from scratch after the war. Nevertheless, the city centre is a real picture, rebuilt or not.

To complete our visit to the city we sought out the German National Museum. We are just about over museums, so the hour or so we spent here would not be enough for most people. The place is enormous and could easily demand half a day for those not suffering from museum overload.

Back on the city parking decision; our three hours in the Central Station carpark cost us the princely sum of AUD$9. Try doing that at home folks.

17 October, Ehingen am Reis

Unwittingly, we have spent the last week or more exploring the famous Romantic Way. We thought we were just roaming around some nice old German towns. Our ignorance can be blamed on the fact that most of the material we were working from was in German, not one of our best languages. Courtesy of our cousin Werner, and partner Claudia, who showed us around Nordlingen today, we now have a good detailed map of the area and descriptions in English. Despite our poor planning, we seem to have covered most of the more important towns.

Of special note to us was the small town of Harburg which we visited this morning. Our daughter, Elizabeth is a Harburg by marriage, so we took heaps of photographs in case there was some chance of a distant claim to this magnificent property.

We visited Nordlingen over thirty years ago, but only briefly. Today we had the royal treatment with a guided tour from Claudia and Werner. The city is one of the last remaining totally-walled cities in Germany and it is possible to walk all around it for a different perspective of the city. Another viewpoint is the Daniel Tower, attached to the church. A mere 360 steps will take you to the highest point for many miles around, providing spectacular views of both the city and surrounding countryside. Seeing a place like Nordlingen with someone who lives there allowed us to explore those beautiful local sites that only a resident would know. And, yes, it was another perfect day.

18 October, Ehingen am Reis  

For some reason, every route we took today had a road works diversion in place. This is a very European thing. Because there are so many good roads to choose from, rather than have traffic driving through road works, diversions are put in place. In Germany the diverted route is marked with a yellow U and a direction arrow. This sounds simple enough. In practice, it is not. Locals are probably fine, because they have some grasp of the local geography, but those of us who are GPS dependant are easily led astray.

Our outward journey seemed simple enough on our GPS, but within a few kilometres, we were diverted through the town of Dinkelsbuhl. This was not such a disaster as it might seem as Dinkelsbuhl was on out “to visit” list for the day, another medieval gem.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber was our end destination and having found our way through the maze of U (diversion) signs to get to Dinkelsbuhl, we thought we were ok. As it turned out, what should have been about an hour’s drive took us close to two hours, even taking out the time we took to wander through beautiful Dinkelsbuhl.

The frustration vanished when we walked through the city gates of Rothenburg, with its closely-packed medieval streets, numerous city gates, market squares and an interesting cathedral built over part of the city wall. We walked the city wall which doesn’t make it all the way around the city, but still gave us many fantastic views of the old city centre.

Heading home, we carefully plotted our route to avoid the diversions we had encountered this morning. All went well, no diversions, until... for some reason the fire department closed off almost every road we needed to take to get home. But luck was on our side. As we were waved away by the fire department officers, we noticed that the truck in front of us was an Oettingen Beer truck, heading home. Oettingen is just a couple of kms from home. We were saved!

19 October, Ehingen am Reis

Our last day in Germany; tomorrow we drive to Nuremburg and take the ICE fast train to Stuttgart and then a TGV French train on to Paris. Our two weeks have allowed us to take our time to explore this interesting part of Europe. For our last day, we randomly selected a town for our last visit. Gunzenhausen, just 25 kms west, was our choice, not as spectacular as many of the other cities and towns we have visited, but a nice little town nevertheless.

Heavy fogs are starting to build in the mornings and the temperatures are dropping, we have actually needed to pull on a sweat shirt. We have an early start tomorrow for the supposed hour and a half trip into Nuremburg. Given our previous experiences driving into and around Nuremburg, we will be giving ourselves a good time buffer.

Northern Italy

Northern Italy

28 September, Airbnb, Trieste, Italy

We arrived in sunny, warm Trieste, fairly much on time, just before noon. Our last couple of trips have been with FlixBus, a fairly big operator in Europe. They have a smoothly operating website that takes payments from standard credit cards and PayPal. They also accept electronic tickets, which is a big attraction, as printing tickets on the move can be a bit of a pain.

Slovenia has some beautiful rural countryside, almost Swiss, with rolling hills that look like golf course greens and little villages with houses with steeply gabled roofs. Then, about 20 kms out of Trieste we crossed a small mountain range which must have marked the entry into the drier, Mediterranean coastal area. Suddenly, most of the green was replaced by light brown grasses and far fewer trees.

Trieste is a port city and from our window on this crystal clear afternoon, we can see the deep blue of the northern Mediterranean and the mantis-like cranes of the port.

Our apartment must surely be the biggest Airbnb in the world. Easily as big as our home in Brisbane, it sleeps five and has a kitchen that could cater for a small function.  Everything screams Italian chic.  The only drawback is the sloping, attic ceilings in the main bedroom. We foresee some minor head injuries during our stay. Just two minutes from the train station and bus terminal, supermarket on the corner and five minutes' walk to the centre of town, we are made!

We have never had too much difficulty communicating in Italian. The Italians generally are so good at using body language along with the spoken word to get a message across that all you have to do is watch as much as listen. Our problem is that having spent some time in South America recently, we tend to get our limited Italian confused with our equally limited Spanish.

29 September, Trieste
Having spent a bit of time last night exploring the Trieste transport system on the web, we were fully prepared for our planned journeys to the outer suburbs to visit Castello Miramare to the north of the city and Risiera di San Sabba to the south. While the technology used by transport systems in big cities around the world has advanced enormously in the last decade or so, some traditions still remain. The little kiosk selling magazines, cigarettes and snacks at the bus stop still sells single tickets just as they have always done. But today you can track the location of your bus on your smartphone, pay online and, in Trieste, there is also Wifi on the bus.

Castello Miramare was the home of Prince Maximilian, the younger brother of Emperor Franz Joseph. Maximillian drew what ended up being a very short straw when he accepted the offer of Napoleon III to become Emperor of Mexico in 1864. He ruled for three years before the Mexicans, who had had enough of European rule, overthrew him. He was executed in 1867.We put ourselves in the place of the average Mexican in 1864 and wondered how it was that they were expected to accept rule by an Austrian prince.

The strategic location of Trieste at the head of the Adriatic has meant that it has often been fought over and occupied. During WWII, after Italy signed an armistice with the allies, German forces occupied Trieste and surrounding areas of today’s Slovenia and Croatia. Risiera di San Sabba, an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Trieste, was established as a concentration camp to “process” Resistance fighters, political prisoners and Jews. Though it was on a much smaller scale than the mass camps in Poland and Germany, the crimes committed here were no less grievous. Today the site is a memorial to those who suffered and died here in one of the probably hundreds of similarly little known sites throughout Europe.

30 September, Trieste
Two cruise ships loomed at the quay as we rounded the corner on the short walk from our apartment towards the old city centre, but only a few hundred of the floating hordes seem to have elected to come ashore. This extremely pleasant and surprisingly small city was thus largely left to us and the locals.

We were in no rush today, so we wandered about a little, well yes, we did get a bit lost, but what a great place to do just that on another perfect day.

Eventually we found the Museo Revoltella, a mixture of city palace and modern art gallery. Built by Baron de Revoltella in the mid-19^th century, the house was pure opulence! The good Baron was a great collector of fine art and his collection has been augmented by the city to create a fantastic collection of local art. We had never heard of any of the artists, but we found a lot to like in the six floors of sculpture and paintings. At just AUD$3 it was great value as well.

We found the overly-renovated Roman amphitheatre a bit so-so. The Castle San Giusto was likewise a fairly modern reconstruction, but with great views over the city and environs.

The highlight of the day was the Arch of Riccardo. In a small square, difficult to find among the winding streets of the old city, we thought this 33BC Roman monument really deserved a visit and some respect. Only in Italy. Somehow, the city fathers at some point had decided that poor old Riccardo, whoever he was, really didn’t deserve that much respect. An apartment block has been built adjacent to the arch, using one of the arch pillars to support its outer wall.

2 October, Airbnb Milano
We lucked out with the weather yesterday; it rained most of the day. The lucky bit was that we were on the bus between Trieste and Milan. By the time we arrived, just one hour late this time, the sky was clearing and the rain had stopped. This has been only our second rainy day in more than a month. On the other rainy day, we were driving most of the day as well. Today was what we have come to expect - not a cloud in the sky and a little cooler, which is good.

Many years ago we commented on leaving the subway in Cologne and being overwhelmed by the cathedral that loomed above us as we climbed the stairs. Today was just as impressive an entry onto the Piazza del Duomo. The cathedral virtually filled the sky.

The crowds in the square and lined up to enter the cathedral were not on the scale we had experienced in Dalmatia, but it was still busy, to say the least. The security on entering was extremely strict and conducted by the military. Rigorous as they were, the soldiers were extremely friendly and all was managed with good humour. No matter how often we say, “not another cathedral” we can’t resist these fantastic medieval masterpieces. They never cease to amaze us, not so much for their religious significance, but for the astounding skill and ingenuity of their designers and builders.

Along with thousands of others, we climbed to the top terraces for a closer look at the spires and the sculptures that adorned them. Looking down on the piazza, we noted that the crowd had grown significantly. What must it be like in July and August?

As we have both succumbed to a second bout of the heavy colds we brought with us to Europe over a month ago, we decided on a light day. Besides our wracking coughs were frightening small children and spooking the horses.

After a rather nice sandwich lunch at a little hole in the wall cafe, we visited the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan’s famous art gallery. By reputation, the Pinacoteca is a must-see. To be honest we were a little disappointed. Initially sponsored by Napoleon when he made Milan the capital of “his” Italy, it was established to rival the Louvre. The focus was on 14^th – 16^th century religious art and there was, without a doubt, a fine collection of this genre, but religious art has never been our thing.

To this point in our travels, we have been using buses, partly because train services in the Balkans were infrequent or not available at all, but also because of the extremely cheap fares. The drawback with the buses is that they can run late, sometimes very late, usually due to traffic. Tomorrow we hit the rails with a fairly high expectation of punctuality. Even in Italy trains have a good record for running on time. Then we are into Germany where, a little like Japan, being on time is a matter of pride.

Most of the Airbnbs we have stayed in on this trip have been inner city apartments. On the whole they have been extremely comfortable, even bordering on luxurious on a couple of occasions. Although we pay, on average, AUD$120 a night for city apartments, a bit less in the country, apartment stays are a great way to manage the budget on long trips such as those we mostly take. While eating out every night would be great, the dollars soon disappear, especially if a beer or wine is added into the menu. When travelling in Asia, we do eat out far more regularly, but of course costs there are much lower. Even there, though, it is good every now and then to grab something to eat in, have a shower, throw on some more comfortable gear and relax.

4 October, Airbnb, Torino (Turin), Italy
Our train trip from Milan yesterday was a minor disaster financially. We had checked our possible trains on the web and found a good cheap, but slow trip at $23 AUD. It was only a regional trip, so just picking up tickets at the station was the go. Milan station is the largest in Europe by passenger volume, but we weren’t fazed by that. Veteran Japanese train travellers, we have managed stations there with daily passenger throughputs that Milan wouldn’t manage in a month.

Over-confident as usual, we bowled up to the first ticket machine we saw and selected what we thought was our previously researched, favoured train. Once the tickets were printed we noted the price. AUD$45 each! Seems we had used the wrong machine and our regional train hadn’t come up on the menu so we had picked one leaving at almost the same time. Never mind, we had a very fast trip on one of Italy’s super-fast trains.

We are again right beside the station and in walking distance of the city centre. The Airbnb experience is still working well for us, except that this apartment is a little run-down and in a bit of a rough neighbourhood.

We travelled to the city’s outskirts today by tram to visit the House of Savoy Palace and Basilica Superga. Our usual planning was a little off as we had failed to notice that the vintage cog tramway to the top of the mountain where the palace and basilica were located only ran on the hour. Of course, we arrived 10 minutes past the hour.

We climbed to the top of the bell tower of the basilica for a spectacular view of the city below and took a guided tour of the Savoy family apartments, in Italian. Mind you we did have four pages of English description, but the guide sprouted out at least 50 times that amount of dialogue.

Our history of Italian Unification is a bit vague since we studied it well over 40 years ago, but from what we recall, the broad picture is that Italy in the 19^th Century was a mixed collection of City States like Florence and Venice and for want of a better term, family feudal estates of which the House of Savoy was one. Then along came Senor Garibaldi and his small force of 1000 red-shirted revolutionaries who gradually brought the diverse states and cites under the control of the Italian Monarchy. We know it was far more complex than this, but any simplification of Italian history can only be a good thing.

Torino boasts the second-best Egyptian Museum in the world. We aren’t sure of the veracity of this claim, but it was definitely the best collection we have seen, a little too much so in fact for so late in a long day.

5 October, Torino
Last day in Italy today. Over the Alps to Germany tomorrow.

We had another disappointing visit, this time to the GAM, Turin’s gallery of Contemporary and Modern Art. Only half the Gallery was open, the second floor being closed for restoration, the floor where all the better known art was on display.

Our second outing of the day was a far more memorable experience - the National Museum of Cinema, in the fantastic Mole Antonelliana  building. Movie fan or not, everybody surely must love this place. From extensive collections of historic cinema technology, through clips from classic original European and American films, to an enormous atrium displaying movies of every imaginable genre, a full day could happily disappear in this fantastic museum.

One of the Catholic legends that we were brought up with was the Shroud of Turin. For many centuries, the shroud was claimed to be original, used to wrap Jesus after the crucifixion. More recent scientific investigation has challenged this notion to the point where the official version presented in the Turin Cathedral is that the shroud is associated with a man who was tortured and crucified. Whichever version one believes, this relic has become one of the best known in the world. While there was a special sealed room where the shroud is held, the room was empty except for a photo of a head on the shroud, yet people seemed enthralled. Not so, us.

While the weather for our stay has been perfect, our now persistent heavy colds and barking coughs have put a bit of a damper on our enjoyment. However, despite our health issues, we have loved the city.