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Postings from my recent travels in southeast Asia, Italy and England. As usual I found that travel reveals more about oneself than about ones destination.
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Sunday, June 16, 2002
Calda Italia!
Hello all - Ciao! - my week in London was great. What a fabulous city! I felt like my head was on a swivel there was so much to look at I was continuously turning this way and that. Went to marvelous museums - many of which were free - walked along the Thames and re-established contact with my 84 year old maternal grandmother (who I haven't seen - except for a brief visit when I started my holiday - since I was 5 years old).
Being thrifty (better known as CHEAP!!!) I decided to take the bus to Italy - what an experience that was. The Saturday I chose to leave was the beginning of a 'bank holiday' (like a statutory holiday in Canada) of four days long (usually they are three) due to the queen's jubilee celebration and also coincided with the beginning of the World Cup.
Everyone - including the bus companies I think - thought this would lead to lighter than usual traffic to the continent. Boy were they wrong. We arrived at about 6 miles from Dover (we were taking the ferry to Calais) only to hit a massive traffic jam. That was at about 10:45 a.m. (we left London at 8 a.m.). We finally boarded the 5 p.m. ferry (yes, 5 p.m. it took us 6 hours to go 6 miles). It was stinking hot and the bus was turned off most of the time so the air-conditioning wasn't running.
We were supposed to arrive in Paris at 5 p.m. and those of us going on to Italy were to take a bus leaving at 7 p.m. Well we got into Paris at 10:30 p.m. But this turned out to be a good thing in some ways - there were 14 of us going on to Italy and they put us onto a full sized bus (48 seats). So I - being the seasoned bus rider - immediately grabbed the back row of seats, rolled up my sweatshirt as a pillow, took off my shoes and put on my ever at the ready slippers and was asleep before we were outside the city limits of Paris. I had about 7 hours of quality sleep and when I awoke we were in Italy.
The rest of the trip was uneventful and I arrived in Firenze only about 45 minutes late. My accommodation in Firenze, arranged by the language school I was attending, was excellent. A clean, cool, spacious room in a lovely apartment about a 20 minute walk from the centre of town. It was great.
Firenze itself is also wonderful although it is a bit disheartening to see all the same stuff being sold to tourists as there is at home - there are people who will write your name in fancy characters (just like at the inner harbour in Victoria), the guy in the gas mask doing the science fiction scenes with spray cans of paint and even a band of the South American pan-flute players! And the tourists - egads!
Judy (my friend from Victoria) arrived after I'd been in Firenze a week and we had a great time eating, drinking, practicing our Italian and generally being agog tourists ourselves. We went to the famous Uffizi and enjoyed it immensely although we'd both had our fill of religious paintings by the end of a couple of hours. I also took Judy to the church of San Miniato which is wonderful and we spent another hour exploring the fascinating and exorbitantly ornate cemetery behind it.
We never got to see David (at least not the real one - two copies for Judy and three for me - there is one in the plaster cast room of the Victoria and Albert museum in London). I decided I wasn't that crazy about seeing it and Judy tried twice but the line ups were too long.
We're now in Perugia which is magnificent. Tomorrow we're heading off to Deruta (where they make those gorgeous ceramics they sell in Torrefazione on Government Street in Victoria) for a day trip. And then on Tuesday it is off to Napoli for three days and then to Roma.
The subject of this message refers to the temperature here. It is HOT! To me it doesn't seem that bad after southeast Asia but I think it is a bit unusual for Italy and it doesn't show any signs of abating. I wonder if there are any hostels with swimming pools in Roma? It is about 30 degrees here at high noon and it isn't that much cooler in the evenings. And unfortunately our hostel here in Perugia kicks everyone out from 9:30 to 4:00 every day. So the rest of the town gets a siesta but not us!
So bye for now. Next message will be just before I return to England (the end of June).
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