5 weeks. 6 countries. 8 apartments. We booked and paid for these places months ago without knowing anything about most of the cities we were visiting. You scan the pics on Booking.com, check there is a washing machine and that it’s in a part of town close to transport and a supermarket. But did we…
Category: Italy
Marostica, Aquileia, Trieste.
We popped into three Northern Italian towns we’d never visited before. Here are some mini snapshots… Marostica Where is all the second hand stuff? I was convinced I’d find so many little relics and dust-collecting nic-nacs to add to my “old stuff” collection at home. Most “old stuff” in Australia I’ve found at op shops…
Buona Befana!
In Italy’s North (Veneto and Friuli) Christmas and New Year festivities are “all wrapped up” (to quote a much-used advertising slogan at this time of year) on January 6, The Epiphany. This is when the 3 Wise Men (the magi) were said to have travelled to Bethlehem to bring gifts to baby Jesus. So, to…
Auguri da Venezia!
While it’s a bucket list dream for many to see in the New Year on Sydney Harbour for one of the biggest NYE fireworks displays in the world, Venice was our choice of party city to celebrate the start of 2020. “Get down to Piazza San Marco early” warned Frederico our apartment owner “or you…
La Serenissima
I’ve already written about the way I feel about Venice from our last trip to La Serenissima (the most serene Venezia) in 2013. I’ve always trained in from Treviso in the past, but this time with New Year’s Eve and Cam’s 40th birthday set to fall across our Venice days, it seemed like a great…
Horrible Histories
When your kids’ favourite show includes segments on “Groovy Greeks” and “Rotten Romans” (if you have kids in upper Primary, you’d know “Horrible Histories”), it’s a given that visiting ancient ruins is going to be a hit. And yes, even though we’re in Italy, there are ruins of the Roman AND Greek variety. The temples…
“The Shame of Italy”
For Year 12 Italian, we studied Carlo Levi’s 1945 novel “Cristo si e Fermato a Eboli”. Levi was an Italian writer and anti-fascist activist who was exiled to a remote area, now known as Basilicata, in Italy’s South in 1935. There, he encountered people living in poverty unknown and unheard of in Italy’s north. Whole…
The best meal of my life.
As a super-organised planner extraordinaire, having two nights un-accounted for in our trip was supposed to be a “hells yeah, I’m all free and breezy, and can be a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kinda girl” moment. But as we approached those two nights, where we needed to stay somewhere to break up the ten hour drive between Florence…
Go with the Flo.
There are so many reasons why you’d want to go to Florence, and just one why you wouldn’t. Pros? The art. The food. The history. The celebrations. The desire to create, and be surrounded, by beauty. The con? Tourists. We’d just come from 2 weeks in Umbria, where we’d often be the only people in…
Umbria’s Hilltowns
Our time in the country house in Umbertide, Umbria, is coming to and end. It began in a stressful whirlwind, with Cam’s mum, Deb, set to join us. The girls were mega excited, but the fact we didn’t have her airline, flight times or flight numbers up until the day of her arrival, and the…
The Token Traveller 