In Venice, there were gondolas, canals, a million tourists, some rain, one very kind woman who stopped to ask if we were lost (then gave us directions because we were).
There was affordable pizza, a gift (or two) for Miss 9, from Julie and another from me.
And there were dogs, more than adept at beating the pigeons to tourist food ...
I did the crime ... an Italian espresso at 5pm in Venice. And although it was in celebration of finding our way out of the maze that is Venice, it seems I must do the time. It's 1.29am and I'm still awake. Wide awake!
Today has been all about leaving Trieste, then impulsively stopping for an hour or two of wandering through Venice, and driving on afterwards, another million miles towards Milan then Lake Como.
An impulsive couple of hours in Venice that became 4 hours when we were lost for a while on our way out of that ancient city.
And Venice ...!!! I'm not even sure how to write up the experience. Not yet. But tonight, once we found our way to Bellano, Italy, there was this dinner consisting of this divine smokey cheese, provided by our lovely Air B&B hostess, and a bottle of Italian red wine we had been carrying since Budapest.
Julie made herself pasta but it felt too late for me to be eating something so serious and anyway, I was still recovering from The Most Delicious pasta dinner I had ever tasted ... the previous evening, back in Trieste. Something to do with mushrooms, a cream sauce, and pasta at Al Barattolo.
If you find yourself in Trieste, I can only tell you that you must eat at Al Barattolo because the food is divine. The house red wine is also delicious but that's a whole other story.
That said, tonight's pasta did inspire Julie to write up a blogpost about our roadtrip so far. But our journey is almost done and tomorrow we're off to the airport. I'm heading back to Antwerp while she's continuing on her long journey home, with Athens as her next destination.
I will miss that cousin of mine after almost 2 months of living and traveling together. We do have the most excellent adventures though. Always. Last time we wandered all over England, wondering about speed limits and road rules as we went, occasionally phoning home to seek wise counsel on these serious matters.
We drank wine with mercenaries on that journey. I actually went through a stage where I met 3 different groups of them socially ... by chance and yes, I found it bizarre. We also managed to accidentally walked out of a cafe without paying, realised, then found a branch of the same chain in another town over there, confessed, felt the love ... well actually, their surprise that we were so honest. I think they might have been stunned but anyway, they'd written it off, much to our relief. And so much more. It's never sedate when we get together.
Anyway ... tonight finds us in a lovely Air B&B in Bellano in Italy. It seems to be located on one of the arms of Lake Como, not Como itself though. Everything we've viewed online tells us it's lovely however ...spending time lost in Venice complicated our arrival here and made us some hours late, in fact, after darkness had fallen.
The light was fading fast when we began driving the 50 minutes alongside Lake Como to Bellano. Darkness AND there were masses of tunnels, some as much as 5kms long. And while The Homer Tunnel experience in New Zealand last year, seems to have cured me of my previously intense dislike of tunnels, I wasn't the happiest creature when I realised we had driven an extra 16kms beyond our destination exit road, due to our troublesome GPS losing its satellite connection while in those very same very long tunnels.
But arriving here, meeting Laura - our lovely B&B hostess, settling in, drinking the last bottle of red wine Julie and I will share in a while ... somehow everything took on a rosy restropective glow and voila, we were happy again.
We are fortunate, it doesn't take much to right our sometimes wonky worlds. Well ... I could have done without the whole 'sleepless in Bellano' thing but you wouldn't have this post and nor would you have this small glimpse of a scene I spotted in Venice.
The best random car radio I've heard anywhere in the world so far was between Rijeka, Croatia and Budapest, Hungary. I guess it's music I know so perhaps there was some nostalgia from the 70s and 80s involved but honestly, excellent music for that 4+ hour journey.
If you have a rental car that doesn't charge your GPS as you travel, chances are you might have some challenging experiences when attempting to reach your destination.
First hint of trouble was in Verona. Many people were approached for directions to our final destination in the heart of the ancient city. Rijeka, and voila, although we tried to leave the GPS alone and simply rely on it for the complicated city-leaving and arrival parts ... the GPS battery started to die about one kilometre from our destination.
About then we became suspicious of the coincidence of the destination flag appearing and the battery warning appearing. Maybe it had some kind of bug in the machine.
Budapest ... about a kilometre from our destination, having really rested the GPS, up came the battery warning along with the destination flag. We were caught in a long traffic jam on the other side of the river. Julie laughed. I was not amused.
We crossed over into Austria yesterday and barely used the GPS. No flag appeared as we neared our Vienna destination ... the 'bug' in the GPS suspicion is over. The rental car has a faulty charger. We shall proceed with caution, relying mostly on the big highway signs. It's Trieste today and a longer journey that will take us through Slovenia.
But back to other things learned ... be clear on destinations programmed into the GPS. We had hoped to call in for lunch in Zagreb but managed to miscommunicate on programming that idea in. We passed by and realised, after a conversation, that we love the journey as much as the destinations so we continued on. 4+ hours of road-tripping was a really excellent Plan B, although we did detour to a secondary road and visit a lake before leaving Hungary.
Budapest, brilliant city. Loved it but more to follow in another post.
Julie's handbag. The one that sits behind us on the floor of the backseat. Yes Julie, it is a marvellous bag that holds so much but ... let's be sure that I pull out your sunglasses, your normal glasses, your lip balm, your iPod music player (although that's more useful if charged), and every other thing I have had to grapple with on the road trip while you have driven us across Europe.
But okay, yes, perhaps it would have lacked a certain sense of achievement had we been that organised.
Air B&B, a great way to travel. We've stayed in local homes and apartments, met excellent people that I have to write more about when I have all the information and life isn't about the journey. I'm writing this from a student flat in Vienna, where one of our hosts is a lovely Croatian guy studying architecture. He was just in Rijeka last week. They are a delightful couple and we're glad that we did it. Julie organised it all and she has made me a convert because I do love meeting people where ever I go.
It's another big old apartment complex with at least two inner courtyards. The Budapest apartment was my favourite so far ... directly behind the opera house and truly exquisite, inner courtyard, beautiful ironwork on the inside and that delicious sense that you are experiencing something of an everyday life in each place.
Learned while living in Istanbul ... always look for cafes and restaurants that are full of locals. Do not be tempted to do anything else. If you know someone, all the better, ask them where to eat. We have eaten divinely while traveling. It's been less about expensive and upmarket and so very much about good local food. Hungary has been my absolute favourite so far.
If in doubt about where to eat, stop someone who looks like they might eat in places you would like to eat in. Asking politely worked every time.
Wines ... some countries you can barely go wrong, other countries have a wine culture to be explored with caution. Perhaps that's as specific as I'll get but I do love countries where I can find my beloved Italian red wines. We enjoyed this Croatian red wine. And were really impressed by Hungarian red wine ... absolutely lovely. Thanks to Jennifer.
Men from Manchester on stag weekends in Budapest ... very friendly, quite naughty but with a lovely humour that meant we always wandered away on laughing. We met 3 groups on our second night there. Yes, they made us laugh.
Croatians in Rijeka speak beautiful English. We were told by the lovely wine guy that they start studying it in fourth grade. Hungarians in Budapest also speak beautiful English.
Maybe that's enough for this post. I wanted to finish up with a photograph of the most divine fish and chips I've had any place so far ...located on Andrássy Avenue, we would absolutely recommend The Bigfish restaurant because their cod and chips were sublime.
The sun is shining here in the city of Rijeka, and although we went wandering this morning ... finding a market, a park, and a beautiful coffee-making cafe, I have returned to the apartment to write a long-promised post for another website I admire.
And I'm nursing a headache. One of those ones that come from an old neck injury that doesn't respond well to this thing and that thing ... maybe one or many of those things I have done these last few days. I'm hoping to 'rest' my way out of it here in the quiet of the apartment.
Meanwhile Julie's off to climb 500 steps to the top of a hill that we were told we must visit. She has her camera. I shall live vicariously through her images. And the sun is pouring down on me as I sit here, next to the window, about to begin working. Adele is singing.
Tot straks.
hello, autumn... hello, smell of smoke in the air. hello, hot cups of ginger tea with a cookie on the side, hello chilly evenings, hello colors spreading from mountaintops down, down down into the valleys here below.
Nina Bagley, extract from her blog Ornamental
If I had to describe the place I would most like to live then a location like Nina's would be high up on the list. Her blog is the place where I go when the need to wander off and be quiet is upon me and I can't physically go anyplace.
In fact there's a novel I've been writing since those days when I was an airforce officer's wife. It's a story that has retained the same main character but one that has reshaped itself as I have moved countries and lives. She always has a dog, lives someplace beautiful but slightly isolated, and her life has been simplified.
She was a war photographer, so I researched post-traumatic stress and Iraq and the Green Zone and so many other places where people like her go, filled with the conviction that if people just knew the truth of those places and situations, they would rein in the monsters who create wars.
My bookshelves have more than a few war journalists and photographer biographies sitting there, next to the climbers stories. Another people who fascinate me.
But there's still no dog in my life. Everyone feels compelled to remind me of the responsibility when I bring up my desire to have a dog again. They tell me ... the woman who has had dogs since she was 9 years old, that it's a big decision.
I don't roll my eyes ... well, not visibly but it does get boring. I rode horses, had cats, my daughter had a pony. There are things I just know by now.
Another birthday soon. Another year older and, oddly enough, I'm enjoying these years. I'm becoming less concerned about what people think of me, how I 'should' look, and I'm turning down the self-censorship dial on those things I would like to say directly.
I learned the fine art of careful and considerate behaviour as a child, with a side-helping of all-consuming guilt if I slipped up and was honest or direct. It's almost fun unlearning these things. Fun and frustrating, and challenging too, but as long as I'm gentle ...
Autumn is here. It was crisp out there this morning. The pollution levels have been high recently. Our city is split by a ring road that has some of the heaviest traffic loading in Europe. We're a true crossroads and it's a nightmare living so close to a section of it. And then there's the industrial pollution.
It takes about 3 days for my system to begin to clear when I flit off to Genova, that spot by the sea that is close to some beautiful hills and mountains.
New Zealand ... out there the air was simply stunning. I would all but dance, delighting in the variety of scents the air carried as we journeyed there.
Wild thyme in Central Otago, then the seemingly limitless beech forests and lakes that give Fiordland that unforgettable smell. The wild west coast of the South Island, with the Tasman Sea crashing on one side while, on the other, the Southern Alps roar up into the sky. The scent of the sea and the glaciers, soaking wet glacial moraine and forests.
Mmmm, I'm not really a city girl ... must work that one out one day soon.
But today is all about packing and preparing for another journey. My cousin continues her journey back to New Zealand on October 8. We will say our farewells in Milan, after almost two months together. It's been good having someone around who shares a history, whose mother was my mother's much-loved older sister.
Sometimes, over these weeks, I've looked into Mum's eyes - Julie's are almost exactly the same. Mum died way back in 1999 and I've missed her often over the years. Anyway, it has been a time of 'remember when ...' and of familiarity, of picking over old wounds, and creating new stories to tell next time we meet.
We're off on a roadtrip to a part of Europe I haven't thought of exploring before. Although, admittedly, I do find it hard to go past Genova ...
But anyway, meet Julie. She was the model of choice one day out there in Piedmont on the photography workshop. Sandy and I photographed her, delighting in the colourful backdrop Diana provided with her delicious use of colour.
Julie has eyes just like my mother's.
