Travel

Sicily Walks #5

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It’s 9.15 am and I’m drinking a Sicilian Pale Ale in a bar in Palermo Airport. Our bags are checked through to Brisbane. I don’t particularly care where they go as long as they eventually find us at home because we have all of our important stuff with us including all the requisite boarding passes.

That’s the celebratory reason for the beer. The real reason is that we dropped off our hire car an hour ago and I bid a poison-spitting farewell to Italian roads and drivers. The 50 or so kilometres from our hotel to the airport this morning was supposed to be a breeze. It was a nightmare. When I checked Google Maps at 6.00am it was predicting a 43 minute trip. The bad news is that it took an hour and a half. The good news is that we didn’t hit anything and noone hit us. God knows how that happened. In the areas where the traffic was heaviest – the outskirts of Palermo city – the lines on the road became as rare as functioning car indicators and it became a free-for-all with lanes becoming multiple choice and when a huge truck decides it wants half of what appears to be your lane and half of the next one over, drivers scatter and aim for the nearest available space. The words of our Syracuse cab driver (see #4) were Nostradamus-like in their prophesy.

I was sweating bullets all the way to the airport, the child bride was finally able to relax in her seat when we got here instead of jumping about like she was constantly being cattle prodded and our travel companion, in the back seat, when not getting hit in the back of the head by a flying suitcase (hard breaking unavoidable) was grinding her teeth to the gums.

Notwithstanding the driving hysterics, we had a marvellous time in Sicily. It was the second series of White Lotus that originally got us thinking about coming here. We even went to where it was filmed – Taormina – which looked nothing like what we imagined from the series. Not to worry because we found plenty to gawk at everywhere we went, the food (with one notable exception) was great, the beer was cold and the wine went down far too easily.

Our trip into Palermo yesterday was by train. The previous night it cost 70 euros for a taxi, one-way for the 25 or so kilometres into town. On the train it was 3.3 euros each. To compensate for the much cheaper price, the ticket machine wouldn’t accept any of our credit or debit cards; only cash. As luck would have it, this was the only time on the whole trip when none of us had any. A very kind American couple gave us the 10 euros needed for three tickets. Lucky I was wearing my Tennessee Titans t-shirt which got the conversation with them started.

These old European cities are always just a corner away from something interesting, historic or both. Anywhere with lots of glass will be soulless and boring comparatively. So walking along the main street of Palermo (Via Roma, I believe) from the railway station, it was easy to find something to photograph which is the determining factor differentiating interesting from boring.

The trains, or at least the one we travelled on between Santa Flavia and Palermo, are clean, comfortable, fast and on time. My recommendation to anyone planning a vacation in Italy is to shelve the car hire plans and catch trains. Apart from the absence of stress, you get to enjoy the incredibly rugged and spectacular scenery (talking Sicily here), none of which I saw when for about 900 kilometres, all I focussed on was the lane marker (when there was one) staying in the bottom left-hand corner of the windscreen. Getting used to driving on the wrong side of the road and not knowing where the front right corner of the car is (get your designers onto that, Mercedes) made centring the car in its lane rather challenging initially as that guard rail in Taormina discovered. Fortunately we got there and here in the end. I just need to know now, how many fines I wracked up by blowing through toll gates.

Sicily Walks #4

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We drove on the Syracuse to Catania road for the fourth time a few days ago. I wasn’t driving – we were on a tour to Mt Etna and Taorima. I’ve driven it three times. Only one more time when we head to Palermo. And we went through toll gates legally this time. I covered my face.

Mount Etna is about as Mars-like as I would imagine Mars to be. The only environment i have seen similar to this was in the backblocks of Namibia – rough, twisted, razor sharp  volcanic rocks and black sand. If you fell over in this place you’d be picked up in strips. Strangely, very strangely in fact, lady bugs are everywhere on Mount Etna because they can float up and away from predators on the thermals and hide in the many cracks and crevices. I’m surprised every other low on the food chain insect didn’t think of this. Who knew?

We were up pretty high after taking the cable car at Mt Etna. Not as high as we were when we went to the Annapurna Base Camp in Nepal, but high enough to get the wobbly boots after sudden movements. After walking up a moderately steep slope for about 30 metres and having to stop halfway for a breather, I concluded that if I am ever dumb enough to attempt to climb Mt Everest,  it would take me about a year.

On Sunday we did another museum. When you consider that it doesn’t matter where you are in this country (I imagine Greece is the same), there will be a few thousand years of history right under your feet so there’s a lot of stuff to put in museums. So while sculptures and pottery and tools and weapons and jewellery and frescos abound, there are very few taxis on Sunday afternoon. We eventually found one driven by a bloke who had spent a career travelling the world in the hotel industry and had come back to his home town of Syracuse during covid. He told us you’d have to be mad to drive in Italy. Thanks pal. Pity you weren’t looking over my shoulder when I booked the car. Day 1 and I’m wondering why the speed limits don’t seem to demand much attention. Day 6 and I’m ignoring speed limits with the best of them. And lane indicators are as optional as clothes at an orgy.

We’re in Palermo now, staying at a very nice resort hotel which so far seems like a home away from home for Germans….and mosquitoes. Pity really because everything else is fine. We last encountered mosquitoes in the rooftop bar in Syracuse which was a bit of a surprise. Them flying that high in cool weather would be the equivalent of me walking up Mt Etna. And besides, why hasn’t the Mafia had them all shot.

Speaking of the Mafia, we had dinner in a Michelin starred restaurant last night. There are a few here and we’re told that the boys with the black shirts and white ties like to hang out in them. Not for the food, obviously. I’ve never been particularly impressed with these ultra-fine dining places. It’s more about presentation than a good satisfying feed and the presentation didn’t disappoint but the food did. Just as expected. The price didn’t disappoint either. Again, just as expected. The mark-up on a lamb chop was about 1000%. But the chef did remove the bone.

Sicily Walks #3

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We travelled first class on the train down from Naples to Messina in Sicily. You’d expect that for the extra money you’d get a window to look out of. Apparently not as passengers in every second row found out. What we did get was a train that boarded a ferry and crossed over to Sicily from the Italian mainland. Now that’s pretty cool. Just think of the possibilities. You could access the Trans Siberian from Alaska. Sri Lanka from India, the Marrakesh Express from Gibraltar, the UK from France – oh that’s already available underground in both directions or by inflatable dinghy in one direction if you have no legal right to be in the UK. I believe I can be locked up for saying that now. What a retarded world we live in.

So the surly waiters in Naples have been left far behind to be replaced in Syracuse, by a delightful young lady (she’s Argentinian) and a robot called Lola which delivers food to tables, I believe. It’s brother Leonard, is required to deliver stuff to rooms. The CB asked for tissues and a shower gell top-up. Apparently Leonard deliverd these things but we didn’t know because he couldn’t knock. Apparently he just waited outside the door. Something is missing here.

Getting to Syracuse from Messina was interesting, says he with characteristic English (I was born there) understatement. The hire car guy never mentioned the toll gates. Solution – pick one that doesn’t have a boom and just drive through. Red light? What red light? And driving on the right-hand side of the road is one thing but doing it in Italy with Italian drivers all around makes it a potential demolition derby. I’ve also discovered that on the highways where the purely academic speed limit can be up to 130km/hr, actual drivers either dawdle or pretend they’re Top Guns in a land hugging missile.

Road maintenance appears to be conducted the same way wherever you are in the world. Barriers are erected for miles for no good reason apart from maybe slowing the traffic down -ha!. If Italy had speed cameras especially in tunnels where the speed limit routinely drops from 130 to 80, the national debt would be paid off in a month. Speaking of tunnel’s, Sicily doesn’t appear to do hills. If it goes up, put a tunnel through it and if it goes down put a bridge over it.  Sicilians prefer their roads flat it seems. This means that in a mountainous place like this the 400km+ journey we have just done from Syracuse to the Valley of Temples and back was about 75% bridges or tunnel’s.

And don’t ask me why it’s called the Valley of Temples because while the “temples” part is correct, it’s actually on a high ridge. Go figure. The Valley of Temples is Greek, dating back to 500 BC and if you’ve seen the Parthenon at the Acropolis in Athens, the one here is better preserved. Looks like it could have been thrown up last year provided there were a few thousand slaves available. As with the archeological park in Syracuse, Greek architecture, or its remains, is pervasive. The Romans kicked them out after a few hundred years and when they tried to utilise the Greek theatre for gladiatorial combat and especially fighting wild animals, found the ground level seats for dignitaries were a bit too close to the action so they built another one – completely enclosed and with the front row beyond the reach of a fully extended lion.

Sicily Walks #2

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Getting from Naples airport to our hotel was easier said than done. There were 6 of us with 6 suitcases and more than 6 assorted back-packs and other bags, most of which contained about 2 weeks of dirty washing. At least 2 cabs would be needed but then Enzo showed up with his tardis. How we all got in there with our bags reminded me of when I was 10 and our football coach got a whole 4 stone 7 pound (child footballers were weight limited back then) rugby league team, that’s 13 kids, into a VW Bug for the admittedly short trip to the ground where we were playing. Herbie would have been proud.

I got Enzo’s number and a few days later he excelled on our behalf again. We got him to take three of us round the Amalfi coast. Nothing funny happened but we were gobsmacked by the spectacular beauty everywhere and the English accents everywhere. The town of Amalfi was packed and the tourist season was winding down. I can’t imagine how many people are hit by cars in the high season, looking right instead of left.

Speaking of driving, you haven’t been tail-gated until you’ve been tail-gated by an Italian. You’ll be cruising along at 120km/hr in a 100km/hr zone when out of nowhere someone doing 150km/hr+ has pulled up a metre or so from your back bumper. And they’ll stay there until you get the f… out of the way.

Back to Naples and looking out of our first floor hotel room window you would have to conclude that Naples is a grubby, massively graffitied, crime ridden shithole. That’s a little unfair as parts of it aren’t entirely like that if the street sweeper has just gone through. There are parts that look unfinished, like a big part of Rome, but I think in this case it’s because they just couldn’t be bothered. When you have Pompei (167 acres and counting) and it’s little brother Herculaneum (20 acres) plus wine tasting on the slopes of Mt Versuvious, the Isle of Capri and the Amalfi Coast nearby, Naples itself doesn’t have to try too hard.

When the CB and I were in Rome some years back we heard that all attempts to dig a subway system failed because they kept digging up antiques. Similarly, Herculaneum’s 20 acres is only a fraction of its pre 79AD area but most of it is under the modern town 60 feet above. If you want to put a subway anywhere in Italy, you’d have to do it where noone lives or has lived which kind of defeats the purpose.

Sicily Walks #1

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The Sicily Walk is beginning in Naples which I guess is rather silly and therefore appropriate in itself.

Rather less silly, let’s start at the beginning. We lobbed into Naples and immediately encountered a problem – one of us left a bag in the customs area and we were all outside. That is, we had entered Italy but one of the bags was not quite in Italy. So I and the owner of the bag had to figure out how to get back into customs to retrieve the bag. First problem – the doors only open from the inside so we had to wait until someone came out then we ducked in. Not very legal and we were immediately nabbed by the constabulary. After explaining the situation I was told to stay put and my companion was taken off to retrieve the bag in question. All done and noone was arrested. Goodish start.

That’s actually the third time I’ve done something similar. Once in India, at the boarding gate I was told that my carry-on had to have a baggage tag for the security guy at the gate to stamp otherwise why do you need a security guy at the gate. The tags were available at the check-in counter so I confidently (this is important) strode back out through customs and immigration then strode confidently back inside having secured a tag from check-in, and noone batted an eyelid. Another time I was sitting on a plane at Rio de Janeiro airport one night, having officially left Brazil albeit still sitting on the Rio airport tarmac but after many hours the plane didn’t take off due to a technical snag or more pertinently due to the guy who was supposed to fix the snag not being available. So we were all marched back through a darkened terminal with nary a customs or immigration person in sight. We were accommodated in hotels then returned to the airport the next day. On explaining the situation to the check-in chick, we were directed to an unmarked door which magically allowed us to skip immigration and customs again, as we had skipped it coming back in and viola, we were out of Brazil again.

So I haven’t had a chance to put a coherent flowing Naples narrative down up to now because we’ve been having too much fun. So here are some random thoughts to begin with.

The CB and I were in Nepal (that’s not a typo) a few years ago, just after the covid gates were slightly cracked open, and on the bus trip from the Katmandu airport terminal to the plane I was offered a seat by a young Asian lady. I didn’t know whether to be grateful or offended. Something similar happened again a few days back. We were in Pompei. The old Roman roads there are about 40-50cm below the narrow footpath so I was waiting to step up from the road onto the footpath as a stream of tourists went past. One of them, again a rather attractive young woman stopped and asked me if I needed a hand getting up onto the footpath. It was a warm day and we had done quite a bit of walking so I probably looked a bit frazzled…..but really. I think I’m doing okay for my age – won’t be climbing Everest anytime soon but still more than capable of doing…..this and that. But apparently I look pathetically hopeless and helpless to attractive young women. If I could produce that look on demand it’s a skill that could prove useful in another life in a parallel universe, but not now.

Never take short-cuts you haven’t first tested yourself. The CB and I and one of our mates decided to visit the Naples Archeological Museum which is 1.9km from our hotel and a 27 minute walk according to Google maps. After an hour of our unintended Naples walking tour we were 13 minutes away – half way – yea! And isn’t that railway line supposed to be on our right and not on our left?

We got there eventually and it was well worth it – it seemed like every statue and every fresco from Pompei and Herculaneum had been looted and deposited in the museum. One could assume the towns themselves are empty shells having been stripped bare. No, that is not the case and is a mightily unfair assumption because notwithstanding a lot of their stuff being removed, Pompei is now up there with my world highlights along with the Acropolis in Athens, the Valley of the Kings in Egypt, Niagara Falls, the Himalayas and that lap-dancing place in the Valley in Brisbane (speaking of stripped bare).

Fjord Escort #7

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I’ve previously mentioned that there’s an Irish pub on board. The child bride and I have achieved local status – they know our names and room number and deliver G&T’s without asking. A couple of Irish guys play there a few times a night and watching them has convinced me to go back to my roots. Being 25% Irish, which incidentally is proportionally higher than most of our aboriginals are aboriginal in my estimation, it’s a legitimate pursuit, I think.

So I’ve been noting the songs that these guys have been playing, that I’d like to play. One is about a bloke who gets married just before being executed, one is about a bloke who steals to feed his family and gets transported to Australia, one is about a bloke who dreams about his Irish home while living in California (he dies when he’s 23), and another is about a bloke who is framed by a beautiful woman and is also sent to Australia. There are others with similar themes but I have trouble reading the words and music at this stage because of the tears. I love the Pogues also, but it’s hard to get a smile from most of their songs. I need to find or write some happy Irish songs.

It’s quite anomalous when you consider how outwardly happy-go-lucky the Irish are yet there is so much sadness and bitterness in their music. They can and do draw on rebellions, troubles, crime, betrayal, war and famine – disagreements and tragedy on every conceivable level.

Time to move on to something debatably less traumatic. The good news is we’ve had no rain so far on this trip. The bad news is the wind has been whipping up rough seas so our last stop in Norway – Alesund – has also been dropped from the itinerary. Fortunately, when Gravdal was jettisoned, Narvik was available to step into the breech. This time it looked like a slow 3 day wend down to Southampton until Le Havre volunteered it’s services. Is this the first time the French have volunteered for anything? Just asking. So, Le Havre here we come.

The first and last time I was in Le Havre was in 1986 and all I can remember is looking at a large pile of coal which our hosts assured us came from our mine in Queensland. How was I to know if they were having us on? If you’ve ever seen piles of coal ostensibly from different mines next to each other, you’ll know what I’m talking about. Oh, and the trip back to Paris was conducted like we had a terminator on out tail with Jake and Ellwood Blues taking it in turns to drive.

So Le Havre was an opportunity for a bus drive into Paris, a bit of a drive around, a photo opportunity at the Eiffel Tower and lunch in a restaurant that reminded me of the refectory at university. We then drove back. And that is the end of the Fjord Escort. Next comes the Sicily Walk as we head to Italy today.

Fjord Escort #6

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We have another day at sea today so the child bride and I slept in and were late heading off for breakfast – about 9.30am. You’d think at that time there would be a liberal sprinkling of available tables. But no. We went to lunch at about 2.00pm the other day – rather late for your average pensioner who will be early for any freebie, but same result – this particular restaurant always seems to be full. I think some people sleep there. They are not relinquishing a window seat for anyone or anything. If they’re not eating at that table they’re playing cards. Rough seas and the wobbly boots should be keeping the walking sticks, walkers and mobility scooters in their rooms but that’s only a small percentage. Everyone else is there with bells on.

I have to admit, it’s nice to get off these ships regularly so the CB and I are not fans of extended times at sea. There are reasons for this. Boredom is one because we don’t want to join a choir or be embarrassed by the professional trivia competitors or enter a ping pong tournament or learn to line dance. Actually, that may be worth investigating although there are no Shania Twains on this boat so….. Exploring (and sampling) the various drinking establishments does while away some time and we’ve done that countless times so far. An additional reason to get off occasionally is because cruise ships are just about the most efficient virus incubators ever invented and are especially effective in bad weather when all of the doors and windows to the outside world are closed. So I caught a cold. I’m blaming the CB for hiding the zinc tablets thereby compromising my immune system. Maybe I should have worn one of those useless masks that some people on this boat still insist on wearing.

We were lucky during the first half of this trip with great weather but once we started to head south the weather went pear shaped so we had to skip the exposed Gravdal in the Lofoten Islands. Fortunately the skipper decided to substitute the geographically protected town of Narvik. This place had a small but significant place in the conduct of World War 2 in 1940. Jumping forward a couple of years, in November 1942, Winston Churchill said in a speech regarding the Second Battle of El Alamein that “Before Alamein we never had a victory. After Alamein we never had a defeat”. Incidentally he also said in the same speech “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is perhaps the end of the beginning.” But I digress. Back to Narvik.

The Battle of Narvik was fought from April to June 1940. In April the British and Polish navies beat the German navy off Narvik and in the next months German forces were driven back to the Swedish border. This was the first Allied victory but I guess Churchill forgot because British forces were withdrawn in June that year to fight elsewhere and Norway was subsequently lost.

Just to finish off, why was Narvik so important that a naval battle was fought over it? Amongst other things it’s the port for iron ore produced at the Kiruna mine (there’s a fascinating story unfolding there right now but  that’s a digression too far) not far away in Sweden. No iron ore, no tanks. Thus endeth the history lesson.

Fjord Escort #5

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Alta, which is as close to the top of the world as we have ever been, has restored my faith in humourless Scandinavian pragmatism. This relates to the Alta city centre. Now, before getting into the detail, it’s necessary to understand that the area in question was relatively recently rebuilt (without character or quirk) after the Nazis destroyed everything in the area except the church at the end of WW2. The church was spared because there are German soldiers buried there. Oh the humanity! None of what would be the charming olde worlde old town exists any more.

The city centre is clean, ordered, free of congestion (both mechanical and human) and entirely comprised of what appear to be relatively new buildings. No one is shouting or brandishing weapons or loitering or fighting and there doesn’t appear to be any homeless (too bloody cold I expect) or obvious sub-saharan African or Middle Eastern “refugees”. It’s the sort of boring only Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Danes are capable of. If deadpan was a town, this would be it. The CB and I and our mate Jas got a shuttle bus (US$20 each – this cruise line doesn’t miss) for the 10 minute ride from the ship to the town, walked from one end to the other and back, got back in the bus and went back to the ship. That’s as exciting as it got.

Fortunately you don’t have to go far out of town to find a pulse and a personality. There’s a husky farm where dogs are trained for sled races like the 1600km Iditerod in Alaska. If they knew what they were in for, I’m sure they wouldn’t be so enthusiastically friendly and seemingly happy. My favourite touristy spot was a slate mine where they make roof tiles that the Iranians should have utilised to protect their nuclear facilities. It would take more than a bunker buster to break those suckers.

The indigenous Sami people add a splash of colour to fairly drab (colour-wise) but scenery-spectacular area. Admittedly, there are autumn colours where there are trees but trees are like swimming pools up here – rather scarce. The Sami breed reindeer. Reindeer can now be added to a list that includes the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo, the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia and Stonehenge in that they are much smaller than you expect.

And of course there’s the Norther Lights or Aurora Borealis which this part of the world is famous for. We heard a story about a couple who’ve been coming here for 16 years and haven’t seen them yet. I assume they are blind because we’ve seen them in Trondheim, Tromso, Alta and from the ship. It’s a good year and a good time of the year to see them so all we needed was a clear sky which we got. We’re on our way south now and the weather has closed in and the boat’s doing a bit of rockin’ and rollin’. More on that in #6

Fjord Escort #4

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Norway is one of the most expensive countries in the world….that is if your country has a crap currency like Australia’s Pacific peso. It stands to reason that if our currency was a lot stronger, it wouldn’t have cost me A$66 for two beers. Admittedly one of them was a litre and the other was half a litre but that price should at least come with a lap-dance. I’m not sure whether that would have been on the CB’s list though, she being the recipient of the girlie half litre beer. The litre should have come with a girlie.

And why is this the case? Because Norway built a massive sovereign wealth fund on the back of North Sea fossil fuels so has a strong economy and therefore a strong currency. Australia, which has more wealth in the ground than just about anywhere else on earth has sqandered opportunity after opportunity. We should be creaming it but aren’t. Why? Because idiots vote for idiots and we all live happily ever after until, as prescient Margaret Thatcher noted, we run out of other people’s money and unfortunately that won’t happen until the IMF or the World Bank or the Chinese tell us we can’t borrow anymore.

And now for something completely different (to steal a phrase). We were sitting in a bar overlooking the commercial area of a marina with tour boats and other working boats in Tromso when we saw people actually in the water, in October, way north of the Arctic Circle. What madness is this we asked as one? They were at the end of a 50m pier periodically emerging from a wooden shed-like building before diving, jumping or getting gingerly into the water. Turns out the building is a sauna. So these people were heating themselves to lobster mornay then jumping into the Arctic Ocean. I can’t think of anything with more heart attack inducing efficiency.

Tromso has this very modern church which they call a cathedral but it isn’t. It’s A-shaped with glass at both ends. The back is lined up with where the sun comes up and as there are times of the year when the sun barely gets above the horizon, for a big part of the year the parishoners were looking straight into the sun. So they all started wearing sun glasses. It must have looked like the Godfather’s funeral every week. To alleviate this situation the church now has a stained glass back window. A cheaper option would have been to turn the pews round, move the alter to the other end and buy sunnies for the pastor.

Fjord Escort #3

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American songwriters were and I guess still are fond of writing songs about American females. I can think of a few – She Was an American Girl by Tom Petty, American Girls by Counting Crows, California Girls by the Beach Boys, American Woman by the Guess Who (okay, they’re Canadian). I’m sorry, I can’t help it and I could do with losing a bit of avoirdupois myself but (nastiness alert) travelling on this ship reminds me of Queen’s Fat Bottomed Girls. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen as many canes, walkers and mobility scooters beep beep beeping as they reverse into elevators. If we hit weather like the CB and I experienced off Japan last year, it’ll be carnage. The crew will be sweeping body parts into the ocean. I know it’s a bit unfair making this an American thing but their life expectancy has dropped in recent years and there’s a reason they had so many covid deaths. I’ll leave it there before I get into more trouble.

I mentioned in #2 that the Northern lights forecast was at 40% from 8.00pm last night. When the CB and I managed to drag ourselves away from O’Malley’s (of course there’s an Irish pub – they’re everywhere) and head up to the roof (deck 16) it was obvious that word had got around. These big cruise ships look pretty top-heavy but when most of the passengers are at the top, on one side of the boat, those stabilisers below the waterline have to be working overtime lest we tip over (see paragraph above). At first glance it was hard to tell what the fuss was about but you have to give it to phone camera manufacturers because through the camera lens, there was the Aurora Borealis . We’re hoping the weather holds out so that when we get to the roof of Norway, it will be even more spectacular.

Trondheim is a very nice city of about 200,000 people of which about 20% are students – science and technology dominates (yea!) and there’s a big medical school. I’m assuming that they have here similar discriminatory enrolment policies as Harvard and othe Ivy League schools in the US. But instead of favouring Obamas, here it’s gorgeous cool blondes. There are Miss Worlds everywhere you look. So I certainly have something to look at while throwing down a Ringnes or three.

There’s a zone around Trondheim and the next stop – Tromso – which gets the benefit of the warm Gulf Stream so it’s a balmy 4 degrees rather than minus 20 or whatever it would be without that advantage. I guess we also have to realise that we are further north than the north coast of Alaska, which puts things into a bit of perspective. Breaking out the thermals today.