Travel

Rambling River Run Repeat #3

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We just racked up another first for the Child Bride – first time in Bulgaria. Let me rephrase that – first visit to Bulgaria. I’ve been here once, I think. Let me explain. Many years ago a colleague and I came here to sign a contract. I was an observer but still partook of the warm, celebratory champagne at 9.00am followed by copious bottles of Bulgarian red wine until they poured us onto our flight that afternoon. It may have been a dream but I’m pretty sure there’s a (fax) paper trail somewhere to prove it all happened.

Our first voyage on the luxurious boat we now temporarily call home was literally across the Danube River from Giurgiu in Romania to Ruse in Bulgaria. Interestingly Ruse is called “Little Vienna”. I have no idea why. Most of the buildings we saw are what they call panel blocks – typical soviet style aparment buildings made from pre-fabricated concrete slabs with the character of gravel. I guess this is what the crappiest part of Vienna looks like. But at least the buildings in Ruse are habitable. Out in the countryside it looks like the Red Army just passed through like a cyclone through Legoland. Most of the buildings don’t look like they’ve been maintained since before they were built. Then we got to Arbanasi and an area nicknamed “Beverley Hills” where the Bulgarian big-shots including the former communist president (everyone is equal but some are more equal etc etc) have holiday homes. Talk about a contrast.

Speaking of contrasts, we’ve driven through plenty of pristine agricultural land in both Romania and Bulgaria and fingers crossed so far and let’s hope it continues,  we’ve encountered zero of those horrendous windmills. You know the ones. The ones that consume more power in their construction and operation than they will ever generate. And after they die, the poor old landowner is left to deal with the carcass that’s left. Don’t get me started. Fortunately we’re not in Germany because there they’re as common as bums, littering the landscape like empty beer cans at a football stadium. I don’t know about Bulgaria but Romania has nuclear and hydro which exempt them from implementing the incredibly moronic energy policies so loved by equally moronic Australian politicians.

Despite economic difficulties, Bulgaria must be in a golden social age right now. They’ve seen off communism and prior to that had to put up with regular and varied periods of Ottoman occupation, or as present day Ottomans like to call it, “migration”. Then as now, the Ottomans thought of ingenious ways to bludge off the local population. For example, if a Bulgarian offered food to an Ottoman, the Bulgarian would be taxed for the wear and tear inflicted on the Ottoman’s teeth. God help us if Australia’s treasurer Chalmers starts to think like an Ottoman.

Rambling River Run Repeat #2

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Before we leave Bucharest we need to acknowledge something as culturally precious to the Romanians as a ute is to an Australian tradie and a Ferrari is to an Arabian prince, a hockey puck is to a Canadian, a casino is to a Chinese granny and a spiked dog collar is to a German swinger and that’s beer. On our first night in Bucharest, the Child Bride and I found a pub a couple of staggering minutes from our hotel. The choice of beers was as extensive as a Kardashian arse with the minimum alcohol content at a heady 5% and most in the 6-6.5% range. The highest was 16%. Light beer is for communists. After four rather substantial glasses, I was ready for a lie down.

We’re now out and about, or if we were Canadian (there they are again), oot and aboot. We know Romania is famous (infamous?) for gypsies and I thought they lived in brightly coloured wooden caravans pulled by horses or hillbilly trucks. It seems that when they are not on the road they actually live in what were once considered to be houses. House pride is not something that would get them into the culture list above. You can tell a gypsy’s home because there’s a bloke who looks like Borat sitting on the remnants of a couch in the front yard surrounded by life’s debris. There’s more shit outside the house than in it. I know this because you can’t fit that much shit into the Palace of the Parliament, let alone a windowless hovel.

We knew it would be cold here in the Transylvanian Carpathian Mountains but it snowed yesterday and will likely do so again today. This was not in the fine print from what I remember and I didn’t bring my beanie and big coat. I have a Korean winter golf hat which has a fold-down flap to cover your ears, but only half of them so it I bump my head it’s likely my ear lobes will fall off.

We visited two castles in the last two days. The first, Peles Castle is more of a palace, like an ornate wooden version of the Hermitage in St Petersburg, on the inside. The outside is rather more extravagant than the box like Hermitage. It was also built relatively recently, like after the Ottomans had been vanquished although it’s doing nothing to stop the Ottoman invasion of Europe currently underway. Bran Castle or Vlad the Impaler’s castle or Dracula’s castle, depending on your preference, is more your neo-barbarian style. It has the swirling turrets and was built up rather than out to protect a pass at the border between Wallachia and Transylvania by the Teutonic Knights in the 12th century. This was long before it supposedly housed blood sucking ghouls which didn’t occur until Bram Stoker (who never visited the place) wrote his book. Vlad did make a significant contribution to the bloodthirstyness of the areas reputation by inserting sharp logs into people he didn’t like or even didn’t know, such was his apparent indifference. And it was actually built to collect taxes, not the blood of wild eyed, bare necked totty.

We spent two nights in Brasov (preferred pronunciation – “bras off”) after Bucharest and it was from here that we visited said castles. If you ignore the communist influence and focus on the pre – Stalin/Ceausescu architecture it’s a very attractive city, if rather cold. But the CB and I did find a a place in the middle of the town square, serving beers, wine and pizzas with a generous helping of gas heater which made a significant contribution to my “would I like to live here” survey which is conducted everywhere I go, if only subconsciously. The answer was…..

Rambling River Run Repeat #1

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Before we move on from Turkish Airlines, a couple of things. We boarded in Bangkok at 10.30am (that’s “am”). By just after midday, the cabin was darkened ostensibly so people who’d had a tough morning sitting around the airport could get some well earned shut-eye. WTAF!!! In reality it’s so the flight attendants can drink coffee and gossip. I have been known to buck the system (other airlines do this) and raise my window shades. If it’s 2.00 in the afternoon, I want some natural light. But these new fangled flying machines have windows that can be darkened electronically by an unseen, unknown controller. Big Brother has invaded the skies. And then to extend the scam on guests who have been duped into thinking they are waking up after a questionable night’s sleep, they served breakfast at about 5.00pm Istanbul time. To steal a quote from Philip Roth; “You can’t bullshit me Portnoy”. Can’t end on a negative note however. The Child Bride and I were in biz class and apart from the wrinkles mentioned above, Turkish Airlines was great.

Strictly speaking, we haven’t started the River Run yet and won’t for another 4 days after we’ve had a look round Romania. Like most of the countries that spent 45 years behind the iron curtain, they’ve been re-learning wicked capitalist ways for a few decades now. Unlike most of their erstwhile comrades, the Romanians said goodbye to communism with a rather spectacular flourish by putting the dictator and his equally disgusting wife up against a wall, on Christmas Day (1989) no less. You’d think therefore, that anything remotely like our Greens Party would have been long confined to the gulag of history. But I’m here to tell you it survives in the baggage handling system at the airport. The bags come out at a speed suggesting a baggage handler walking them over one at a time from the plane to the conveyor belt. Or maybe it’s just a reflection of the time it takes to rummage through the bags which are inadvertently unlocked.

Yesterday was spent wandering around the old town of Bucharest as well as seeing some of the sights. While I wouldn’t normally consider architecture as “the sights” it’s interesting to see the contrasting styles. There’s the elegant European style of the 1800’s and early 1900’s in various stages of repair – some restored to former glories and some demonstrating Gaza chic – there’s the communist sludge that the Russians left all over Eastern Europe like so many of my childhood lego buildings and there’s the Grimms Fairytales brutalist style like the Addams Family and their relatives moved into the neighbourhood. I wonder if that last one contributed to the foreboding reputation, especially when we’re talking about Transylvania. Oh, and a few more recent glass boxes.

You can’t come to Bucharest without visiting the Parliament of the People or the Palace of the Parliament or something. Whatever it’s called, you can’t miss it as it’s the now third biggest administrative building in the world behind the Pentagon and the Thai Parliament. It should be called Ceausescu’s folly because for a number of years it hoovered up a third of Romania’s GDP on it’s construction. He deserved to be shot just for this.

Anyway that’s not the point I am trying, so far unsuccessfully to get to. The longest corridor in the whole building is 200 metres in a straight line and while we were looking down it, a very attractive young lady in high heels attempted to walk along its length. Another lady in our group and the CB made comments about being young once and not missing doing that and other girlie things which caused me to immediately stop listening. But the sight stuck with me and I later suggested that this country is endowed with an abundance of extremely attractive women. Whilst this comment was purely observational, I don’t think my extremely hot wife let me get away with it.

Rambling River Run Repeat – Prologue

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This will be our second attempt at the iconic European river cruise although we have added to the previous effort with the Bucharest to Budapest leg. Low water levels meant we only got half way last time (about 6 years ago) and so had to do the Austrian and Hungarian bits by bus. This time the bad luck’s been related to flights. It’s not the first time the Child Bride and I have had a spot of bother traversing through or travelling to the Middle East. If you’ve read The Dry Argument, secreted somewhere in these pages, you’ll know we headed to Egypt three days after October 7th 2023 which naturally put the kibosh on the Israel part. Now there’s another war we have to avoid so availability of flights or lack thereof has meant three days in Bangkok before heading to Bucharest. Could be worse. So this Prologue has got nothing to do with rivers other than there’s one here and we found a bar next to it.

I’ve been trying to eliminate some of the avoirdupois I have invested a considerable amount of hard-earned in over the years. So far so good as I’ve dropped almost 7kg since Boxing Day. Ominously this travel extravaganza starting with Bangkok then four nights in Romania will last a bit more than a month. So what’s it got to do with my attempts to shrink my ponderous bulk, I hear my dear reader ask? Because after Romania we get on a luxurious river boat and set out on a 26 day odyssey which will eventually conclude in Amsterdam. The weight bit relates to the fact that the cruise is all inclusive 24/7 so all of the sacrifices and sweat of the last few months have been as pointless as a bowling ball. The CB and I were sitting in the Qantas lounge at the airport on day 1 and the first champagne (at 11.30am) beat the shit out of my conscience. I’m not looking forward to stepping on the scales when we get back.

One of the first things you notice here in Bangkok is that the drivers are either very devout or very superstitious or very pessimistic about their (and by extension, our) chances of surviving the drive because invariably the drivers cabin is festooned with deities and amulets. Speaking of religion or superstition or both, our recent travels have taken us to Nepal, Japan, the Middle East and the Subcontinent (also the USA bit it doesn’t really count). In all of those places temples and shrines are ubiquitous. So while we are in Bangkok I refuse to go to a temple, shrine, church, cathedral or monastery. I prefer forts and castles. If this was a literary critique I’d be preferring the War to the Peace.

Notwithstanding my aversion to things of faith (from a tourist’s perspective), we have done some serious touristing while we’ve been here. One thing you notice is the tourist uniform which generally comprises an I Heart Bangkok t-shirt and one-size-fits-all elephant pants. The less said about the young Japanese lady wearing (unwittingly, I suspect) an “I Wanna Bangkok” t-shirt, the better. I bought a Maeklong Train t-shirt at the Maeklong market which the train runs right through the middle of, literally inches from stalls. When you’re told to stay behind the red line you’d better suck in that beer gut. Our health and safety nazis would regulate this into oblivion but thankfully this is Asia and here civilisation hasn’t progressed to the point where a government inspector will wipe your arse and you’ll pay an exorbitant tax for the privilege as is coming to a Western democracy near you.. The other bad news is that unfortunately my shirt will forever smell of fish.

After a hard but pleasant day touristing in the Bangkok heat, the CB and I as usual, are thirsting for an ice-cold ale. At the Bangkok floating market, lunch for three and two beers came to 500 baht – a bit less than A$25 plus tip. Back at the hotel, one beer was 470 baht and one glass of Kiwi sav blanc was 780 baht. You could have swapped a bottle of wine for one night’s accommodation. It was time to go exploring. We found Jack’s Bar, an expat hang-out where a large Singha beer is 120 baht. You also get a view of the river which is like a cut down version of Victoria Harbour in Hong Kong or the Bosporus in Istanbul, such is the amount of traffic. Speaking of Istanbul,  that’s our next stop on the way to Bucharest. Another new experience for the CB – Turkish Airlines.

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.