Day 52: The Louvre and Home

Our last day in Paris.  Truly it was all over too soon.  There seemed so much more to see and do; so much on my list that we barely touched.
So we’d best be up early, there was a lot to fit into today before we had to be at the airport this evening to start our long journey back home.
We’d packed last night so we were able to get out of the apartment by 8:30 or so.  It was all too hard to arrange a taxi in Paris.  Everything I’d read said booking a taxi could leave you open to having to pay for the taxi from their departure point, something that could turn out expensive if they taxi was coming in from the suburbs.  The best way to grab a taxi is from one of the taxi ranks, however much searching of the internet the night before was reasonably inconclusive in respect to locating one nearby with any confidence.  There was one somewhere on Blvd de Clichy, so we’d see if we could see it, but basically if we’d walked that far with our luggage, we were already nearly halfway to Gare du Nord anyway.
In fact the hardest trial was not worrying about a taxi or walking to the station, but rather getting the luggage down the apartment stairs without killing myself.  The steps showed every bit of their 400 years of wear and they were steep.
It had rained overnight so the streets were wet as we walked through Montmartre to Gare du Nord station, past the shops just opening up for the day, and the early risers heading about their business.
We walked along Blvd de Clichy with no taxi to be seen, past the metro station, and then continued along Rue de Dunkerque towards Gare du Nord.
At the station we were able to drop off our bags with no problems at all, thank God, and we grabbed a simple breakfast at station café.
A lot of people come and ask for money in Paris.  A lot of them do not look like beggars either, such as the lady that was asking all the clients while we ate our croissant and drank coffee.
We caught the metro to the Louvre, passing a beautiful violinist as we made our way out from the station and up to the Passage Richelieu.

Day 51: Musèe de l'Orangerie, Notre Dame and sad farewells

Shanny, Shazzy and Ken were already waiting for us at Café des Deux Moulins, otherwise known as Amèlie’s Café.

Day 50: Versailles and Offenbach

And today we go to Versailles.
Versailles: Loius XIV, XV and XVI’s monument to excess and decadence.  No wonder the people revolted. Luckily the palace survived the revolution, as I’m sure it is a great money spinner now for the French. Just like Ludwig’s tributes to the Sun King back in Bavaria are huge tourist attractions.
We met Shaz, Shan and Ken at Abbesses and metro’d our way, with a little bit of getting lost between line changes for just that little bit of added excitement, to our RER station at Musèe d’Orsay.

Day 49: Montmartre

I was up early, and decided to go for an exploratory walk around Montmartre while Michelle slept in.
There were still quite a few people in the Place du Tertre, even at this early hour.  I needed to get a map, however the tourist office wouldn’t open till 10:00am so I wandered around the mostly deserted streets, heading in the general direction of Sacré Cœur.

Day 48: Au revoir Rome, ciao Paris. Saving the best till last

Our last day in Rome.
It is always a little sad as I leave one place I have quickly grown to love, and yet of course exciting to think that I’ll soon be somewhere new.
Today we basically had a spare day free of any planned activities since the juggling from the closed Colosseum meant that we had missed going to Naples and Pompeii.  Naples couldn’t have been an option today as there was no chance we would be back in time to make our evening flight to Paris.  So today was an opportunity to sleep in and just take it easy. And today we did just that.
After our 10:00AM checkout, we headed off to Termini station to drop off our luggage. Seven weeks we’d travelled through Europe without any address tags on our luggage, but now I was feeling that my luck had run out, and I had best find some before we left our luggage in the left luggage.
There are a lot of shops at Termini.  Two levels of shops.  The lower level included a McDonalds alongside part of the old Servian wall.  I just love finding these old city walls, and this one is from the 4^th Century BC.  History plus.
But continuing on the search for luggage tags; most shops if they even understood what I was asking for did not have the damn things.  Not even the sure bet bag shop.  There was even a full on supermarket down here where at least I found a combination luggage lock so we could lock up the hand luggage, but alas no tags.
In the end I gave up and checked our bags in tagless and headed back upstairs.  I bought our tickets for the airport train ride this evening, despite those pesky “ticket helpers”, and then headed off down the streets of Rome looking for somewhere to plonk and relax.  The simple prerequisites being drinks and shade.
We sat down at a nearby restaurant but after 10 minutes without service, gave up and moved on. We decided to walk to Trevi Fountain again, especially as I hadn’t yet tossed my obligatory coins in. Half way there, wouldn’t you know it, we came across another fountain.  Rome is the city of fountains.

Day 47: Vatican City

Today is Vatican Day.  You know, because more Roman Catholicism.  Anyway, it’s not realistic to visit Rome and not visit the Vatican. Our tickets were for 9:30, and I’d organised the train tickets the night before so we headed straight down to the metro station about 8:00.  That should be heaps of time.
There are only two train lines in the underground in Rome, so it’s pretty straightforward getting around on the train, except this was peak hour and the platform was crazily crowded.  We had to let the first train go, and managed to just squeeze onto the second.  I’d never seen anything like it, except maybe in those videos of trains in Japan where they have people to push the commuters onto the carriages.  The platform and train were literally packed solid with people.

Day 46: A Roman Holiday

OK, let’s try this Colosseum thing again…

Walking there, I noticed what looked like a key embedded into the road between the cobblestones.  This caused me to pause, which was very lucky, as a bird shit then exploded on the road just in front of me.  So stopping to look at this key prevented me from getting bird shat upon.  This has to be lucky right?  It's luck if a bird does poo on you, so it has to be even luckier if one goes to poo on you and misses, yes?
We got down at the Colosseum just after 8:30 and yes, it was open.  There were queues but they weren’t too bad.  Wait, once inside the queues continue through the first corridor and around out of sight down around the curve; but really they weren’t too long and moved quickly.  As a bonus, Michelle as an EU citizen got in for free!  So that bird pooing incident was indeed lucky!
We grabbed our audio guides and started our tour.  I tried to get onto the underground tour, which would have taken us into the areas beneath the Colosseum, but there were no English tours left available for today.  Something to organise in advance for next time.

Day 45: Dead monks + fountains + ruins + cats = Rome

We got up nice and early and headed down to the Colosseum ready for the 8:30 ticket office opening.  You know, to avoid the queues I’d heard so much about. As we approached, we could see huge crowds.  But they weren’t at the Colosseum.  Instead they were lining the streets waving red, white and green flags.  There was only a small group of people lined up at the Colosseum, and the gates were closed.

Day 44: Florence for one more day. Palazzo Pitti.

Last day in Florence today.  It’s always amazing how after just a few days you feel at home in a place, comfortable walking around without getting lost.  Such a sharp contrast to when you first step out of the train station or airport into a new city and you can’t even work out which way is north.

Markets were setting up in the streets, and the Ponte Vecchio was crowded even at this early hour.

The Palazzo Pitti, however seemed thankfully quiet, and no queues at all at the ticket office.  Tickets in hand; you need two tickets for this one, one for the palace, and another for the garden.  The garden ticket also gets you into the costume gallery, back inside the palace.  Yeah, I don’t get it either apart from it cost 23 euro all up.

Anyway, this is one pretty amazing gallery, and takes quite a while to get through.  We spent about 3 hours and covered all the art gallery, but I was suffering pretty severe gallery fatigue for the last 5 or so rooms.  I re-entered one of the rooms, and even though I’d only been in it 5 minutes beforehand, I couldn’t remember a single painting on the wall.  My head was full of Tuscan and Florentine art and I couldn’t fit any more in, it was coming back out of my ears. Still, it was all amazing and on a longer stay in Florence a couple days between galleries would solve this problem.

So I got my fix full of Botticelli, Lippi, Raphael, Van Dyke, and even some Rubens.  No pics allowed, I found out after taking a picture of the ceiling.  Which didn't turn out....

Day 43: Florence, David, crypts and relics

The Accademia is right across the road from our apartment.  We got up, went out our door, went in theirs and around the corner and... Wow. Michelangelo’s David.  Wow, wow and wow.  You can just stare at him for ages.  The detail.  The stature, imposing, glowing marble. This is real art.  To think that somebody could extract that from a slab of second hand marble.
We spent a good 1.5 to 2 hours here at the Accademia admiring the fantastic paintings, some dating back to the 1400’s. The room of plaster casts which were the precursors to construction of the marble statues also was amazing.  The Bartolini statues are ethereally beautiful. But David is a religious experience.  Watching people watching David is great too. There was also a musical instrument exhibition, which had cellos from the 1600s! And what on earth is a Guitar pianola!?! But no photos were allowed…
Afterwards we walked past the Duomo where I had planned to climb up to the cupola, but the queues were insane, presumably because today is a Saturday.  Looks like I’ll miss out.  Can’t say I’m that disappointed though, but it would have been good to have done it.
The Piazza Duomo was teeming with people, heaps more than any other day.  Even the queue to get into the Duomo was huge.  This thing holds 20,000 people so I’m not sure why the queue was extending right across the piazza. We walked on to the Basillica de Museo di Santa Croce.

Day 42: Florence and the Uffizi

I’m very excited this morning as we are going to the Uffizi. But I’m a bit annoyed too as I had sussed out that I got scammed on the tickets.
To see the Uffizi, you want to grab the tickets beforehand to avoid the long queues. I’d seen the queues for the Accademia so was glad that I had booked them online. But googling brings up www.uffizi.com, which you would think is the official site. It isn’t. The official site is www.polomuseale.firenze.it. This meant that I ended up paying this tricky booking site 10 euro more than if I had gone to the correct site. Not a big deal, but I was annoyed with myself for getting mislead. To make matters worse, now I was also a little concerned if I would be able to get in showing the voucher on my phone, as there was no way to print it. So I decided it was best to head down early in case of any problems.
My worries were for nothing as it all went smoothly; I passed my phone through the counter and received proper tickets (and my phone) back no hassles at all.
The Uffizi Gallery is extremely high on the wow factor. I loved this place. So much art. We were in there for some 4 hours, and it still felt a little rushed. And Birth of Venus! Birth of Venus just sent chills through me. It’s truly a beautiful painting. I just loved the Botticelli’s and the Lippi’s with a passion. The faces they paint are simply beauty captured on canvas. Botticelli’s La Primavera, and Annunciation; Lippi’s Madonna with Child and Two Angels were favourites, as was Gerard van Honthorst’s Adoration of the Child.
The rest of the art in there is also truly amazing. A huge collection of altar pieces and religious art. I rename the museum the Madonna with Child, the Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian and the House of Penises, as they were the predominate themes running throughout the gallery. The later envisioned through sculpture rather than painting. Ta;ling of the sculptures, they were amazing too; a favourite would be Sleeping Ariadne. The way that the marble was carved in such detail, including the folds of cloth.

Day 41: Italy just gets better and better - Florence!

We met Paolo at our apartment at 7:30AM for checkout.  Our train was at 8:30, and it was about a ten minute walk, but I like to be early and not risk missing a connection.  There were no hassles with checkout, so we were soon lugging our luggage down the three flights of stairs, and dragging it all up to the train station.

They had a really cheap and nice café shop at the station, which was great after having to pay upwards of 5 euro for coffee!  And they had café ginseng!  For 1.50!!

Day 40: Totally Love Venice!

Today was Michelle’s birthday.  What a perfect place to spend a birthday! After getting the train into Venezia Santa Lucia, we saw the Orient Express awaiting departure at the platform.  That train looks like a must do experience, but when I looked it up online afterwards, it only travelled from Venice to Paris.  Not sure why it's still called the Orient Express anymore?

Day 38: Rainy Days in Austria

I had been worrying all weekend about the car.  I'd had a bit of a brain fart, and though I had known and even put it in my notes to contact the car lease company 4 business days before the due drop off date, as what was outlined repeatedly in the lease agreement, and that was all meant to happen when we were in Garmish, I’d somehow thought that it instead was when I was in Salzburg and it didn’t click until 6PM last Friday that this was all wrong. Which of course was after business hours and too late to do anything about until 9:00AM Monday morning.  Today.  Now.
So I tried calling, and couldn’t get through. And tried again, and still couldn’t. And again, and again, for about 40 minutes, and now I was getting quite concerned.  What would happen if I couldn’t drop the car off?  I was meant to give 4 days’ notice.  They’d said so over and over on all the instructions supplied. With no luck getting through, I tried ringing the Barcelona office and got through straight away.  I explained my problem, and he said no problems, but you know you are meant to give 4 days’ notice?  Yes, yes sorry :–(  I thanked him all grateful, then Michelle said, I think he thought you wanted to drop the car off in Barcelona?  But I said Munich!?!  Sure enough, ringing back he thought I was dropping off in Barcelona.  Problem not solved.  I tried Munich again.  Tried their head office and tried the supplied mobile number.  I even tried their Skype ID.  No luck.  I called the Australian broker, and they said it shouldn’t be a drama, and they would try on my behalf, and to just assume it would all be good and to drop the car off.  So much worry over a stupid mistake.
So continuing our Sound of Music experience, we drove out to Mondsee to visit the church used in the movie.  Warning.  Don’t look too closely at the altar piece.  There are a number of skeletons from previous bishops just sitting in there.  Lovely.

Day 37: Frauline Maria's Sound of Music Bicycle Tour

What an amazing tour.  We were so lucky that our guide was a trained opera / operetta singer; she had the loveliest voice and was full of energy, singing the songs at every location we visited.  She also had heaps of information about the history and places in Salzburg, as well as the Sound of Music Movie.  This is a very highly recommended way to see Salzburg, as well as to do visit and get the most out of the obligatory Sound of Music sites.

Day 36: We're going to Salzburg!

Not a great deal to really to say of interest today, given it was a commute day.  Well at least for the morning.  We farewelled our lovely host in Garmisch, then spent an uneventful though beuatiful two hours or so driving to Salzburg.  The highlight of the trip was stopping at a roadside stop for breakfast, and they had weisswurst!

Day 35: More Ludwig, More Schloss, More Wagner

Now today we put into practice our well learnt lesson from yesterday; we were at Linderhof Castle not long after opening, joining the very next tour at 9:30. Yay!
Now this castle was a lot smaller, and set in large, extensive grounds and gardens, and so was very different to the Neuschwanstein Castle we'd visited the day before.
Ludwig had Linderhof built to replicate and celebrate the French baroque period and as a tribute to Sun King Louis XIV, who Ludwig totally idolised.

Day 27: Nudist colonies, pedibuses and erotimechanica. This is Switzerland.

Sorry about the News of the World style headline, I'm trying to attract a larger readership ;-)
Today I got up nice and early to help walk Marianna to school; she's such a cutie.  She talked and talked and talked the whole way there, and she made sure her bat was kept nice and warm tucked away in her top. Pedibus?  yeah I had no idea until Henric explained it.  One volunteer parent is the head of the bus, one volunteer parent is the tail of the bus, and they are both holding a rope which all the kids on the bus have to hold onto.  The bus then makes it rounds, stopping at the pedibus stops to take on new passengers, and bring them all safely to school. Very cool for the first year kiddies.  Very uncool for the 2nd year and older kiddies. We walked back via the lake shore which was lined with a multitude of market gardens.

Day 23: Uzing. Chateau des Baux, Carrieres de Lumieres, Avignon

Another lovely country drive today brought us to limestone country and the Château des Baux, a citadel allegedly passed down through the descendants of one of the three wise men.  This place is medieval heaven.  A lively little old town, similar to Carcassonne Le Citè with shops and cafès, but at the top of the hill are the remains of the old fortified château as well as working trèbuchets, and some of the best views across the countryside we’d seen to date.

Day 20: Around Uzes. The Pont du Gard and Nimes. More Roman than Rome

This morning we visited Pont du Gard, a huge Roman aqueduct of three levels spanning the Aude River.  Bloody amazing is all I can say.
I grabbed the last shaded car park and sorted out the tickets in the visitor centre, where I was advised by the helpful lady behind the counter to bypass the audio guide and grab one after visiting the museum and cinema if I felt it was still warranted.  Sage advice, as after watching a film about the aqueduct, then wandering around the museum for the best part of an hour (it was an amazing museum and highly recommended) we knew everything we needed to know and still hadn’t even seen the aqueduct.  All we wanted to do now was walk down and see it as quickly as possible!!

Those Roman babes knew how to rock a bikini!