A Trip Down the Garden Path

Hello Everyone,
Here's a little update of what we've been up to recently. We took a Topdeck (that's the name of the tour company) camping tour from Rome to Budapest (Hungary), and it was fantastic.  I must say, I'm a lover of the camping. There's just something about having your own room and your own bed that makes everything a-ok. I guess camping is in my blood, and I have a load of childhood memories of holidays at the beach or in the bush with family and friends... and with the tent (Ha ha Loz, do you remember Camping Cubs? You were such a good camping skills teacher, cooking sausages on a Golden Circle fruit tin and Dylan and Kristen were the best cubs. I, on the other hand, was the renegade cub who undoubtedly caused a little havoc, probably because I secretly wanted to be a Camping Cub and win all your homemade badges, ah the memories).

So anyway...  I'm going to give you a little pictorial rundown of what we got up to in Italy.

We walked all over Venice, criss-crossing the canals, got lost in the back lanes then found our way again...


 We took a Vaporetto ride (water taxi), squshing shoulders with tourists and locals alike for a little bit of standing room...



We visited the island of Murano, and wandered thorough the glass shops...

I love these kitschy pendants

We watched people go by in gondolas, making the difficult decision to forgo the ride ourselves to avoid the cost of 90 -120 euros...


We wandered along to the Rialto Bridge, the oldest bridge crossing the Grand Canal in Venice...




Next we got on the train to head to Verona, the town made famous in Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Shakespeare's play was originally an Italian story, and as is the case of many age old tales, he took the story, translated it into English and made it his own. Juliet's balcony in Verona is not the original balcony (whether there actually was a balcony is questionable I'm sure), it was added on to the house in the early 1990s to create a shrine of sorts to the famous star-crossed lovers and to attract tourists to the town. And attract tourists it does.  Have a look at the crowded courtyard.


Entry to the Capulet House and Juliet's Balcony. heartfelt messages of lovers past, present and future.  You can see one man climbing to get his piece of the  wall...

I wonder how Juliet would feel about this declaration eh Mihaela?

The balcony

The Bard himself

View out to the balcony

Assuming the Juliet pose

The original costumes from Zeferelli's R and J film

The crowded courtyard, this may have been is a lull, becasue when we came in we had to squeeze our way through

'Glen and Juliet': It just doesn't have the same ring

We saw these locks in a few places around Verona, and also in the R and J courtyard.  Apparently it's about 'locking' your love together

Next we headed to Lucca, a little town in the region of Tuscany. I really wanted to to do an Italian cooking class, and what better place to do it than there?

Glen getting into mixing the biscotti

Shaping the biscotti

And it's done. It tasted just as good as it looks!

Chef Paolo who led the class

Making the chicken liver pate, guess who was in charge of mixing this? Not my favourite thing...

And the vegetable ravioli, it was actually really easy

Rack of pork, wrapped in prosciutto

Enjoying the fruits of our labour...

Tuscan bread salad

Chicken liver pate

Vegetable ravioli with tuscan meat ragu, yumo!

Pork and seasoned potatoes

Biscotti and a dipping liqueur, it was strong!

Our road from here led to Rome, apparently all roads do, don't they?  And there we took in the most famous sights.

The Colosseum by night...

And by day

The Trevi Fountain

The Pantheon and some gelati

At the Papal Palace - St Mark's Square

Nice getup fellas

The extravagance inside...

Circus Maximus, where chariot races took place

And finally, the feature photo of Rome requires you to look through this fairly average looking, if not a bit manky looking, keyhole. Yup, put your eye to it and peer through, I promise you it's worth it...


And this is what greets your eye... (scroll down, I'm doing the suspenseful thing, please humour me)

Isn't this an amazing picture? It looks like a make-believe land, like something from a Disney story.  But it is real, it's known as the keyhole picture and we had to hike to the top of a hill to get it; it was so worth it.  The really cool thing about this picture is that it looks through three countries: It's the courtyard of the Knights of Malta (1), over looking Rome (2) and into the Vatican City (3) - it's all kinds of special.

Well that's the End of Italy, we board the ferry next for Greece.
Ciao bellas!