Forza Italia

We've come down through Italy and I have to say it is beautiful, la bella vita is in evidence here.

Milan:

We started in Milan but as first port of call into Italy, I was a little disappointed. The city is quite built up and very industrialised, I was expecting fashion on every corner and a certain chic essence oozing from the place. All I found was grimy buildings and lots of traffic. Of course you have your designer boutiques, but I'm not exactly in the market for any Gucci at the moment!

The most obvious tourist attraction in Milan is definitely the Duomo, a huge Gothic cathedral that takes centre stage with the beauty quotient in the city. I'm not religious, so it doesn't have any significance to me as a place of worship, but it certainly was impressive.

One of the best parts was the Beatles exhibition that we went to, which for me was great. It went through all the history from1960 - 70, concentrating on 68 a period of worldwide upheaval, from Vietnam war to civil rights movement.

Apart from that, the most exciting thing was a thunder and lightening storm, the likes of which we don't see in Ireland very often. It had everything from thunder and lightening, to rain and hailstones the size of eggs!

Verona:

Home of Romeo and Juliet, we of course had to go see Juliet's house and famous balcony which was filled with the obligatory tourists posing.

Verona was one of the most picturesque places we visited. Al streets lead away from the Arena, a huge Roman amphitheatre, that today is still used for concerts, opera and ballet. Down the narrow streets, there are trattorias, designer shops and the best gellatorias- ice cream shops, in the world.

It sounds cheesy but even the light and the air seems different there, a subtle smell of oranges carries on the breeze as you walk around.

Venice

We did't actually stay in Venice itself, but Mestre, the closest you can get while still on the mainland, and it may sound stupid, but I didn't actually realise that Venice is an island. We went in by bus every day, which only took about ten minutes, because, the prices there are crazy. Even to use the internet is 8, 9 or 10 PER HOUR depending on the place!

It is again a beautiful place, but I think it has perhaps lost some of its magic by surrendering itself completely to tourists. Around every corner stalls selling tacky souvenirs, pushy tourists and the absolutely stifling heat make a heady mix. Maybe at a different time of year you could appreciate it more, but the only relief was the cool breeze found sailing along the grand canal on a vaporetto waterbus which picks up lots of people at each stop exactly like a bus.

Florence

When we got to Florence we headed straight for the museo della accadamia which houses the statue of David.

We walked around the city and took in the views, but I wouldn't recommend visiting main cities in the height of summer. Queues are order of the day and the city is literally taken over by American tourists.

We rented a car and wanted to get right out of there and get into the heart of the countryside.

Anghiari-Tuscany

I came across a website which you sign up to and it puts you in touch with people on farms looking for people to work as volunteers. In return you get free accommodation, for for us has turned out to be a great deal.

We ended up finding a nice American who took us in to work for him on his goat farm. On the first day, we were up at 5:30 to feed and water the goats. Now I'm not a morning person, and ordinarily, this would have been torture, but I actually didn't mind. We were up with the sun and stripping bales of straw into the troughs. Brent, is who we are staying with and he has about 70 goats including the milking ones, kids and billy goats, which all have to be fed and watered. After that its up to the chickens to feed them and collect the eggs.

Later in the day, Brent said he had the "deal of the century for us". On day 2 were to go up to his other house, Priello, up in the Tuscan mountains and clean the place because he had guests coming and didn't have time to do it himself. In exchange, we got a five bed, five bathroom house to ourselves with a private pool for four days. I think it was a pretty good deal!

Since then we've been back on the main farm doing our farming duties, which I love. In fact the farming life could be for me. Apart from our one little incident yesterday, everything has gone smoothly. We were left in charge of bringing the herd out for their daily graze, which is harder than it sounds. They just go in any direction and when one heads somewhere, the others follow running behind. Just when we thought we had gotten them under control quietly grazing in one spot, Brent comes running out shouting "This isn't my land kids!", while we were standing watching them nibbling on an apple tree. Whoops! Needless to say we had to quickly usher them out of there, so you could say our first goat herding experience wasn't exactly a dazzling success.

The land of spicy hookahs

From Madrid we flew air Maroc to Marrakech, the plane was slightly scary being covered in arabic art and writing.

When we finally arrived, even the airport is distinctly Morrocan:

As we made our way over to the taxis, they were nearly jostling with each other to get the stupid tourists fare - we paid him 170 dirhams to be dropped off in the middle of a road with cars and bikes coming from all directions to be handed over to a man with a wheelbarrow. We found out later a taxi should be no more than 60 dirhams.

The man with the wheelbarrow took our bags and proceeded to walk in front of all the traffic out towards the main square the djeema al fna. This square is busy day or night but quite hard to take pictures of because if you take out your camera people are over to you straight away trying to get money out of you or drag you off somewhere.

In the middle of the mayhem are storytellers, men with monkeys, snake charmers, women sitting under umbrellas doing henna, people selling everything from dead hedgehogs and ostrich eggs to hats and wallets that looked like they had been stolen from tourists. It is also the main area for food stalls and huge carts selling fresh orange juice for 3 dirhams which is about 25 cents.

When we finally got to our riad which was down tiny dark winding streets, the man with the wheelbarrow also decided to rip us off, asking for 100 dirhams.

After paying him we were pleasantly surprised; stepping into the riad off the street is like another world. It was decorated in traditional Moroccan style with a pool outside, we were also served a breakfast the next day which for 18€ each a night is not bad.

On the seond night we ventured back out to the square:

Again, in Morocco, apart from the lady in our riad, the people were not too friendly. Everyone was always trying to get something from you which if you ignored, would shout abuse after you! Otherwise they were trying to nearly knock you down with their bikes which they race around on even down they tiny narrow streets with no rhyme or reason, people just drive wherever they feel like going.

The food though was an affair to remember; even cheap cous cous was delicious. On the last night we went to a restaurant that was obviously marketed towards foreigners, it would have been probably too expensive for locals, judging by the prices. The atmosphere was dark and secretive with mosaic-ed walls and service was provided by a waiter in a Fes hat. You could imagine it being a haunt for American expats a là Casablanca. I had a tajine there that was just the right blend of spicy and sweet served in the traditional dish.

Thumbs down for Madrid

To get to Madrid, we came via Irun in the north of Spain and had a three hour stopover to get the next train to Madrid. All that time we had nothing to do but sit on little wooden tracks turned into benches and stare at a little Spanish shopkeeper.

When we finally got onto the train, we were in first class because there were no 2nd class left, and it was even fancier than the tgv to Bordeaux, no slumming it for us :) Me a poor peasant that I am have never been in first class, where we got everyting free from wine and nuts, to earfones, a film and dinner. Spain though was even worse for vegetarians than France. Nearly every meal there has some animal body part in it. I just stuck to the gazpacho, a cold tomato soup and some fresh crusty bread.



When we got to the hotel finally about six hours later, Patrick who was in charge of booking the hotel, informs me "oh yeah by the way the hotel is a four star, it was the cheapest I could find" as I looked at him incredulously. I think someone was living in a dream!


The people in Spain, were not all that friendly, granted that we didn't speak Spanish, but you would think staff in a four star hotel would be able to speak English, but they had hardly a word.

On the second night there we found a family of ants trailing along under the bed and all over our clothes, we literally had ants in our pants!

Of Madrid itself, the city has some beautiful buildings and architecture but we were situated a good bit outside the city centre so we spent a lot of time on the metro, from one place to another.

The main sights that we saw were the Palacio Royale and the Prado museum, but unfortunately you couldn't take any pictures inside the Prado, which has famous paintings to rival Italy and the palace was closing for the day at three just as we got there.









some of the paintings the Prado houses: http://www.vincesear.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/bosch.gif Hieronymus Bosch - Garden of earthly delights
Las Meninas - Valezquez http://educacionplasticayvisual.wikispaces.com/space/showimage/velazquez.meninas.jpg

The three graces - Rubens
http://www.museodelprado.es/en/bienvenido/15-masterpieces/ficha-obra/obra/the-three-graces/

On the whole although we were just staying in Madrid to wait for a flight to Morocco, I wouldn't go back.

Biarritz

So here we are in Biarritz, I dont know why I always thought Biarritz was associated with skiing but its exactly the opposite its a surfers paradise.

Everything really revolves around the beach so when it rains like today there nothing much to do, so we just went to the Musee de la Mer - the aquarium.

Heres some gratutitous shots...of the beach

And here's the beach today, the red flag was up and when the waves were coming in it looked like a whirlpool.


We'll be leaving here in a couple of days, next stop Marrakesh. Oh and if anyone was wondering, we decided to skip Germany because we didnt fancy beer and leiderhosen also it was out of the way. C'est la vie