The Grand Tour

I found this poem on the Net. It's by Cicely Fox Smith poet of many a sailor and soldier poem in the early 20th century. Despite the slightly racist undertone of its final stanzas (don't forget, this was the 1920s and for many the World was still this strange thing Out There and Unknown),  it's sort of 'fitting' in the context of our Traipse Through Europe. Apparently a lot of the poet's poems 'ave been turned into folk songs. Enjoy.

  

I always wished to see the world, I 'ad no chanst before,
Nor I don't suppose I should 'ave if there 'adn't been no war;
I used to read the tourist books, the shippin' news also,
An' I 'ad the chanst o' goin', so I couldn't 'elp but go.

We 'ad a spell in Egypt first, before we moved along
Acrost the way to Suvla, where we got it 'ot an' strong;
We 'ad no drink when we was dry, no rest when we was tired,
But I've seen the Perramids an' Spink, which I 'ad oft  desired.

I've what 'll last me all my life, to talk about an' think,
I've sampled various things to eat an' various more to drink;
I've strolled among them dark bazaars, which makes the pay to fly
(An' I 'ad my fortune told as well, but that was all my eye!)

I've seen them little islands too — I couldn't say their names —
An' towns as white as washin'-day, an' mountains spoutin' flames;
I've watched the sun come lonely up on miles an' miles of sea,
Why, folks 'ave paid a 'undred pound an' seen no more than me!

The sky is some'ow bluer there — in fact, I never knew
As any sun could be so 'ot or any sky so blue;
There's dates an' figs an' suchlike things all 'angin' on the trees,
An' black folks walkin' up an' down as natural as you please.

I always wished to see the world, I'm fond o' life an' change,
But Abdul got me in the leg; an' this is passin' strange,
That when you see old England's shore, all wrapped in mist an' rain,
Why, it's worth the bloomin' bundle to be comin' 'ome again!

Espana

And then ... we were in Spain. France, Holland, Belgium, Britain, Italy, Portugal, Spain.

Arriving on a sunny Thursday, after a long drive through the beautiful Alentejo (the 'bread basket' of Portugal, in full spring colours of bright yellow and soft purple), Friday proved to be a wet, cold, cloudy day, very uninspiring, so we spent most of it inside. 

Peter, Ann and Jane left for Salamanca in the course of the morning. Tearful goodbyes informed us all that my love will be sorely missed but, no doubt, they will be reunited soon. 

Tomorrow, Saturday, weather permitting, we're planning a few outings to a few of the many Roman treasures in the town. We're spending a few days with Toni and Rita (one of Niki's oldest friends) and will make our way back to Lisboa on Sunday, so we can recuperate from the long drive back for a day at Carlos and Christina's, before embarking on the Emirates flight back via Dubai to Sydney.

Peace and quiet...

Sarzedo was knowingly planned for the end of our Grand Tour as we knew that it would be a relaxing time - in fact, there is so little to do in Sarzedo, and there is no Internet, that the only option is to relax, to veg, to ponder, to read, to go to bed early, to enjoy walking through the village, to go up a mountain, watch a forest fire, have dinner together etc. etc. Ann, Peter and Jane joined us there for a short break in the mountains. It was, in one word, lovely. The photos tell the story. Our house has come along a fair bit (inside walls had appeared and the bathroom was in the process of taking shape, and the retaining wall), and friendly neighbours had cleared the garden (the height of the grass was a bit of a fire hazard...) We're deliberating the next steps as we speak ...

sarzedo -

Sarzedo

We're about to go into the mountains tomorrow, Sunday, where Niki's house nestles patiently in the 150-people village of Sarzedo. We're going to stay in Carlos and Christine's house in the village, where we have stayed before, and check out the extent to which Niki's house has improved / progressed. Over the past three years some work has been done (it's by no means finished yet, at all; there is, for instance, no water and electricity yet), but apparently more has been done than we think (according to Carlos who is overseeing and doing most of the building). We'll see what we find. Peter and Ann, and Aunt Jane, are on their way to Sarzedo, too, after a 24-hour boat trip to the North of Spain (from the UK) and will stay in Covilhã. It should be nice to spend some more time with them: us up the mountain, and they down the mountain. We'll be cut off until Thursday, though - no Internet there (unless we kindly go and ask Christine's father, who only speaks Portuguese and French (at a million miles an hour) and who seems to be the Only Man With Internet In The Village. So probably no phones either, and we are actually quite looking forward to that...

Nipping back

Just nipping back to a moment on our Milan sojourn, which I hadn't blogged about yet: walking through, and having dinner in, the town of Monza, where Niki's friends Marina and Francesco live with their children Andrea and Margarita. Monza is a quiet town outside of Milan, and really pretty. We spent a few days with them and they had invited about 15 of their friends to meet us. We spent a very enjoyable evening partaking in Monzaic (Monzean, Monzish?) delicacies. On the way home to the hotel, we got lost (it wasn't the drink, honest) but found our way in the end. While we were having dinner, and yakking away with the locals, Tess and Yarrow went out with Marina (16) and Francesco (19) to a club, and arrived back in the apartment after us (closer to 1 than to 12) all excited and happy having danced and 'hung out' all nigh.

monza - slideshow

A moment

A wonderful moment: I heard Yarrow singing upstairs, and Vanessa playing piano. I stole up the stairs where Carlos was already peeking around the corner to admire the impromptu duo. I joined them there and they kept on playing... Do we have a future, girls?

Dinners

Pictorial evidence of two dinners this week: one at Susie's, with Miguel, Susanna, Maria and Xana in Susanna's flat; and one with Christine and Carlos, Vanessa and Thomas in Povo (where Niki's apartment is).

Partay!

Having swanned around Lisboa and environs for the rest of the week (Carlos and Christine are very, very hospitable and giving us all space and time, it's really wonderful), today we had my love's hello-farewell party. In order to avoid having to traipse around Lisboa and try to see everybody individually, nice though that may have been (but impossible), we had arranged a party picnic in one of the parks in the area and about 30 or so people came down to celebrate. The sun was out, the moods convivial, the chatter endless... A lovely afternoon!

parc

Portugal

And so we have suddenly started the last leg of our journey. We've arrived in Portugal and are staying with my love's friends and colleagues Christine and Carlos, and their children Vanessa and Thomas. Their house is built in a village on a hill (not uncommon in Portugal...), overlooking parts of Lisboa. Tess and Yarrow are studying hard and have already done one of their exams yesterday. Tomorrow, Wednesday, they will sit their second 'stint'  of papers. I'd like to give them a medal for 'Keeping At It' and their teachers for cooperating in this our Grand Tour venture. As we speak Niki and Yarrow are having a DM (Deep-And-Meaninful) about Utopia and Distopia, in preparation for Extension English. Over dinner we had lovely and lighthearted wordplay about differences between languages in which Thomas decided that tomorrow he will tell somebody "You and me - gezellig, bloemkool.", and see what happens.

This afternoon we drove to Belem, an area in Lisbon, where the world-famous Pasteis de Belem can be had and eaten. Yum! Perhaps Anjes remembers we went there when she and the girls came to Portugal a few years ago?

We then sauntered around the area and visited the Padrão dos Descobrimentos (Monument to the Discoveries) which is surrounded by a giant marble square with a world map. The monument celebrates discoveries made by Portugese explorers and is very impressive to see. Among the plethora of monuments and statues we have come across during our tour through Europe (and there are many!) this is one of the few monuments celebrating secular human activity, and I felt that was quite refreshing (even though it represents a somewhat romanticized idealization of the Portuguese exploration).

Milano

From Milan, the setting for some of Shakespeare's Two Gentlemen of Verona. The play where the character of Valentine speaks:

... now let us take our leave.
To Milan let me hear from thee by letters
Of thy success in love, and what news else
Betideth here in absence of thy friend;
And likewise will visit thee with mine.

Milan, compared to Rome, strikes us as a more 'refined' city, but perhaps it is just because it is quieter, less busy, offering more space to breathe. It seems a more sophisticated city, less pre-occupied.

Having said that, it is the city where we have least enjoyed the accommodation we have booked. Some apartments do not deserve the name 'apartment'. Our present Milanese 'digs' should be refered to as, erm, cupboard? As you come into the apartment complex, you are struck by the Grandeur of it. The apartment, however, is next to the Concierge's one, and we suspect it was perhaps once used as his storage room. It has, admittedly, two stories (well a ground floor and mezzanine, which you get up to via a staircase), and it is beautifully appointed with huge, classic architraves, wooden floors, marble and the like, but there is only one window, and in the bathroom - tucked away behind our mezannine bedroom - I really can't stand upright (that's how low the ceiling is). It looks huge thanks to wall wide mirrors, that give it a sense of space without actually giving you room to move. We all feel incredibly claustrophobic, so we'll all be glad to leave it again Saturday morning. 

Outside ... palatial.

Inside ... erm, get me out of here...

Milan, though, is lovely and we spend most of the time outside, in town. Yesterday, while Tess and Yarrow caught up on school work and exam preparation, Niki and I visited a museum and the Duomo Cathedral, a gothic, squat, gloomy building in the centre where one wasn't allowed to take photographs unless one had paid six euros. Reminiscent of the Vatican I, of course, took photos and ignored the fervent and repeated admonissions of the 'minders'.

A demure, austere, gloomy Duoma

At night we had dinner with Niki's friend marina's mother, Fiorella. Marina's relationship with Niki goes back a long, long time, so it was good for them to catch up and for us newbies to the Italian scene it was a lovely 'authentic' way to meet Italians and learn about their customs. We were treated to a real Italian meal with anti-pasti, pasti, first course, second course and two deserts! 

Last night Niki's friend Marina and her husband Francesco had invited us to join them at a ballet performance by Teatro alla Scala, the our dance and ballet talent associated with the Scala Opera House in Milan. A wonderful, dreamy, evening full of music, colour, dance, stories and applause. We all loved it!

How do they do it...?

Today, Friday, we visited the Duomo Cathedral again to let the girls get a taste of it (no photos, though).  After this, Tess and Yarrow shouted us lunch in the centre in a lovely pavement cafe (the pavement cafe with the Very Attractive Waiter, I am told), which was really kind of them.  The cafe sported an inside Living Room - interesting option, for a cafe ...

A dining room, perhaps?

To polish the day off we visited a Modiglini and Contemporaries exhibition in the Palazzo Real (just next to the Duomo) which was very interesting. A guided audio tour, which is the things to do these days in museums told us everything about Modiglini and his eastern European and Russian contemporaries of which we knew precious little.

A stroll on the way home through the Milanese fashion quarter, basically the same as the historic centre around the Piazza Duomo, a roughly rectangular area known as the Quadrilatero d'Oro (Golden Quadrilateral), bounded by Via Montenapoleone, Via Sant'Andrea, Via Monzani and Via della Spiga, showed us another side of Milan life. This is where shoes cost at least 300 euros, most bags 1,000 euros, dresses 5,000 and jewelry is priceless (literally), where the Bold and Beautiful do their shopping, but which (I have to say) is far-flung from any reality that I know. Most shops, of course, are empty, with only the attendants waiting for customers.

Another world

On Saturday morning Francesco will pick us up from the apartment, and take us to Monza where we have booked into a hotel for a night. We'll spend the weekend with Marina and her family.

Disappointed

And then sometimes, you look forward to a day like today where I was hoping to show the girls Vatican City, building on my own impressions of it from twenty years ago. The impressions I then had were of art and architecture, of history and power, not so much of religion because the pomp and circumstance have never meant much to me in that respect. Then, I just walked into the Vatican on a morning, anhd was amazed at finding Michaelangelo's Pieta just there, and was intrigued and impressed and the sheer size and artistry of the Basilica and the area around it.

But then you find out that time has since moved on, the world has changed, people travel in herds, and the day turns out completely differently. Our visit to the Vatican was, and I know I write on behalf of all of us, an utter disappointment. Having learnt about Roman Circuses earlier this week at the Colloseum and Pompei, I found that the Vatican anno 2013 is nothing more than that: a huge Circus Maximus in which 'they' cram as many people as they possibly can (probably worth about 1.2 million euros a day - yes, I did say 'a day'). Hasn't the RC Church have enough money already?

First we waited outside for (free) entry to the Basilica for about 45 minutes until we calculated we probably would have to wait another hour and a half before reaching the door, by which time we would have lost our pre-paid and pre-booked place to enter the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museum.

So we left the line, and walked along another line (which we could skip thanks to the pre-booked tickets) of about a kilometer long.

Having entered the Museum entrace, we shared the artistically and historically beautiful corridors and halls of the Vatican with thousands of 'pilgrims' of sorts and felt like sardines in a tin, football supporters in an arena, cows in a slaughter-house, being herded along at the slowest speed imaginable (well, you literally couldn't place one foot in front of the other without bumping into somebody) through what now are, in fact, a series of museums leading to what is being presented as the piece-de-resistance, the Sistine Chapel. The museums along the route show off the unimaginable wealth the Roman Catholic Church has gathered over the centuries: ranging from sculpture to painting to tapestry to architecture to books to ...

All museums and the Chapel, in which we had been looking forward to musing over Michaelagelo's paintings, were as much a disappointment as everything else, simply because there was no way in h**l that we were going to see anything of it, or were able to stop, look and ponder. When we finally did get to the Sistine Chapel, we were so over this whole Charade that we didn't know how fast to cross the floor of this 'pit' and to squirm our way through the people trying to stay upright, in order to reach the other side and follow the arrows for Exit. I do not exaggerate.

All four of us expressed feelings of disgust at the spectacle, as we made our way through the final chambers and shops, and sat down on some steps outside, at the money-grabbing, greedy, unholy spectacle.

Sure, millions of people want to see it; and sure, it's almost impossible even with the most advanced contemporary tourism management techniques to control entry and exit at such a scale, but I mean, did they really have to line the corridors through which we were being 'mustered' with trinket shops selling boxes of jigsaw puzzles, pencils and crap 'made in China' wares?

 Really?

Vatican - slideshow

Pomp ... ei

We knew it was going to be a long, long day. We knew we had to get up at Sparrow's cheep, and wouldn't be back till dusk. What we didn't know was that it would be such a lovely day, a fascinating excursion and a beautiful insight into the hearts and souls of the inhabitants of Pompei. We all know the story of Vesuvius erupting (they had no idea, by the way, they were living at the foot of something called a volcano, they didn't have the word for it), and our visit to this lost (and then regained) Italian city showed us the realities of life in those day and the degree of destruction the natural disaster caused. Thanks to the fact that Pompei wasn't actually buried under lava, just under ash and stone (a layer of 10 metres high!), the city was, to a certain degree, saved for posterity. For centuries superstition kept people away from the area and from living there, until early in the 19th century archeologists decided it was time to unearth history. Hopefully the photos will show you what the day was like and what we experienced. We hadn't really ever done a ' package tour'  like this one (including guides, lunch, coffee breaks, transport, excursions) but we enjoyed every minute of it. Yarrow, especially, will have a lot to show and tell for it all when they start doing Roman History on her return. Don't forget to go to Tess' facebook page to see more photos!

Pompei - slideshow

For there is in London...

Dictionary maker Samuel Johnson once said (and often gets misquoted by those who leave out the second half of the quote): "If a man is tired of London, he is tired of life, for there is in London all that life can afford.' True things, but on a two-day flash visit to the British capital, surely, there is no way in which one can sample all that life can afford. We took a hop on hop off bus to see the sights, and did (see the sights) - guided by a few great guides, lots of humour and Interesting Facts and Factoids. We stopped off at the Changing of the Guards (a tad boring, it has to be said, to see a bunch a red-coated bear-hat wearing soldiers go off and on duty, and there weren't even horses involved, nor puppies!). Subsequently we interluded at Covent Garden where Niki and Hans had a meeting with one of their new publishers, Harper Collins, who had already offered work in Liverpool and wanted to discuss a project for later in the year. At the end of the day we visited St Paul's Cathedral (gawd, so many steps up!) and even sat in on a bit of Evensong with a live choir singing (pretending to be a group of 70 American Pilgrims, who hadn't turned up). We left mid-mass though, as we were meeting Richard, Niki's second cousin twice removed (I think that's correct) who took us to his home in High Barnett, where we stayed the night. Early the next morning he took us back into the city, shouted us breakfast and left us (he works in the City) to wend our ways through the rest of town, visiting the British Museum, where I had another meeting, this time with Garnet Publishers, to finalize a deal, while my love and lovely daughters did the Top Ten of Things to See in the museum. Lunch in the cafe and another trekette in the Underground + a walk took us to the Globe Theatre of the South Bank, next to the Tate Modern, where we sat in on part of a rehearsal of that night's show The Tempest. We were all very sad that we couldn't go and see the plane at night, as we had planned to go back to Polebrook that night. Good thing we had already seen a Shakespeare play earlier during the trip.

London - slideshow