This is an island near Venice where Murano glass is traditionally made – and still is. All sorts of luridly colored frogs and cats and Xmas decorations. And chandeliers, goblets and heavy necklaces. Some of it is amazingly beautiful. And some really isn’t. But I guess they’re trying to appeal to a very broad range of tourists and enthusiasts. Statistically someone is going to be an avid amusing frog or pig collector.
It was such a perfect day. We went to Murano in a fabulous, wooden trimmed open launch – James Bond style, wind in the hair, blue sky, sparkling wake etc etc. and then took the regular ferry to Burano*.
Murano is not nearly as quaint and touristic as it could be. It seems like a very congenial, ancient little village populated with real people with busy non-tourist industry based lives.
And Burano, nearby is also gorgeous but more heavily unnatural and one dimensional. It’s all about lace table cloths and people buying Pinocchio puppet souvenirs. It’s still very beautiful and sweet. Like a cross between The Prisoner and Legoland – but with pasta.
I think the lunch we had in Murano was our best meal in Italy.

*Murano / Burano
Amman / Oman
Philadelphia / Philadelphia
You have to be paying close attention to follow this blog on a map. Luckily there isn’t a quiz at the end.

Yay Venice. The best and whackiest place in the world. We went to see the Biennale which was an over whelming amount of artistic stimulation to absorb in one go and reinforced my philistine attitude to art. Most of it was childish, trite contrived bull shit. My truly artistic friends (Shelley Watson springs to mind) will be gnashing their teeth at such an opportunity being wasted on me. Spain’s exhibit was piles of meticulously sifted and sorted dirt. And that was one of the less affected ones. Hackneyed, clichéd 6th form art folder stuff. Bah humbug.

That is my two cents worth. Most of it was cool. Here’s the Spanish dirt in case you thought I was making it up.

The British exhibit was breathtaking. The Australian one was dum. The NZ one was eyewateringly dull, and frustrating. It could have been an installation from a Westfeild Mall. And its not that I am particularly mean spirited or jaded (or in any way well informed about art) because I thought the Michael Parakowhai exhibit last time was mind-blowingly good and made me want to stand up and sing the National Anthem on the Grand Canal.

Venice – what a thoroughly choice place. It suits me entirely. Its all about stumbling about looking at lovely old things and eating and drinking. There isn’t even a need to be careful in traffic. We stayed in a place we’ve stayed before which is perfect. We had an attic room this time with a rooftop / Cave Creek style balcony that the children weren’t allowed onto.

And just to shake things up a bit, so it didn’t get boring they held a regatta. On a perfect cloudless day, only marred by a Russian oligarch buzzing the canal in his chopper, they rowed past a variety of small, local boats and old, enormous traditional historic barges. And there were bands playing, and choirs of retired gondoliers singing and elderly nuns on folding chairs. What a lovely day. And then there were rowing races between the local suburb’s boats – perhaps a precursor to our corporate dragon boat race teams, but with loads more velvet and gold trim, and more nuns cheering.

All sunny. All delicious. Mostly Octopus.
And we had a Father’s Day picnic.

After that we drove to Florence and stayed in a really great, randomly chosen hotel which was a quick walk into the center of town.

Florence is really nice, but its incredibly crowded. I think on ‘top of the usual tourist hordes its near the coast and they bus in cruise ship multitudes as well.

The Duomo is arguably one of the finest churches in the world. It’s made of layered pink, white and green marble, geometric patterns and statuary with a legendary dome on top. (Its very like many mosques, -minus the statues – but don’t tell them that.) Its heavy and oppressive and solid and has survived the Arno flooding all over it throughout history. The baptistery next door is also beautiful and has legendary bronze doors that I love.

We ate Bistecca Florentine – amazing. And loads of pasta. We had one exceptional meal – stuffed rabbit, sole, liver … all made by one multigenerational family, from the bread to the pasta. With a lovely Nana in an apron polishing glasses, and a couple of great-uncles on lap tops.

We spent a whole day at the Pitti Palace which was interesting and has lovely gardens. It also features in the Dan Brown book which must never be read.

special coke for Aunty Flis!

When we left Rome we rented a car and drove north to San Gimignano. When I say ‘we’ I mean Mike drove – because only a mental person would choose to drive in Italy as Sandi Riches can attest to.
San Gimignano is a very lovely little hill top town. It’s famous for its medieval towers which survived the war and its very well preserved if a little twee and contrived. It features in ‘Tea with Moussolini’ which no one else seems to like except me. Cher isn’t to everyone’s taste.

It’s just such a beautiful, fun, delicious city. And we met Daddy there! Yipee! Which meant I didn’t have to be in charge – or even think – yipee!!! All I had to do was eat three course meals every 4 hours and drink wine. And stuff in gelato. It was heavenly.
We stayed in Trastevere – the old residential part, very near the River Tiber.

The food was uniformly wonderful. It seemed to be octopus season. ‘Pulpo’ three times a day. The only unwonderful dish we ordered was a weird pumpkin ravioli with a fruity, spiced Xmas cake flavoured sauce. Not awful, just very challenging.
The idea of having an entree, a bowl of pasta and THEN a main course and dessert seemed impossible … at first :).

We spent an afternoon at the Colosseum, which was great. I’d only ever walked around the outside and never been into it – so it was really fascinating. It’s a shame it wasn’t the 1960’s when it was famous for its proliferation of wild cats. I did take the kids to Torre Argentina to see the cats there – but it was drizzly so they were hiding.

We saw the tourists littering the Spanish Steps – I don’t understand why it’s an attraction? It always seems romantic in films but in real life its just a squatting point for unattractive people to drink their Starbucks and be propositioned by trinket salesmen.
The weather that day was beautifully heavy and oppressive with black clouds and very loud thunder – and inevitably it poured in a huge deluge.

It’s tricky running over slick greasy cobbled lanes, leaping puddles in sandals. We cunningly thought we’d shelter in the 1000 year old Pantheon – one of the most lovely buildings in the world. This was foolish because a) every other genius tourist in Rome was packed in there and b) it famously has an open ocular letting the rain into the middle of the dome, onto the tourists. And, as it’s a Catholic church these days, rather than a pagan Roman temple they frown on open umbrellas. It was quite fun to be in the ‘temple’ and experience the crush of 1000 steaming, drippy people. It felt more authentically pagan.

One delight in Rome, and other European tourist traps is that when it rains a charming Sri Lankan man will instantly be at your elbow selling you an umbrella. Very convenient. No need to think ahead or be prepared.
I was very put out (and moist) in the rain in London when there were no little umbrella men to be found. ☹

We threw coins over our shoulders into the Trevi fountain (which means you’ll come back to Rome one day) and Jack spent time picking up squashed bottle caps to check whether they were old Roman coins that had wriggled up to the surface. A habit he developed in Roman ruins in Jordan – but with no success.

The kids had a challenge to spot all the Romulus and Remus they could see – and all the different SPQR signs – which is of course hilarious because that’s where Mummy goes for ‘lunch’ on Sundays.

We searched out the best gelato store in Rome – all organic and local and delicious.

Rome is very pedestrian friendly with walkable distances between famous bits – but all the little back alleys and streets are fascinating. Beautiful glimpses of gardens; fountains everywhere, and thousand year old drinking fountains; the river side is lovely; the buildings are gorgeous; the churches are abundant … bells rings, the sun shines and then its time to eat more pasta. And everywhere there are palaces and statues and monuments and ruins and its quite bewildering to have so much continuous history; thousands of years of buildings and sculptures and adornments all plonked together in layers and still lived in.

We climbed to the top of the Castello* (which is Hadrian’s Tomb) and saw the golden St Michael statue and the great view. The Pope was doing his business at St Peters that morning so there were enormous crowds and bands playing and pilgrims and nun-tourists and flag waving happy Catholics down below us.
*The Castello features in the newest Dan Brown book – which you must never read unless you are trapped on a plane/train and it is the only book in English. An 11 year old sponsored heavily by the Italian tourism ministry could have written it.

We went to St Peters late one evening and had lovely low light shining through the stained glass and very few other people to enjoy it with. It is, as you can imagine, very golden and jeweled and shiney – twinkling with the loot of two thousand years of nicking all the best stuff from around the world.

The churches in Italy have a volunteer clothes-police force of frowning old ladies outside churches to stop tourist in their togs, grown men in shorts and semi-naked Israeli girls from entering. They hand out scarfs to cover shoulders or use lava-lava style over short-shorts. Bravo.

Here’s some photos of the kids sliming themselves up in Dead Sea mud. I can assure you they looked sleek and elegant and 10 years younger once it rubbed off …
The Dead Sea area is quite creepy/beautiful. As you drive down into the valley (the lowest place on earth!) everything living dies away. There are some artificially irrigated plantations near the towns, but everywhere else is crispy, hot, parched and has a thin layer of sterilising poisonous salt over it to make sure everything’s good and dead. The sun blasts down and it is all glare and white and rock.
The sea itself is really a medium sized long thin lake. One side is Jordan and the other is Israel and Palestine. They all siphon off the water for industrial uses as fast as they can and the sea level is decreasing a meter a year. In 20 years it will have disappeared they say.
Once it wasn’t so toxically salty – we saw some very beautiful mosaics in Madaba which were of a map of the area in biblical times, showing Jerusalem and Bethlehem and the sea which once had fishing boats and sailing ships on it.

We scrambled about a ruined Crusader castle for an afternoon. Had a swim in the salty sea – very difficult and strange – it’s impossible to sink because the water is so buoyant. It’s a very strange experience. And did lots of swimming pool swimming: much easier. The food was unremarkable … but not too many flies. Yay.

What can I say? It’s amazing.
The main entrance is from a town called Wadi Musa (The Valley of Moses) and it’s then about a 1/2 hour walk into a canyon to reach the Siq – which is a very narrow, (3-4 mtr wide) steep sided ‘crack’ through the mountains, another 45 mins and it opens onto the Treasury building. The most iconic one. The Nabateans, who built the city had water piped through the Siq – one side with water for the camels and horses and the other side with fresh spring water for travellers. No water now. The story is it was ‘discovered’ by a German adventurer in 1812 – but of course the local people had been living there continuously. The city was mostly abandoned after a huge earthquake in 360AD, but people have always lived there. Nabateans, Arabs, Romans, Crusaders, Ottomans, Beduions … its like a train station.
We left at 7am, no tourists (thanks Syria!), no heat (yet) and rode horses in. Fantastic.
It would take years to see the whole place. There’s miles of valleys and ruins. Roman market places, crusader castles, a byzantine church, and the Nabatean facades which it’s most famous for.
We spent 6 hours looking around until it got too hot. We saw photos of it in the snow, in December which would be breath taking. I think you should go and see it. But you should go in Spring or Autumn – not the middle of Summer. And definitely ride horses in – not scabby old camels or donkeys.
We spent 4 nights in Wadi Musa in total – amazing food – but the machine gun fire outside the hotel window for hours, at the same time the sarin gas was dropped in Syria / US evacuated their embassies / Israels fired rockets into Lebanon … kind of took some of the fun out of it.
The hotel said the gunfire was for ‘religious’ reasons and they were ‘happy’ guns not bad guns. I now know that I am not ‘happy’ with the sound of close machine gun fire – another new experience.