SOMEWHERE OVER THE RAINBOW

I forgot to post Carnival pictures yesterday -

We managed to make contact with our family who had been a bit anxious while we had been shipboard because our phones had not worked.  This had not surprised us because they kept bleeping and welcoming us to various countries …  so we were Welcomed to Italy, Iceland (?), Albania and finally Greece.  Speaking person-to-person with my folks was reassuring and we felt a bit less out on a limb.

After a gargantuan breakfast in Patras, we set off down Greek motorways, which were much more reassuring as we had half a chance of reading the passing signs and understanding what they all meant.

I spied a patch of blue sky and imagined learning the Greek language well enough to explain to one of the village people what – a piece of blue sky big enough to make a sailor a pair of trousers – actually meant.  I think it best to leave that for the time being as it would be well beyond my current capabilities.  The road from Patras to Piraeus is a marvellous new venture but the tolls were a fraction of those we paid in France and Italy.  We could see new tunnels through the mountains being constructed and primed by K – I did see the Corinth canal as we whizzed over it and marvelled that cruise ships could actually pass through it.  I also had a good look about and imagined where ancient Corinth fitted in with all the high rise buildings and rather run of the mill concrete architecture of modern day Corinth.  I wondered what St Paul would have made of it and what the Corinth of his day looked like when he penned his epistle to the Corinthians.

We arrived at Piraeus at noon and the patch of blue had expanded to take in the whole sky. On the motorway approach to the town, a street market/boot fair was going on and cars were parked all the way down the motorway for about a mile with people walking back and forth with goods for sale and shopping bags stuffed with produce.  I was again clinging on for grim death and thought “this could only happen in Greece”!!

Hurrah our first sunny day of the trip and I thankfully took my coat off but realised there was no space in the car to put it anywhere.    We stopped at the port café where Kimon had a much needed ice-cold beer while we waited to board our third ferry boat  – believe me, he certainly deserved it!

 

NO SUCH THING AS A FREE LUNCH

Ancona to Patras

The ferry from Ancona was rather luxurious and we were determined to enjoy every minute.  Just as we had chosen our meal at the cafeteria our names were called out over the ship’s tanoy and K had to leave his hot dinner and go investigate why were being called.  Would you believe it, we were given a free meal lunch ticket just after we had paid for our meal.  Never mind, we thought, we will use this for lunch tomorrow and our meal was warming and very welcome.

We had a bit of a lounge about because there were gales and rain going on outside – so sitting outside on deck was out of the question.  We checked out the shop, the swimming pool, the wellbeing centre (= beauty treatments, sauna, Jacuzzi etc but thought that we should probably conserve our cash for later.  All in all it was a good break and K made the most of the opportunity to rest from driving and unwind a bit.  On presenting our free lunch ticket to the cashier for lunch the following day, we were informed that lunch was free for everything on the menu except fish.  … And you guessed it; we had chosen fish – so our free lunch did not happen.   The fish, however, was excellent,

The spanking new vessel boasted of Internet and I hopefully sat down to start my blog.  First I asked the Receptionist where to go.  Go to the Bar to pay and come back to Reception for a password.  This involved several flights of stairs and walks up and down the ship both ways – especially as the password did not work, the keyboard made it very difficult indeed to use @ without using various other keys to make it operate.  So all in all my hour was up before I could really get started and I got into a muddle with all the different passwords needed.

We arrived at Patras at teatime and quite a scene awaited us.  It was Carnival (before the beginning of Lent) and, terrifyingly everyone was out in the streets in fancy dress costume with music blaring from every lamp post.  I was clinging on for grim death as K steered the car around all these partygoers.  As we arrived at the hotel, there was a great flurry of families all dressed to the nines in fancy costumes for an evening out en famille.  It was good to see and great fun.  K and I wished we had a silly hat or something we could adapt to enjoy the fun but nothing was mineable from the depths of the luggage in the back of the car.

The weather was wet, cold and we fiddled with the hotel room air con heater on the wall to get warm.  After the huge meals we had had shipboard, we went to bed without supper and watched a very bad American film on TV with Greek subtitles which was difficult to differentiate with the Coca-Cola adverts!

We sat down to a Creta Beach style enormous breakfast buffet the following morning – in fact the place we were staying at reminded us very much of our first trip ever to Crete when the children were all with us – to the style of the hotel and the bungalows beside the beach.  Our son had been at junior school at the time and spent most evenings searching for “creatures” by torchlight– much in the way of “My family and other animals”.   This time, however, the rain did not stop and we had a lake outside our french windows with pine cones floating about in it.  K and I both feel that we have sucked cloud, wind and rain from England with us and wonder if we will ever get the chance to put some lighter weight clothes on!

RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING, RECALCULATING

After all our expectations of Venice, sadly it was a bit of a wash-out. The freezing cold weather had put sight-seeing off the menu and we had a restful afternoon and a brief evening out at the nearest restaurant to keep the costs to a minimum.

We had a funny moment at the restaurant when the Waiter came with a trolley to serve the two young fellows at the next table with Steak Tartare. He made a masterly and rather theatrical show of mixing all the herbs, oil, egg and raw minced steak and we looked on in fascination making a mental note of the method and ingredients. K could not resist doing a Mr Bean impersonation of reacting to the raw meat and finding two dozen places to hide it away so that he did not offend anybody. The Waiter thought we were a bit odd anyway so we had to get our hilarity under control and eat two plates of food which neither of us had ordered but our Italian was so non-existent, we did not like to say anything.

The car was packed up ready for an early start in the morning for the journey down to Ancona. We checked maps, spoke to people, did lots of revision and prepared ourselves to leave lots of 'getting lost time' so that we could be sure of catching the ferry but luckily in the end the journey was quite straightforward. I jumped out of bed at 6.00 am and reminded myself that I had now retired!

When we first planned the trip, a drive down the Italian coast via Venice, Padua, Rimini looked wonderful and we prepared ourselves for lots of spectacular countryside and scenery. We set off in sunshine, progressed into mists and then found ourselves in thick fog. After that we had fog plus recent very heavy snowfall and the sky only turned a little less grey as we entered Ancona itself. The brief glances I did have of seaside compared disfavourably with Bognor in December!! I think there were lovely views with rustic farmhouses and wide roofs made of red ceramic pottery tiles but under several inches of snow, their photogenic charm was a bit difficult to find.

The Agents promised an upgrade from an inside cabin to an outside one, so we stood our ground at the ticket desk once we got to Ancona feeling that our time cut short in Venice, our long drive, petrol and frequent tolls counted for something. Even we were impressed with the result with a wonderful cabin, free complimentary evening meal and 11 Euros from the ticket clerk! After this we took the car and got into the queue watching all the cargo driving off the ship and waited for our turn to drive on.

At last … I got my cruise! K had promised me a cruise about 15 years ago when he was in a position to do something about it – but being a bit of a busman's honeymoon was not terribly keen on the idea. Granted it was only for 24 hours or so but beggars can't be choosers. We unpacked our crumpled clothes into the wardrobes of a rather lovely cabin and stretched out on the beds to get all the tension of 1,200 miles heavy driving out of our system. An American guy we met yesterday said that after experiencing driving in European cities twenty years ago, he still travelled a lot in Europe but never went anywhere unless by train. Wise words indeed !

Anyway, we are now “full steaming ahead” to Patras and determined to enjoy this rest period making the most of the facilities which after several days on the road are pure luxury!

FOLLOW THAT LORRY

FOLLOWING THE LORRIES TO VENICE – 2 March 2011

Somehow I envisaged a drive through Europe to Venice would be a feast of delightful vistas and leisurely stopovers to enjoy the countryside.  Today has been such a mixture of delightful looking cupola’ed church towers and rustic villages on hill and mountain sides but all were impossible to capture on camera because of wall to wall lorries all around us on the auto strada.  We were intrigued to see cargoes from all over Europe – Czechoslovakia, Hungary, France, Spain, Poland and Germany but noticed only one lorry from the UK (with one contact address in Dartford!)

The book of maps informed us that we would be travelling along the south bank of Lake Garda but any view of this was enticingly out of sight – just over the horizon … and blocked by about 5000 lorries all going the other way.

We were doing well when just as we approached Venice the road building authorities did it to us again and whisked us along a new piece of road and we found ourselves on the way to Trieste with about 15 miles to cover before we could turn around and come back again.  Naturally, we had to pay a hefty toll for travelling so far along a road which we had no desire to be on at all!!  Hhhmmm.  We will be glad to leave the car parked up tomorrow and travel from Mestre into the centre of Venice by train for a days outing.  Wish us luck – we have no Italian phrase book or map of Venice but K is doing very well at remembering all his Italian office speak and has managed really well so far,  Correction – he has just returned from hotel reception with a map of Venice but I feel sure that we will be true to form and get lost in no time.

STOP PRESS  Have just had worrying information that our Minoan Line ferryboat from Venice to Patras has been seconded to evacuate people from Libya ... so we may be in Venice for longer than we had anticipated!!!!

LOST IN FRANCE

Interesting times today when we started well and fired up the SatNav only to discover that the new road that had opened before due date in February 2011 (i.e. last week) did not feature on the program and we spent at least an hour in one town going round and round in circles (and paying umpteen tolls) trying to get on to the correct road.  Several shouting and swearing matches at one another – as we had to blame somebody – we ended up paying a huge toll to travel through the longest dirtiest tunnel ever but which transported underneath Mont Blanc.  I don’t know why we were so surprised to enter it in relatively warm weather and emerge some 35 minutes later into thick snow on the Italian side of the border.  We thought that by now we would be getting into warmer climes – in fact K had tossed aside the can of windscreen defroster and his warm jacket just before we left home – but I haven’t taken off my anorak yet.  It has been very cold everywhere so far.

Approaching the toll booths on the autoroutes has been a bit stressful because it is impossible to predict what they will require from you – i.e. change, notes or credit card or whether they will disgorge a ticket.  Whatever you prepare yourself with, it is almost bound to be wrong and we thought we might get arrested at one point when we paid 5.70 euros in change for 5.80 charge.  The machine would not accept our credit card and eventually sent us on our way with a reluctant arrividerci.

After a very hard drive until well after dark, we ended up in Alessandria in an intriguing hotel with very ornate roccoco furnishings and a veritable gallery of original art on every wall in the place.  However it had a bathroom to die for and we gratefully fell into a wonderful hot bath.  This would not have been possible for most guests but I had with bitter experience provided myself with a universal bath plug and felt that my 99p on a large silicone disc had been very well spent.  After a plate of wonderful pasta, ham, cream and fresh parmesan we felt ready for new adventures the following day.

Boning up in Beaune

Monday 28 February – Hotel Campanile – Beaune

Owing to freezing cold winds and driving rain whilst packing the car and trying to leave the house clean and tidy, we found that all the important luggage needed for the overnight ferry was totally buried and even with a last minute trip back to the car deck just before the ferry sailed, the only things that K managed to salvage were towels not provided in the ensuite cabins.

However it was a very comfortable journey and we watched Portsmouth’s Spinnaker Tower at close quarters as the lights of old Blighty faded into the background. It was at this point that we discovered that the wonderful gismo bought for keeping all the techie stuff charged in the car had not worked and we were racking our brains trying to remember in which bag or box we had packed all the adaptor plugs, power cables and associated jump leads.

The trip down to the Bourgogne took us around the avenue peripheric of Paris (terrifying) and frantic map searching and thinking that we had made a wrong road choice made us turn the car upside down searching for the SatNav to get a better grip of the map system because all our Michelin guides seemed to work on routes which travelled down the centre seam of the book and had three numbers for each road almost at random.

Once at Beaune, we asked the way to the hotel and were given a completely wrong address which was good in the sense that we saw the whole of the very pretty town centre via an intricate combination of one way streets but after an hour or so we got a local map from the Centre du Tourism and only had one foray around the local square and a new improved one way system to get on track.  The hotel was just off the main road on which we had originally entered the town.  Even from the toll roads, the scenery has been fantastic;  lots of bridges over wide rivers and historic castles and turreted maisons built up in the hills. We passed Chateau Neuf and I attempted to take a photo from the car … result distinctly underwhelming!  As this is vine growing country … we are hoping for a very nice glass of vin rouge ce soir!  PS my french needs much more practice but it will be better with some local vintage on board - in addition my computer has cunningly translated blogspot into french - so finding the right buttons to press has been exercising my grey matter!  This blog may be much more of an education than I thought!

Underwhelming photo refused to load - as all my school reports said ... could do better and will try next time.

Mesdames, messieurs, santé and bonsoir!  Check out our coffee choice!

Countdown to take-off

OK so we are now blogging from the laptop.  Finding the input much more tricky than a proper keyboard.  I started my final day of work with croissants, OJ and coffee with my travelling buddies on S W Trains.

The Retirement Do yesterday was nice with a tea party, speeches and pressies.  The new office baby paid a visit to the office for the first time and I was very honoured that the new Bishop attended the party when he was supposed to be taking the whole month off before his new chapter begins at the beginning of March.  It was a lovely day and a good way to finish nearly nine years commuting to central London.  However, when I saw the photos taken with a professional media camera, I wished that I had had a professional makeover before the event.  The thumbnail versions looked so much more acceptable than the close ups!  Hey ho, such is life.

Meanwhile, K had cleared a lot of stuff away and the house was beginning to look very empty apart from the mountain of bags and cases to go in the car.  Will try to take a photo of that packaging process!  Only last minute arrangements to make now and then committing all the stowage places to memory so we can retrieve them later.  Wish us luck on the journey and that our car makes it also that we manage to get the European SatNav working with our dinosaur brains!