This time last year i was in Europe having the time of my life. I'd go back in a minute.
Between me and Em we took 800 photos; I've tried to distill down the holiday down to about 20 photos.
From Paris we caught a plane to Naples and trained it to Sorrento. After some hunting we found our accomadation - a little monastery by the coast (its behind this building)
This is Positano. I got engaged here (specifically somewhere between the town and the little island you can see on the left)
For those who know me will be shocked I'm wearing shorts and thongs. They will not be shocked that I'm eating ice cream.
Probably one of the best, most perfect times, ever.
We weren't planning to see Pompei but some locals insisted so we caught the train up and were actually impressed. Our tour guide was an older gentlemen who was fixated with the brothel ruins, especially the 'menu'
"Everything you could get now, you could get then, naturally"
It was damn hot though.
My 30th birthday - we are making gnocchi. It was awesome, best present ever.
From the Amalfi coast we travelled up to Cinque Terre and it was the most laid back place ever.
We didn't spend much time in the big cities; mainly in Sorrento (too touristy), Positano (pretty cool), Amalfi (boring and expensive), then an unplanned night in Florence (really nice, except for the foot fetish guy who molested Em) , to Cinque terre (a collecton of 5 towns perched in cliffs in the north of italy - we stayed in the smallest village right on the town square so we spent nights drinking and yakking with locals and the 3-5 other tourists) and then to Venice.
I also assumed that Em's half italianess and language skills would be useful. No, she again reverted to "English? English!" but sometmes would preface it with 'Scusi'. Everyone was so tanned that I felt like an albino. Mcleods Daughters (sorelli di mcleod) was kind of well known there so we used it as a refernce point explaining where we were from - it was cool that people thought i was a cowboy. Italy is a great place to visit, except for the Italians. Shops have an average of 3-5 assistants who's function is to fold clothes and ignore customers. Trains run on time, but the time, track number or destination isn't posted anywhere on the platform or ticket; which lead to one madcap adventure trying to catch up to train we should have been on by sneaking on to Express trains and running through stations. Waiters are never wrong and expect you to pay for your mistakes. Signs that say a particular smoke shop sells bus tickets can not be taken at face value. You have to go with the flow.
But even with those misgivings - i had a blast.
Highlights
- Engagement/Birthday
- just the general relaxing
- Venice film festival
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