Venice

I’ve just had a quick look at my past 3 or 4 blogs and it looks like the only thing that I’ve blogged about since Venice is the fact that I am cold. Which is a shame because even though its been really cold we have had a great time in the past two weeks or so, so lets back track to Venice and I’ll try to tell a story from each place we’ve been since.
As we were in Venice on our honeymoon we couldn’t leave without going on a gondola ride. We opted for the long gondola ride (60 minutes) from a gondola near our hotel away from the all the tourists. Our gondola driver was reasonably young (in his twenties) and told us that he was the latest in a 500 year family business... From this point onwards we assumed that at least 67.9% of what he told us was made up on the spot. We affectionately nicknamed him Bender as he reminded us of the lovable robot from Futurama, spontaneously bursting into half a chorus of an obscure song, as if he was trying to avoid having to pay royalties (e.g., Relax, yeah baby uh huh uh huh), truth be told he probably just didn’t know any songs in full. We unknowingly timed it at the top of the tide which resulted in Ri having to run to the front of the gondola every time we came to a bridge to prevent us from hitting it, we have a photo which shows that didn’t always work (mustn’t of had enough gelato at that stage). He took us through the quite backwaters of Venice which was wonderful, past the Casanovas, Marco polo’s, Mozart’s and Johnny Depps house (who, according to Bender, goes through a couple of ‘grams’ a night... sniff sniff). At the end of it he set up shots of Ri driving the gondola and all in all we had an entertaining and romantic ride.

Location - Munchen

Two days ago, in Venice, the weather was fine. I was wearing a dress and eating gelati. Yesterday, in Venice it got Cold. Now in Munchen it's SO COLD. (The photos are of Venice.) So now Europe has gotten cold on us and we probably wont be warm until Thailand in late October.

I really just started this blog to upload a couple of photos and complain about the weather. What a terrible blogger I am!

Ciao Bella

Ri does not trust Italians at all. And I very much doubt that I’ll ever get Ri to return to Naples. As we were driving away from Naples on our way to Florence he commented that ‘it is no wonder the mafia have such a reputation! I mean to be considered a crook in Italy...’
We have not really had the internet since Rome. We’ve popped into a couple of internet cafes to book very-last-minute accommodation and to have a brief skim on facebook – I’m desperately trying to not get left behind in gossip! (turns out my cousin has just gotten engaged! and Ri's cousin is currently having her second baby!)

But I have not had time to really sit down and do up a blog. It’s just so busy. Italy I mean. I don’t think I could do much longer than two weeks in a row in Italy.
We spent three nights in Naples. Ri seemed mildly irritated the whole time. In the funny little way he shows annoyance. In a weird switching of roles as I'm the easily annoyed one. But I didn't mind Naples. The food was pretty good and thats why I went to Naples. Pizza! We went to a Pizzeria that only serve two kinds of Pizza (with cheese and without) and that was pretty good.

I wouldn't recommend getting a taxi in Naples. We had our first really prolonged and frustrating taxi experience in Naples. We had decided to hire a car and drive to Pompei and the Amalfi Coast. So we ordered a Taxi to pick us up from our hotel to take us to the car rental place. We hop into the Taxi all bright eyed and hand over the address which was in Italian. The taxi driver did the usual song and dance performed by all our past Italian taxi drivers (Oh! Where is that!!? Let me call a friend and let the meter run for a minute or two while I make sure where it is!!! Oh that place!! Yes!! I was there this morning!!). But with this driver the dance went on for 10 euros (and about 30 minutes) before he made it two street from our hotel to drop us off at the wrong location. In the end we had him drop us at the airport. After we got our car Ri drove us straight to the address we gave the Taxi driver without a map just to show me that even a bloody foreigner could do it. Ri does not trust Italian Taxi drivers. "No No Ban-dee-doe" "Si! Si! Ban-dee-doe!!"

We ended up having a brilliant day at Pompei followed by dinner at sunset on the waters of the Amalfi coast.

From Naples we drove to Bologna having dinner in Florence on the way. We arrived in Florence just as the sun was setting, and I think if you are only going to stop at a place for a couple of hours then sunset is the time to do it!

From Bologna we drove to Venice and spent 3 days walking around the canals, eating gelati and shopping! It is just so different from anywhere else! I loved it.

Now we are in Munchen! I think it's beer O'Clock.

84 Flavours

Ok sis here is our list, how did we do?

Melon, creama, mint, bounty, coconut, lemon, mixed berry, chocolate, peach, ace (carrot, lemon and orange), kinder surprise, coffee, pistachio, banana, cherry, kiwi, green apple, chocolate chip, tiramisu, cinnamon, liquorice, pimpelmo rosa, mango, limoncello, walnut, zibbona, nutella, blueberry yoghurt, choc-hazelnut, blood orange, papaya, milk, meringue, profiterole, hazelnut, Viagra (this tasted like butter icing), vanilla with hazelnuts, baba, cassata siciliana, caramel (with nuts and caramel sauce), watermelon, grape, mars, cuore nero, fig, yoghurt (plain), novita, crème caramel, rum and raisin, Veronese chocolate (had chunks of ferrero-rocher), choc-mint, passionfruit, chestnut, almond biscuit, raisin, vanilla with chocolate biscuit (pan stele), rum and chocolate, toffee (mou), choc-orange, mandarin, biscuit and cream, pineapple, yoghurt with Christmas pudding swirls, raspberry, pear, extra dark chocolate, apricot, magnum gold (white chocolate and vanilla), magnum (boysenberry swirl with white chocolate chucks), white chocolate, gusto del messe (egg nog), kitkat, lion (chocolate bar), mint and milk, nougat, vanilla, strawberry, blueberry, dolce latte (crunchy caramel and coffee), blue lagoon, mochachino, caramel, kinder chocolate bar, and lime.

there was a little bit of overlap due to the language barrier, and as we left we got a scoop of our favourite 2 each. So our pants are TIGHT but it was fun!

Roma

Oh I feel so fat today. We had tried 29 gelati flavours in 3.5 days. These include Kiwi, Green Apple, Licorice, Choc-Chip and one that tasted like Sambuca. It was basically all we ate yesterday and I swear I had a sugar headache. Ri is sure that we will run out of flavours before we reach 100.

Today we went to Vatican City and spent the day in the museum followed by a quick trip to St Peters. Ri is starting to decide how he would like to decorate our future-house. Turns out our library (I love that our house seems to need a library) will need a massive map or globe - but an old map from like 400 years ago 'before Australia existed.' His words and don't worry I told him off for being Euro-centric.

One more day of Rome before we head down to Naples.

Roman holiday

Ri is suspicious of Italians. He has some serious trust issues after the Taxi driver charged 20 euro more than he should have yesterday. This morning a man called out from his car for directions to the colosseum (even I knew where it was from that location - like one street- it's a little hard to miss) he told Ri that he was a manager from Armani, showed Ri some products and then drove away. Ri was most confused saying "it was like he was going to try to sell me something, but he didn't."

I suggested that he was crazy.

Ri is concerned about Italians.

Today was day two in Rome, we are up to Gelati flavour 12, my favourite flavour so far was 'Ace' which was carrot, lemon and orange. Today we spent the day with our ears to audiotours while walking around the colosseum and Roman forum. I was very glad my brother had lent me Rome (the TV series) late last year, it did for Rome what Tudors did for London. And In Bruges did for Bruges.

At the Colosseum, when Ri was handing back our Audiotour he overheard a Dutch man asking for the audio guide for the Netherlands, the response he got was "we have German or English."

We often marvel at how lucky we are that we speak English. And how Aussies manage to be EVERYWHERE. We can go days without over-hearing an American or Brit, but Aussies are everywhere.

Island Odyssey

The first photo is me on my birthday in Mykonos. The next two photos are of Santorini.

I love the Greek Islands.

It is the perfect place to go and holiday. Not like an interesting but museum-y holiday (like in Berlin) or freeze your butt off in the cold while looking at amazing sites holiday (like in Scotland) (I loved both of these places btw) but a out in the sun holiday HOLIDAY. I'm even sporting a mild tan.

It was the beginning of September when we arrived in Mykonos and we got the feeling that it was the right time to go as the weather was lovely, but there were no crowds. All the resorts were having their end of season parties.

It was my 26th birthday while we were on Mykonos and Ri definately pulled out all the stops for my first birthday as his wife. I know Ri has a blog typed up all about Mykonos and Santorini so I won't go on too much about what we did, as he has been writing the thing for days and I don't want to send him into another re-write. My favourite island was Mykonos, for the beaches and the shopping. But we did have a pretty awesome day on the back of a quad bike on Santorini!

Ri is reading the book that his sister made up for us as a wedding gift. She's set us a challenge to eat as many gelati flavours as we can while we are in Italy, we've been in Rome for half a day and have tried 6 flavours. Hello waist line. Our goal for Italy is to eat heaps of gelati, see lots of art and find me a dress to wear to a wedding that we have been invited to on the 13th of November (less than a week after we get home!) I'm also seriously considering buying a Pope bobble head.

Ri is complaining that there just is not enough time. Me? I'm sad that we are getting closer to the end of the trip - there is still over a month and a half which is the length of a pretty awesome honeymoon in itself!- but I'm happy to be making plans with people back at home!