The nearby hillsides became, if not less precipitous, more grassy, with little brown huts sprinkled liberally around. We wound our way down a couple of switchbacks in the road and through a beautiful pass lined with pine trees, nearby rocky peaks wreathed in cloud. The road wound along the hillside above a deep valley, a bright blue river snaking through it. We stopped briefly at a supermarket we came across to stock up on supplies.

The road continued to wind through the mountains, affording us some rather spectacular views of misty/snowy peaks. At one point, the road passed by a shallow and crystal-clear lake of brilliant blue. The mountains gradually decreased in size, and very suddenly we were on a motorway, and Noia the navigator was displaying the welcome screen for Germany!

Motorway driving is rarely anything but tedium, and today was no different; we drove until we’d had enough, and on a hunch I pointed Noia towards a green patch on the map that displayed a parking symbol within. Sure enough, we’d found a very pretty forest, interspersed with green fields, and a little parking area for walkers. We pulled up, and took the opportunity to take a walk in the intensely green woods — the stuff of fairy-tales.

For the next day, we’d identified part of a driving tour of the Mosel Valey that sounded promising, to the west and very near to our route. We headed that way, towards the Rhone-side town of Bingen am Rhein, arriving relatively late in the day.

After the success of the last night’s camp, I targeted Noia at a road in a large green patch beside the town, little realising at the time that the road in question was barely a footpath through the woods. So, we turned down this little road that got smaller and smaller, to our consternation, and had a slightly worrisome yet relatively pleasant drive through the woods, feeling a little sheepish as we drove past walkers on the track above. (Katherine: Mike handled this with remarkable poise)

We came out beside a little pub, and decided to pull up in the nearby car-park (also the car park for walkers) for the night. With Katherine’s high hopes for a schnitzel, we visited the pub, but found the restaurant closed. Still, we found a seat in the dimly-lit lounge, various animal heads hanging grotesquely from the walls — all seemed very “German pub”-esque — and had a few beers (Veltins, which the barman recommended and which we enjoyed immensely).

Rather desperate to fill up with water, the next morning we set out along the Rhone hoping to spot a caravan park or similar that we could drop into. Sure enough, Katherine spotted one a little distance down the road, and we negotiated our way under the railway line that ran alongside the river, along the narrow little lane, bordered by bright green rows of vines beside the river, and pulled in. The woman in charge was very friendly and happy for us to use the facilities; she was bustling about on various errands as we filled up, and kept making rather endearing “I’m run off my feet” huffy sighs with lots of exclamations in German, to which I grinned and nodded sympathetically.

While Katherine was filling the tank, she heard a hissing, and realised that the front left tyre was leaking air from the valve — just like what happened to us in Arezzo! Uh-oh. I poked at the valve until the hissing stopped, and we deemed it drivable, for now, as the pressure seemed to be relatively normal still. Hoping to find a tyre service facility like last time, we drove for a little while keeping our eyes open, but the one possibility was shut, whereupon we realised it was Sunday. I checked and topped-up the tire pressure at a petrol station, and we hit the motorway, hoping that it would last us until we could get it fixed.

When we decided to pick a town randomly to visit for lunch, the steering felt suddenly very odd, and sure enough, the tyre was down again. We pulled into a petrol station and decided it was time to put the spare tyre on. It’d been a while and my memory was fuzzy (I work with computers, not cars!), but Nettle’s manual, albeit in German, seemed to have all I needed. Out came the jack, and I wrestled the slipping handle until the wheel was sufficiently off the ground, and started on the wheel nuts (probably should’ve done that the other way around, but oh, well). I remembered something about European threads being the opposite to ours — probably the same phenomenon that makes water swirl the opposite way down drains, I guess — and the manual confirmed that clockwise was the way to undo them, so I laboured away, trying everything I could think of to loosen them. No luck, and I was scratching my head wondering what to do next, when a friendly German voice behind us announced the arrival of our saviours for the day. He was a mechanic, amazingly, and his wife spoke English, so we were in excellent hands — apparently, as she told Katherine, he rescues people like this quite frequently. Our benefactors took command, and I held my foot on the brake while he undid the nuts — anti-clockwise, of course — by jumping on the spanner’s handle. Within a couple of minutes, the new wheel was on, and we were good to go. We thanked them profusely. How lucky we are. (Katherine: We had a giggle at Mike’s masculinity taking a bit of a hit, especially given the super buffness of the mechanic in question. He still gets man points for getting the wheel off the ground though. I had an “I’ve watched too much Dexter moment” when I quietly wondered to myself if this guy has a “dark passenger” which he satiates by going around playing the good samaritan but actually sabotaging vehicles and sending their startled drivers to an untimely – and untraceable – death). We went and had a couple of schnitzels at a nearby pub. We were amused in the pub to see a race on the TV, and then realised that it was happening just around the corner, at the Nürburgring. Cool! We felt unreasonably chuffed at having had beer and chicken schnitzel in Germany. Our German experience is complete – at least this time around. (Katherine again: obviously our tire didn’t fall off sending us to an untimely startled death. Sorry for my uncharitable thoughts good Samaritan German guy).

So, with a fair bit of time lost, we decided to just hit the autobahn again, and skip the driving tour this time — how exciting, the prospect of having a “next time”! We crossed over the border into the Netherlands, to our surprise, as we don’t tend to do much map-gazing lately — navigation is more Noia’s realm now, as she’s been so great, we trust her to get us where we want to go. Within a few hours, we passed into Belgium. Belgium!

We headed into the city of Hasselt, where a friend, Kris, lives, who I’d met a year or so before through a WordPress theme I wrote. We’d arranged to pay a visit, so we found a park at a spot Kris had recommended, in the car park of a sports oval already populated with a few campers, reassuringly, and set out on foot to find him.

About twenty minutes later, we set out on foot the right way, as I sheepishly realised I’d directed us in precisely the wrong direction… twice. We walked along a busy, noisy road (Ah yes… This is why we’re not big city fans!), then towards the quieter town’s centre. We made our way under the train station and found Kris’s street on the other side, with lots of imposing brick houses lining the road. We greeted Kris (I experimented on him with some Dutch — “goede middag”), and he invited us in for a moment before we all ventured out into the evening. Kris took us on a walk around the inner streets of the town, and showed us a few of the sights (greeted a few very punk-band-esque friends of his that we encountered along the way), then we dropped in on the local Irish pub briefly — quite funny hearing Irish accents here. We asked for a recommendation from the bartender for a Belgium beer to try and ended up with an interesting beverage that tasted a bit like honey… and beer. We wandered through Hasselt (via the best veggie burger I think I’ve ever had), through the city’s impressive park, while we talked companionably. I was amazed with the depth of Kris’s knowledge of his town, and the amount of awareness and involvement he has in its community and local politics — a local council member in the making, there.

We decided to spend the night in Hasselt, and spent the next morning with a couple of errands — laundry, a little shopping; Katherine was excited to find a well-stocked art supplies shop and basically moved in for a while.

Then we hit the road again, and headed onwards; we left Belgium and entered France, finally ending up in Dunkerque. We stayed the night at the huge and rather fancy municipal caravan park, in preparation for our departure on the ferry the next day, to Dover. Quite fun to be speaking French again.

So with some wistful thoughts, and looking forward to coming back to spend some time getting to know Andrea, Silvia and their friends better, we set off northward. As, it turned out, into something resembling the apocalypse. Dark, intimidating clouds loomed in front of us as we approached, with some excitement, the first foothills of the Dolomites (the Italian Alps). The sky reminded us of the skyscape one sees in tornado movies, writhing menacingly as they curled off the mountains.

It added a fantastic ambiance to the scene as we followed the road into a narrow river valley between two steep-sided mountains, and dusk closed in around us. Then, the rain started, and it meant business: We slowed to a crawl as the downpour reduced visibility to almost zero – “I… guess the road’s out there somewhere”. The hail threatened to crack the windscreen, it came down so hard. Wow!

It eventually abated and we sped up again, heading out into a suddenly lighter day, like winding back the clock a few hours. We got an SMS from Andrea – “What the…Are you ok?”; “I’ve just seen the end of the world from my bike, that was exciting and wet”. We just hope he only saw it, rather than actually experienced it on a bike — that sounds not so dissimilar to drowning!

We drove on through the mountains, following the autostrada, while Katherine read out a heartwarming email we’d just received from Andrea, which mirrored our own excitement and gratefulness at having met. Warm fuzzies well established, we grinned out at the beautiful world around us and marvelled at our blessings.

We drove past vast fields of vines, and found a convenient lay-by off a relatively quiet road to park for the night, beside a wide, slow river and overlooked by a high rocky cliff topped with dense green forest, a little steam hurling itself into the air above us.

The next day we set out on foot to explore this exciting new world, and followed the river while we admired the rocky mountains surrounding us, every remotely-horizontal surface festooned with rich green plant life. It was sunny and warm and we were feeling good!

We drove onward and upwards as the scenery changed further. Lots of bright green fields of vines and increasingly amazing mountains, topped with snow (I’ll never get tired of snow-capped mountains. That’s the stuff, right there.). Very quickly, we noticed that the road signs all had Germanic names, and soon after we were amazed to notice the marked difference in architecture. Suddenly the roofs of houses and other buildings were sharply angled, and the village churches had pointy, colourful steeples. Roofs were no longer orange-coloured, but a deep brown, and much more deep wooden hues were apparent.

We were in another country! But, a glance at the map showed us we were wrong — it was going to be two more days of driving before we were out of Italy. We mused to ourselves that whoever had been tasked to draw the country boundaries had probably been bumped or slipped, and the border skewed south accidentally. They probably just hoped no-one would notice. We noticed, imaginary map guy! I was baffled further when Nettle’s lunchtime came (she’s a thirsty girl sometimes!) and I filled up at a petrol station, and the attendant spoke German! Okay, that’s fine — I threw in a “Danke!” for good measure.

A long but enjoyable drive led us eventually into a little town climbing the side of a hill — not entirely deliberately, but one of Noia’s more quirky routes – she likes it scenic. (Noia is our anthropomorphised Navigon GPS navigator app, short for “paranoia” and named for her inordinately cautious disposition; “beware” every time I go a fraction over the speed limit, or when she thinks the limit is less than it really is; “In 500 metres, take the second exit from the roundabout; beware”, “beware: traffic control”). It got a tad narrow, but we made it through with no drama, and discovered to our delight a car park on the other side that seemed a reasonable place to stop for the day — we were certainly ready for it. There was even a great view of the surrounding hillside.

We wandered back on foot the way we’d come, with the hopes of visiting a little supermarket we’d passed. It turned out to be closed, but we walked around the town anyway, intrigued by its…Austrian-ness!

Back at Nettle, we were investigating the most level and out-of-the-way place to stop for the night, when we discovered a sign prohibiting overnight parking! Oh, how we wished we could’ve un-seen that sign, but the cat was out of the bag, and our hopes of settling in for the evening were temporarily dashed. Lesson learned: Don’t look around too much!

So, dusk rapidly approaching, we set off again, following the road that zig-zagged up a long, gentle sloping mountainside dotted with wind turbines and delightful little brooks lined with flowers. Before long, Katherine spotted a park labelled “Camper”, to our delight, and I executed a speedy across-road 6 point turn, and we pulled in — it was a roadside café car park, kind enough to offer a place for campers to stop for the night. We made sure the café folks were happy with us being there (and scored a couple of pairs of warm woolen slippers, which totally look like bear feet), and happily stopped for the night, with a view out over the long grassy downhill slope we’d climbed, and surrounding snowy and misty mountains.

I was quite keen to do the Itinerari Segreti or “Secret Tours”. According to the Lonely Planet the Ducal Palace is reputed to hold dark secrets that can be found through a passageway disguised as a filing cabinet in the Sala del Consiglio dei Dieci (Chamber of the Council of 10), which to me, sounds deliciously like a Dan Brown novel. Alas, tours only run once a day in English and we didn’t quite make it in time. Reason Number 1 to come back to Venice.

Our next destination proved to be a rather elusive little boutique selling marbled paper called, “Carte”. A blogger friend of mine had coincidentally suggested I try my hand at making some papers a few days earlier so I thought it would be pretty snazzy to check out this ancient craft brought to Venice from Japan via Turkey and Florence. Unfortunately navigating the warren-like streets and canals of Venice in the rain with dodgy GPS proved to be too much for Mike’s sanity. I found the rain rather atmospheric and enjoyed the novelty of wandering around deserted lanes and back alleys rarely trodden by tourists. As we huddled under shelter from the drizzly rain, we once again poured over the puzzling map while a grocer with a cart stocked full of produce rattled by singing a loud tune with obvious relish. For some unknown reason we only own one umbrella and when it rains we huddle under it together. This is usually cozy and fun but today Mike was on a mission and he marched on ahead as I bemusedly followed along behind. We passed what must have been a school or kindergarten two or three… maybe four times during The Hunt. Each time we were amazed at the cacophony of tiny little voices all speaking at once emanating from inside. For full effect turn the volume waaay up.

We aborted the attempt before Mike went completely postal and spent some time wandering the streets of Venice, blessedly without a destination in mind in now very soggy shoes. Despite sogginess, we were delighted to have the opportunity to linger and take tons of photos of the beautiful grunge of Venice’s lanes, canals and buildings.

I’d resolved, during our visit to Venice the day before, to buy a carnevale mask. I’d seen one that was decorated with card suits and was hoping to stumble upon it or something similar again. I did a spot of window shopping but decided to leave serious shopping to the end of the day once we’d done a bit more sight-seeing.

After wandering around in circles a bazillion times we finally managed to find the super cheap pizza place from the day before with a little help from Andrea. Navigating in this place is near impossible. I was super stoked that we’d managed to eat for under €10 in Venice! We even managed coffee for a couple of euros! We chatted for a bit about combatting grumpiness and making the most of less than ideal conditions when sight-seeing. A handy life-skill too me thinks.

Two unsuccessful plans down we decided on our next destination, something that is impossible not to find in Venice – the Piazza and Basilica di San Marco. As we approached we noticed a whole bunch of tourists huddled underneath the arch leading into San Marco, sheltering from the rain.

We made our way through the tight huddle and out into the wide open and blessedly empty expanse of Piazza San Marco, the rain having emptied the piazza of tourists except for those speedily making their way across the void to shelter. If there was ever a reason to visit Venice on a rainy day this is it!

We’d barely noticed San Marco when we were there with Silvia and Andrea the day before as we were distracted by hordes of tourists and interesting conversation with our new friends. This seemed rather startling as we looked on it as if for the first time.

We’d downloaded an audio tour of Piazza San Marco by Rick Steves to listen to once here but noted with some consternation that the iPhone’s battery was dangerously low – all that navigating to find marbled paper! Damn you marbled paper! We’d listened to his audio tours at the Colosseum and The Forum in Rome and found them immeasurably more entertaining and informative than any of the dry, cheerless, uninteresting and gratuitous detail-gushing, date-quoting audio tours we’ve been subjected to by the official tourist offices. While Mike wandered about trying to find free wifi to set up my iPod (the backup option) with our silver bullet for important historical sites we don’t understand the significance of I meandered around the balcony that surrounds the periphery of the piazza happily snapping photos. Audio tour backup almost-but-not secured, we took our chances with the weary iPhone and waltzed out into the centre of the piazza under cover of our umbrella, blessedly un-jostled by the masses. While the rain pattered on our umbrella, we listened intently to all the fascinating reasons why Venice exists in the first place, why it is famous, and very special.

A couple of interesting tidbits we learned from said tour:

As probably everyone knows acqua alta (high tide) in Venice means Piazza San Marco becomes completely submerged. Maybe something most don’t consider, and I certainly hadn’t, is that the water also seeps into people’s homes and other buildings. After the water recedes one must be very careful to wash everything it touched to protect it from the sea water’s corrosive influence.

The bell tower we were to ascend later had actually collapsed in 1902 and the golden angel which adorns it landed right at the front door of the basilica, standing up. The cynic in me wonders if someone came along unseen and respectfully righted her.

Feeling in much brighter spirits after our very successful audio tour despite sloshing with every step we took we headed to San Marco Basilica hoping the iPhone would hold out for another audio tour in there. Alas the Basilica had closed not long ago. Reason number 2 to return to Venice. Bugger, I was reeeaaally looking forward to that!

We approached the bell tower (the Campanile) hesitant to hope that it was still open. It was! And what a view – a damp, cold, view.

I love that this looks like a vintage photo:

We’d originally planned to stay after dark in Venice as this is invariably described as magical. Alas, feet that had been soggy for an entire day and thoughts of a comfy dry Nettle begged to differ so we resolved to grab a mask and get going. Reason number 3 to return to Venice. I half-heartedly perused mask shops but The One continued to elude me and I didn’t have the heart to prolong Mike’s soggy misery. Aaand reason number 4 to return to Venice!

We stopped off for a pick-me-up coffee and gaped at the exorbitant bill. I guess we didn’t quite make it out of Venice without being ripped off. So close! I made a quick purchase of two blank Carnevale masks – the long-nosed mask of the quack doctor and pretty columbina – to paint myself and we sloshed our way to the train station.

We left Venice with 3 objectives out of 8 achieved but I think we excelled at the most important one of all – just wander, get lost, and soak it all in.

Whilst crossing the lagoon on the train and watching the surreal city approach, I got laughed at for eagerly pulling out Google Earth on the iPhone for an additional birds-eye view and showing it to Katherine — “How cool does this look!” — evoking the response that it also looked pretty cool out the window (she said bemusedly that I was missing it because I had my head buried in my iPhone). Andrea laughed knowingly, saying that he does exactly the same thing. We emerged from the train station onto the bustling streets of Venice. Andrea and Silvia took us up and over Ponte degri Scalzi, the bridge crossing the main canal, and proceeded to lead us through a warren of tiny streets, frequently crossing picturesque little bridges over narrow canals lined with boats.

It was very difficult to visualise the city as the collection of little islands that it is — it seemed decidedly more like a solid landmass interspersed by canals! As Katherine answered when asked later that night what she thought of Venice, “I thought there’d be more water”. It was quite cool to think that we were crossing between islands when we passed over those little bridges though. Katherine later remarked on the unusual quantity of graffiti (something I blithely failed to notice), noting that perhaps tagging a place so astronomically famous is quite the ego trip!

A big trade in Venice was in exotic carnival masks — there were lots of little shops selling them, representing a variety of Commedia dell’arte characters. These had Katherine feeling inspired, especially when she spotted the unpainted plaster ones you can buy and decorate yourself.

As we walked, Andrea pointed out one of the university buildings nestled amongst the narrow streets and canals, and introduced us to a great Italian word that we haven’t really been able to find an English version of: Simpatico, which Andrea and Silvia described as meaning something like funny, friendly; basically a word describing someone who’s good company, of pleasant character and who puts one in the mood they’re in just by being with them. (Admittedly, if said about a woman however, it means she has a nice personality but isn’t much to look at, as in “she has a great personality, but…“). It seemed apt, being introduced to the word by those two simpatici.

Andrea was explaining the verb ‘andare’ to me (to go), and a guy passed us and made a friendly comment to Andrea in Italian — something about giving the Americans language lessons and “Americani non parlano Italiano”. We stopped to talk for a moment; he asked us where we were from (actually, Australia!), and our conversation moved from there. and it turned out that Ben was an American who’d just kinda settled in Venice for a few months and had landed some sort of architect internship there – not a bad gig! He looked entirely Italian, and his Italian seemed pretty solid, so I was surprised when he switched to English to talk to all four of us. He was a friendly sort, and brainstormed with us about what to show his visiting mother later that day, given that Andrea and Silvia were being tour guides for the day, as well. When we parted ways with Ben, Andrea turned to us and explained “he is simpatico”.

Andrea grabbed simpatico Ben’s contact details, and we pressed on to Piazza San Marco, one of the main tourist draws of Venice. It was funny, our first visit there with Andrea and Silvia with the pressing hoards of other visitors had us almost entirely unaware of the square’s charms — it was difficult to appreciate the basilica with most of it covered with scaffolding, and the press of people left little breathing-room to look around.

Poor Silvia was feeling pretty drained by this point — our plans to have locals show us around had inadvertently resulted in us dragging a pregnant woman around Venice — sorry Silvia! With Silvia desperately in need of sustenance and a rest we sat down by the water and talked for a while, then pressed on and stopped for lunch at a little pizza cafe way off the beaten track (which made it consequently quite tasty, and very cheap!).

Some more ambling around back-streets and we came across a gelato shop — Andrea and Silvia had two rounds, so I suppose that must be high praise indeed. They laughed at our restraint (only one helping, pah!). We discovered later that the gelateria was listed in our travel guide: Quite a validation for Lonely Planet recommendations right there!

We jumped back on the train and made our way to Andrea and Silvia’s, in Padova. All four of us napped on the journey back (after plodding our way around most of Venice!), although not before Andrea and Silvia had to endure the apparently maddeningly inane chatter of two Italian women in the seats near us; the one benefit to not speaking Italian! We hung around on the couch for a while, and I pulled up an impressive recording on YouTube of Andrea and Silvia’s old band, “K”, playing a gig to a huge crowd.

Paolo and Vivian (Vivienne? Forgive me if I’m wrong on the names, Paolovigo!) had kindly invited us around for dinner, so the four of us joined them at “the cube”, their very Nordic-styled, gleaming house, along with Zage and his partner, and Paolo’s brother Robert and his girlfriend Alice. We chatted with Alice for a while, who spoke excellent English, and then gathered around as Paola and Vivian served up some absolutely awesome home-made pizza. We were startled when out came the shredded horse-meat — really, guys?

At the end of a really enjoyable evening with our new simpatici friends, Andrea and Silvia drove us back to “Monsangeles” (an in-joke name for Monselice that they couldn’t actually remember the origins of!). On the way we introduced them to one more favourite Aussie band, Powderfinger, which went down very well. We said a warm farewell, and promised that we would be back to pester them again — for longer, next time, and hopefully in Italian! Andrea gave us some Italian comic books to practise with – that’s how he learnt English! We’ve got no excuse now.

We’re really excited to have met them — for sure, they’re ‘our people’ — and we can’t wait to be back.

I found Padova, in a strange way, to be a bit like our home town of Melbourne in Australia. It doesn’t look like it at all but I found that Padova didn’t seem to have any grand tourist attractions to it’s name – just like Melbourne – but what it does have is a sense of “liveability”. It’s a nice city. It has pretty parts, it has a pleasant atmosphere and there seems be a lot going on. This was interesting to me as the longer we’ve spent in Italy the more I’ve come to feel that I wouldn’t want to live here. I’ve become very aware of the general lack of space – doors opening right up onto the road in towns, the “country” still being quite populated with at least a house or two always in view. To me, this has amounted to a general sense of crowdedness. This is something I love about travel and learning about other cultures – it shines a new light on our own country and culture. Intellectually I understood that Australia has a tiny population and is massive with wide, open spaces but I didn’t understand what that felt like until I felt what a large population in a small country feels like. It may have been because of our friends’ presence but Padova felt like one of the few places in Italy where I could live – I say “I” as Mike has felt there have been plenty of places that he would be happy staying put in.

It was absolutely wonderful spending time with locals and gleaning little insights we otherwise wouldn’t have gleaned. I love my coffee, I come from a city that has a well-known and respected coffee culture but I can’t for the life of me understand Italian coffee – the espresso. “Sip” and it’s gone! Andrea shed some light on it for me when he likened it to a small gourmet chocolate – it doesn’t last long but it’s a taste sensation for as long as it does.

We had a traditional “spritzer” – a cocktail – at “spritzer o’clock” – sometime in the evening before dinner – and watched the “fighetti” – comically fashionable Italian youth – strut and generally stand around looking rich and beautiful in “The Uniform” – the wardrobe that it seems all Italians have agreed to adopt. I asked Silvia, who expressed exasperation at “The Uniform”, where she does her shopping. Her answer – she doesn’t shop! She proceeded to point out her hole-ridden Doc Martins that were The Thing to have in the 90s!

Just as Andrea finished explaining to us what “fighetti” means, a very expensive looking car that barely came up to knee-level came to a screeching halt right in front of the busy cafe and a trendy young thing strutted out in The Uniform. Everyone in the vicinity turned and stared. Andrea turned back to us, shrugged, and announced, “fighetti”. We all cracked up as the guy sauntered off nonchalantly.

We talked for a while about the band they were in in their twenties, “K”. Turns out our new friends were quite the rock stars back in the day! Later that night at their apartment we watched a concert they played at to a massive audience, Silvia on guitar and Andrea the lead singer! That night we introduced the guys to some Aussie bands – Clare Bowditch and The Cat Empire. It was fun seeing Andrea rock out to a song about our home-town “The Crowd”.

We had a wonderful home-cooked meal with a couple of Andrea and Silvia’s lovely friends and the best strawberries I’ve ever tasted with nothing but a bit of water, lemon and sugar. After dinner we went to the “Gelateria da Bepi”, a gelateria with a very unconventional array of flavours, including basil, carrot, sweet potato, pepper, tomato, rosemary, sage, celery, pumpkin and salmon!

We discussed our plans for Sunday and couldn’t pass up the opportunity of visiting Venice with locals – both Silvia and Andrea went to university there, the lucky things!

The reality of it has been quite different though: Somehow we seem to have made more connections with people than when we were back in Australia! A combination of being more outdoorsey, and having more time to devote to social networking has introduced us to lots of fantastic new people, and some very strong new friendships.

I met Andrea through my iPhone app Loopy — he got in touch after giving it a go, and we got talking. He lives in Padua with his partner Silvia, and next on our itinerary was to go and visit them.

So, we left Poggibonsi and headed north up through Tuscany. This was one of our most beautiful drives so far, through stunning emerald-coloured countryside, all vines and olive trees, cute little terracotta-roofed villas and startlingly blue lakes. We passed straight through Florence (to our surprise — I hadn’t inspected our route in advance), passing right by the place we stayed last time we were in Tuscany. Of course, as is our way, we passed through right on peak-hour, so it was a slow plod through the city. We pushed on the other side, and wound our way up into the mountains.

We discovered the most beautiful wildcamp location (last photo above), but we hadn’t really fulfilled our 3 hour driving quota for the day, and pressed on; we started keeping an eye out for a place to stop about half an hour later, and utterly failed for the following several hours. We felt a little despair when we turned onto an autostrada that reminded us both of the concrete forest that was Seoul, and eventually pulled over by the road and very successfully found ourselves a decent spot off the road 10 minutes away using Google Earth. What a great tool for wildcamping!

The next day we made it to Padova and moved into our new site for the week, in Monselice by the canal. The town was very pretty, and we were pleasantly surprised by our new surroundings, expecting a bit of a “suburban wasteland”, as we two snooty hills-dwellers put it.

After talking to various people, I’d formed an image in my head of Northern Italy as something of an endless suburb, but it was much greener and more relaxed than I’d pictured, to my relief. What’s more, we were thrilled to get our first glimpses of scarlet fields full of poppies!

We got in touch with Andrea and Silvia, and they came to pick us up and take us out to a restaurant with their friends. If it wasn’t clear already, when we met them it became clear pretty quickly that we were going to get along with them very well — these were definitely ‘our people’.

Having not worn or owned any makeup since the beginning of our travels, Katherine took the opportunity to get her girl on. Although not usually big on the hair and make-up thing, she rather enjoyed not looking like the un-groomed, polar-fleece wearing vagabond that she usually does – her words, not mine (I would, in fact, say she’s a damn fine looking vagabond, but she wouldn’t believe me).

The restaurant we headed to was one that had been recommended to Andrea and Silvia, and we were to be introduced to ‘bigoli’, one of the local specialties, a thick egg-based pasta. It’s called ‘bigui’ in the Venetian dialect, which had become a bit of an in-joke after Andrea and some friends had mentioned on Twitter that they were going to introduce us to it, and I misinterpreted it as a software development tool of some kind (‘ui’ as in User Interface).

We filed in and were soon joined by the others, two other couples and a third couple with their adorable little daughter. I was struck by how many of us were musicians and programmers! Always a good sign; there’s something about people who’ve been involved in music. We greatly enjoyed their company, and they were kind enough to do lots of translating for us when the bulk of the conversation turned Italian (we still regretted not putting more effort into learning more, though! We shall for next time).

There was much laughter and good company, and some great pasta with quite spectacular sauce, that we’re forever going to be trying to replicate (we think it was the best pasta we’ve ever tasted).

Then a car pulled up and a greeting in a very broad Australian accent announced the arrival of two expat Australians who had noticed our Aussie flag sticker on the back, which we put there to inform the French that we weren’t British and please don’t hate us.

We invited them in for a cuppa and did a round of introductions: They were Ray (Raylene) and Sam, and had lived here for twenty-three years. Ray was a Port Adelaide girl, and Sam was born in Lucca, a town not far from Poggibonsi, and had spent twenty years in Australia. They were very friendly and curious, and we very quickly made weekend plans!

Sam picked us up early on Saturday morning and drove us around the Chianti region. Along the way, we visited an old convent, inhabited by six Australian nuns who were sent here thirty years ago or thereabouts. Sam and Ray had originally heard about them and dropped in to say hello, and had been friends with them since. We met two of them, very friendly and Australian in an ‘old school’ way (they used the word ‘wog’ to describe a flu they’d had! — to us younger Australians, it’s solely a derogatory term to describe Italians and Greeks in Australia!). When they’d arrived at the convent, it was falling down, the roof just about to collapse, dirt floors — they’ve been fixing it up ever since. They laughed and described it as a challenging time, and I wasn’t surprised.

Sam took us back to their house — with some stilted conversation in the car on the way, with Sam’s amusing tendency to either not hear or ignore much of what we say! — and we enjoyed a several-course lunch with them. Katherine was particularly excited by an Australian-style roast for the main course, as she is a little deprived of this kind of cuisine, with us being vegetarians at home (and not having an oven!).

After lunch they drove us out to a charming fortress-village — Monteriggioni — which we wandered around for a time, talking. The surrounding countryside was beautiful and emerald-coloured.

On the way back, they stopped via a shop that makes and sells crystal — something the region’s known for — and while we wandered around talking with Ray, Sam bought us a gift from them, a little crystal olive-oil dish. How lovely!

The following day Sam and Ray picked us up very early and we drove north west for three hours towards a little town called Villa Collemandina. The drive there was beautiful, heading through (or at least nearby) the Garfagnana, a spectacular-looking region of green mountains and valleys I’d marked as a place I’d like to visit.

We drove alongside a bright blue river, along its valley with multi-hued mountains around us, and stopped by ‘Ponte Diablo’ in Borgo a Mozzano, a spectacular bridge over the Serchio river. Ray and Sam explained the legend: In return for bringing about the bridge’s completion, the devil demanded the first thing to cross the bridge. It was a pig, and a pissed-off devil got some rather petty revenge by making the bridge the odd shape it is. Fair enough.

We drove upwards into the mountains and arrived in Villa Collemandina: Sam and Ray had invited us there to join them at a restaurant they enjoyed, Ristorante Panoramico. The restaurant were celebrating Italy’s Liberation Day (liberation from Nazi Germany, that is) by holding a very inexpensive banquet. First we walked around the compact town’s little paths amongst the tightly-packed houses. A rather disturbing (but slightly amusing) old guy laughed at my hair and asked (translated by Ray) whether I was masculine or feminine! Guess I probably do need a haircut. Then he became overly friendly with Katherine, which was a little off! Eww.

The view from the town was great, as it was perched high on a mountain:

So, we filed into the restaurant and were treated to a feast — prosciutto, slices of local salami served interleaved with slices of kiwi-fruit, a wild mushroom risotto, and some rather more dangerous risotto containing mortal quantities of cheese. For the main course, big hunks of chicken, lamb, and many other different kinds of animal. This prompted Sam to proudly recount the Noah’s Ark of animalia he’s consumed in his life, including snails, sparrows (he described how he built a trap to catch them), wild boar piglets, deer, budgies (of all things!), and donkeys — and lungs & tripe, body parts he was particularly proud to have consumed.

We’ve been curious about gypsy (nomad) culture too, having heard some rather extreme things said — mostly the impression we’ve received that they’re thought of generally thieving and morally deficient — which seemed to us too extraordinary to be anything but widespread prejudice. So we sought Ray and Sam’s impressions, which didn’t differ greatly from what we’d previously heard. In fact, they told us that they’d heard recently in the news that a young girl had been sold from one group to another because she was considered a skilled thief, and thus valuable. It still all seems a little extreme to me — that, generally speaking, one whole culture can be so ‘corrupt’ — so I reserve judgement until I know more!

We were interested in their decision to move to Italy, and Sam explained that Ray’s family had been hostile towards Sam as an Italian, calling him Mafia, apparently, and had made their lives so unpleasant they decided to move. Good old Aussie racism, but fascinating to hear that the family were so caught up in their prejudice that they apparently drove their daughter away to another country!

We were equally fascinated to hear Sam talking about Southern Italians — unprompted, he loudly complained that there was “one law for them, another law for us”, with car registrations, TV licences… — very interesting to behold those sentiments, particularly in light of their exodus from Australia!

After lunch we sat outside in the sun and talked with Ray — as it turned out, we seem to share a lot of similar opinions and we enjoyed discussing the big issues (environmental collapse, overpopulation, asylum seekers and immigration and the popular attitudes to it…).

Back home, we exchanged contact details, and we told them to get in touch when they visit Australia again (if we’re there!), and we said farewell.

It was very interesting to meet some locals who also have an Australian perspective, and we really enjoyed meeting Sam and Ray!

We started out by wandering yet another mediaeval town. My expectations were perhaps a mite high after hearing of it’s popularity and the reception I received at mentioning we were going there on Facebook. As with most major tourist attractions we’ve visited on the trip we were left wondering why this town out of all the mediaeval towns in Italy is so obscenely popular. Location, location, location – it’s within a day-trip from both Siena and Florence. As with any major tourist attraction the maxim “the act of observing changes that which is being observed” – or perhaps more to the point “tourism changes that which is toured” – was evident in San Gimignano. Luckily tourists are extremely easy creatures to be rid of – just walk in any direction they’re not going in, which is pretty much every direction bar one and then like magic you have the place to yourself. So we wandered the back streets a little bit.

It was a beautifully sunny day when we began our hike through the pastural landscape of olive groves and vineyards.

And we were feeling both youthful and vigorous

We came across an interesting, seemingly completely purposeless structure built into the ground that reminded me of something from a fantasy novel or the Amazon jungle.

As the day wore on, the sun that had originally made the day so cheerful, sapped us of our will to go on when it continued uninterrupted by shade and unrelieved by a breeze the whole day long. Like seemingly everything else in Nettle, our water bladder had fallen victim to mould, which had left us with one small bottle of water between the two of us. Of course, we could have bought another water bottle in San Gimignano but every now and then we seem to make these inexplicably stupid decisions, which in hindsight leave us questioning our mental capacities. I think we thought we’d find places to fill up along the way. I’ve definitely come to associate Italy as a place abundant in water fountains, which is great if you’re in a town and not hiking through the countryside where they don’t tend to build public facilities. After running out of water somewhere near the half-way mark of our hike we decided to walk a little bit out of our way to get to the nearest town. We asked the first person we saw for some l’acqua – a middle-aged man picking olives out the front of a property. Of course, he happily obliged. However, it still wasn’t enough water for the two of us and we decided to beef it up with some electrolytes (we didn’t bring enough water but we did bring a full first aid kit) and ration out what was left.

We noticed the following strange phenomenon and wondered if the “anti-light” would show up in a photograph or whether it was just our confused brains telling us the rays of light are dark:

Nope, not an illusion. Anti-light, baby.

We walked back to the point from which we’d diverted from the Lonely Planet directions and took the trail they described (“Buona passaggio“, from a well-wishing olive-picker we passed). Only it wasn’t the trail as it was a dead-end. So we took the only other trail that matched that description, which was also a dead end. We went back and walked along the road a bit further and came to the only other road it could have been. It didn’t match the description in the Lonely Planet guide at all but sure enough that was the one they meant. It turned out to be a short-cut to the very place we had just walked to get water. Having successfully added a few kilometres onto our hike by walking in circles we set off in the right direction for the first time in a good long while.

Stumbling and half-limping, zombie-like, we trudged the rest of the way along the decidedly un-scenic highway back to Nettle. One of our dreams for our travels in Europe is to hike the Alps. Given that we just had our asses kicked by the gentle, rolling hills of Tuscany I think we might have a bit of work to do.

We’ve been travelling through Europe for seven months now and have developed a sort of astronomically high standard when it comes to things to see and do. Mediaeval hill-top towns with charming, impossibly narrow cobbled streets that would have once had me salivating are now generally met with a lacklustre “it’s nice but we’ve seen better”. Ditto for churches and castles. We went to Assisi and didn’t step foot into a church. When we saw photos of the Siena Duomo, however, the newly found HDR photographers in us couldn’t wait to photograph it and it didn’t disappoint.

One of the first things we noticed about this gothic masterpiece was the cacophony of detail in the facade. We’ve both often wondered at the practicality of such lavish detail that is going to be viewed from a great distance. A sculpture that may have taken months to complete may never be focused on for itself but will just blend into the rest!

We wandered the town before entering the Duomo in order to avoid a school group that was just about to go in. I didn’t find the town itself particularly captivating – there was none of the grandeur of Rome, the beauty of Florence or the charm of tiny villages but the piazza was rather impressive in its vastness.

We spent hours in the Duomo being generally overwhelmed by the sheer amount of photogenic goodness and not wanting to miss a great shot. Truly, we would have had lacklustre photos if not for our new found HDR skills given the bright spots of light coming in through the windows and the lamps with the rest being in shadow. Tripods weren’t allowed even if we had one so my shoulder and both of us holding our breath was the next best thing.

I love that those dudes above look like they’re at a rock concert, fist-pumping the air.

Another thing that’s easy to overdose on during an extended jaunt through Europe is religious themed art, especially in Italy. One of the highlights of the Siena Duomo for me was the library which had massive illuminated vellum hymn books on display. To my delight they were filled with creatures and floral designs that could easily slot into a pop surrealism painting today. This guy put me strongly in mind of an X-Men cartoon:

Awesome afro.

By far my favourite little guys were these dolphin-like creatures that I could totally see in a Greg “Craola” Simkins painting – they’ve even got pearls!

I felt such a powerful sense of kindred-spiritness through this vast span of time with the whimsical soul who conjured up these bizarre creatures. It’s the first time that I felt I could really relate to a specific person from another time period and it made me reel a little bit at the… I don’t know, interconnectedness of it all, I suppose. You can’t get much more modern than pop surrealism in the art world. Like the Impressionists and the Salon, pop surrealism artists are still largely unaccepted by mainstream galleries: That’s how new it is. Yet, here’s some dude illuminating hymn books with these imaginary slightly creepy creatures almost 600 years ago that could be published in the funkadelic Hi-Fructose magazine today. This to me, was much more interesting than seeing an umpteenth Madonna and baby Jesus.

After spending some time pouring over the books Mike asked me if I’d looked up yet.

Thank goodness for zoom lenses and digital SLRs because it turned out there were more creepy creature goodies all the way up there getting lost in the “more-than-the-sum-of-its-parts-ness”.

We probably could have stayed and spent another hour or two photographing the cathedral but we were racing daylight so we headed off at peak hour, as usual, for our home for the night – a sosta in the delightfully named town of Poggibonsi.

Our unexpected detour resulted in some excitement as we were waved by another officer right into the town’s narrow, pedestrian-filled streets. We cruised slowly down a main street lined with cafés and boutiques; shoppers threw us surprised/bemused looks as we drove along, close enough to do some window shopping, maybe grab a cappuccino.

Things got a little tight as we drove through the piazza and down another little street past parked cars — this guy’s expression was classic:

Apart from some harmless scraping of our driver’s side step on a step as we passed, we escaped unscathed and drove on into the town of Arezzo. We found ourselves a sosta to stay in, and walked up the steps into the town via a park overlooking the surrounding countryside. We were in Arezzo primarily to visit the Duomo (partly to exercise our new-found HDR tools!), so that was our first stop, right beside the park.

It was an imposing old building, looming over the square, and its interior was lovely, and immense. We took lots of photos, Katherine’s shoulder acting as a tripod because it was so dark inside.

We ventured outside again and walked through the town’s little, steep cobbled streets. We were reminded by a sign that this was the town in which a lot of one of our favourite films, La Vita e Bella, was filmed — I can’t say I recognised anything in particular though.

We came across some stalls selling salami, cheese, and a variety of herbs and spices. It turns out we managed to stumble upon a food festival, and found lots of stalls dotted around the town, each with a different theme – here, meat and cheese, there gelato and chocolate, and in the main piazza more salami, bread, and a couple of makeshift restaurants. We mused afterwards on the homogeneity of the food and had it been a food festival in Australia there would have been Middle Eastern cuisine, Indian, African, European, Asian and of course the more traditional mother-land type fare.

So, we got ourselves some gelati (Katherine picked well with a strawberry and white chocolate blend and cinnamon chocolate), took them back to the park and sat on the grass in the sun watching the world go by as the cathedral bells rang. We laughed at a toddler who had already mastered the Italian tradition of wild hand-gestures while talking.

We stayed the night in Arezzo, and prepared to head off the next morning. Stopping at a service station to check the tyre pressures, I realised that the front-right tyre valve was leaking air, hissing wildly when I gently pushed the valve to one side. Uh-oh! The service station had a garage, so I poked my head around the corner and stuttered out in Italian that I had a problem with the tyre. The guy apologetically said they couldn’t help, but directed us around the corner to a tyre specialist. Miraculously, I actually understood the directions and could find the place he was referring to in Google Maps, but the guy there couldn’t help us either. He pointed us onwards to another garage, pointing it out to me on my iPhone’s map. We found the place, and I looked up and stumbled through an Italian translation of our problem. A helpful and very friendly mechanic from Bangladesh waved us in, jacked up Nettle, whipped off her tyre and replaced the valve within about five minutes, and five Euros later, cheerfully waved us onwards.

Sorted!

We set off from Perugia and took some steep and windy roads up through some more very pretty mountain landscape towards a little town called Preggio. We were headed there to meet up with Bruno, who I originally met when he asked a question about a WordPress plugin I wrote, Flickrpress. He recently noticed we were in the area, and kindly invited us up to his home (and agriturismo) in Preggio!

We found the cute little town and took the bumpy dirt track out to the house (Nettle: “Rrrmmmm! I got this!”), sitting atop a sunny ridge surrounded by blue mountains. Bruno waved us in and introduced us to his wife Elena, and give us a tour of the place, a lovely old farm-house exquisitely interior-decorated and filled with some very aesthetic artwork painted by Elena and her aunt — quite a talented family! Elena’s aunt, also called Elena, painted a large, extremely detailed, brightly coloured idealistic Umbrian countryside scene, which was absolutely spectacular. Bruno explained that Elena was in fact going blind when she painted it and had to be very close to the canvas to see what she was doing. During this story, both Katherine and I had missed whether the Elena Bruno was talking about was his wife or someone else. Katherine found it strangely unnerving talking to Elena at the beginning and not knowing whether or not she could see us.

Our eyes were caught by a piece of Australian Aboriginal artwork in the dining room, and Bruno drew our attention to the artist signature: It was painted by David Gulpilil, a famous Australian actor. Bruno explained that when they travelled to Australia, they’d come across an art gallery in Darwin and entered, passing an Aboriginal man sitting on the street looking like a beggar. Bruno and Elena perused the artwork there and noticed some was by David Gulpilil. When they expressed interest in the artist’s identity to the shopkeeper (they’d just seen a film with Gulpilil in it), the shopkeeper indicated that he was just outside the shop — he was the man they’d passed when they entered!

The four of us sat down to lunch, and Elena brought out bread made from their own spelt flour with cheese and prosciutto while Bruno presented copious amounts of very good local red wine. Then, a big bowl of their own home-made pasta with home-grown beetroot, which was creamy and spectacular. Finally, because in Italy there’s no point stopping eating until your stomach explodes, tasty frittata and a spicy salad of home-grown lettuces and various herbs that Elena had picked growing wild in the nearby fields.

Over lunch, Bruno and Elena told us about their lifestyle change, from living in Italy’s urban north and travelling in their camper (kindred spirits!) while they built rugged campers for a living, to this farm in Preggio — and the learning curve involved, as they now make olive oil, grow vegetables, keep bees and make wine! Elena’s even taking ballroom lessons in Perugia, which we thought was pretty cool.

Bruno noted that they have their own spring here and lots of water capacity, as they predict that water may well become an issue in the future — the little survivalists! Also, Bruno told us about Italy’s ‘feed in’ electricity scheme, which is providing for their retirement: They already have an extensive array of solar panels, and are going to invest a big bunch of money in more panels, which will earn them quite a decent income per year because the Italian government pays for energy you put back into the grid; the panels will pay themselves off in ten years or so! What a great scheme.

When I expressed interest in how Bruno came to be so tech saavy (he was right with me while we were talking WordPress), he explained that he was involved in Italy’s first domain registrar, Register.IT. He’d sold during the dot com boom, and did pretty well out of it — brilliant.

Then Bruno brought out a curious spirit called Amaro, which was quite pleasant (apparently it’s quite bitter further South, and I suspect it was the stuff we encountered in Forza D’agro’ made by naughty monks), which tipped us over into need-a-nap-land. So, we parted ways for the afternoon and Katherine and I drowsily watched an electrical storm happening around us from the couch in Nettle, then napped for a while. This is living!

They offered us the use of their washing machine and dryer, which we accepted with relish (of course, Katherine had just done some hand-washing that morning — she’s good at manifesting laundry opportunities that way) — Ahh, clean sheets.

We joined them again for dinner, which somehow Elena whipped up while we were lazing around. First was fresh, raw vegetables — carrots, some kind of leafy stalks that we didn’t recognise, fennel bulbs and cooked asparagus to be dipped in a dressing of our own construction, from olive oil (Elena and Bruno’s, of course), balsamic or white wine vinegar, salt and pepper. Fresh, simple and very satisfying! Then, Elena brought out an extremely tasty cheesy construction made from a vegetable that may have been rhubarb or silverbeet or a distant cousin, cooked with grilled cheese somehow. Next was a delicious simple risotto. Finally, with a rather worrisome introduction from Bruno — meat-based, not going to tell you what it is, for your own good, Bruno doesn’t like this dish but Elena does — Elena brought out a little casserole-like dish with some rather (as it turned out) innocuous-looking meat and vegetables. Well, innocuous once you get past the fact that I’m actually vegetarian, but for the purposes of proper culture-absorption relax my diet. It wasn’t till the next morning that we found out it was cow stomach! Yeech, I’m glad they didn’t tell us. It was chewy, tasty, and not like any other meat we’d had before (I thought it was a bit beefy, but I’m nominally vegetarian so what would I know).

I don’t know how Elena managed to do all that cooking, but it was a spectacular effort and we are so grateful for their hospitality!

While we were having dinner, Bruno and Elena first expressed an interest in the economic situation in Australia about which we were woefully incapable of enlightening them, aside from saying that living expenses are up and being joyful that we have escaped them to travel the world (nyaa, nyaa). Our conversation turned to the ongoing issue of Aboriginal welfare in Australia: They had seen the desolate towns in northern Australia, plagued by alcohol and drug problems and the like. I knew little about the complexities of the problem — how can I possibly comprehend how to restore pride and cultural integrity to a people whose culture we blithely destroyed, then excluded from our own culture, then grudgingly accepted as second-class citizens and more recently tried to assimilate into white Australian society with the aim of eradicating the Indigenous people once and for all? How do we now either integrate them into mainstream society or reverse the irreversible and restore their culture and way of life? — but we mused that a lot of money has been thrown at the problem in recent years — so, either it’s too little too late or the funding’s going to the wrong places. Of course, the latter is not inconceivable in a country that mindlessly logs its irreplaceable old growth forests for a quick buck, invests next to nothing in its education and research systems and plans to bottleneck its Internet traffic through a content filter to get rid of the Internet’s nasties (that can be effortlessly circumvented). A smart country, we are.

We noticed a photo on the cabinet in the dining room of a tropical-looking resort, and Bruno told us that it was Kenya — and the lodge was theirs! They’d visited and decided to buy some land and build a lodge there, together with a partner who moved to Kenya to supervise the building. He remarked on how widespread the corruption was there, and how they’d carefully done everything in strict accordance with the local bureaucracy but still had to resort to bribery to stop their paperwork from “staying at the bottom of the stack”.

We bid each other buona notte and headed for bed, parked in Bruno and Elena’s front yard.

We re-emerged in the morning for a late breakfast (oops — iPhone died in the night!) that our most gracious hosts provided, home-made bread, honey and jam with cereal and great coffee. Earlier that morning a framed painting had been delivered that we later saw was a beautifully-composed still life of pumpkins and other vegetables in peach and pastel orange hues that Elena had painted. That woman is amazing!

I attempted to fix our boiler’s issues by taking a vacuum cleaner to the outlet, thinking it may have been clogged, and did a few random things with Nettle while Bruno cast an expert eye over her. He shared some useful suggestions — solar panels, even a second alternator that can be attached onto the first one, and an approach we can take to diagnosing our leisure battery issues — and laughed at us and our indoor tendencies (we haven’t even opened our awning once).

So, we said farewell with profuse thanks for their kindness, Elena gave us some eggs from their chickens and Bruno generously presented us with some of their home-made pasta and two bottles of their olive oil, and continuing a tradition started by some friends, made us promise to send them pictures of spectacular places with the olive oil bottles in them. Will do.

We waved and drove up the bumpy driveway grinning and shaking our heads in wonder — I doubt we’ll ever meet a more lovely and interesting couple! Thanks Bruno and Elena!

We got back on the road for another very fine day of country driving, stopping briefly for lunch just down a little dirt road in the mountains. A little further on Katherine spotted a lake (a body of water — always promising) and we did a U-turn and found a great spot to stay the night beside the wetlands. We took a walk around and were struck by how English the countryside looked — lush and green and pastoral. We watched the swallows flitting around above the reeds until the cool of evening set in and we hiked back to Nettle for a cup of tea.

We awoke, fussed with the boiler that refused to light in the miniscule breeze and washed in buckets of water instead, then set off to visit Assisi.

The motorhome parking I’d researched earlier turned out to be specifically forbidden to motorhomes, which appears to be the rule in Assisi: They’re not fans of campers, here. We drove around for a little while, trying to find a place to stop, and were taken on a bit of a wild goose chase following camper parking signs that just kept pointing to the next intersection ad infinitum. Seeing another camper parked on a gravel patch by the side of the road, we decided to stuff the system and park behind them. Take that, the man!

We ambled up the pleasant little road by fields of grass and olive trees, saw our first poppy up close (now, to find fields of them!), and found ourselves in Assisi proper, along with lots of tour buses. We avoided the touristy spots and just took a leisurely walk through the town’s steep streets lined with walls of pink and white bricks.

We found a path that ran though the trees above the town, and followed it until it came out on the road to the fortress that sat on top of the hill. There was a fence beside the intersection that had every inch covered with wads of chewing gum — now there’s an achievement!

Bellies rumbling, we continued wandering though Assisi, and eventually found the only place we could get pizza, in slices reheated as we waited, which were actually surprisingly good. We walked back to Nettle, passing a wall along our way dotted with holes, each one with a pigeon inside (pigeon holes, you see).

We drove onwards down the freeway, and stopped for the night nestled in amongst a bunch of other campers at a sosta in Perugia.

We were there to see the Good Friday procession, apparently the most ancient procession tradition in Italy. Every year, local men and children wear spooky-looking white hoods (Yes, I know what they look like…) and bearing torches, accompany floats carried by solemn-looking bearers through the town. The floats represented various stations of the cross — lances, rooster and a severed hand, Christ on the cross, the body of Christ, a mourning Mary — none of which I really understood with my lack of religious education, but Katherine filled in some blanks later on. Particularly promising-sounding was the orchestra and choir that accompanied the procession, who performed Miserere, apparently the work of a local composer, Selecchy (1708-1788).

We found the piazza at the front of the cathedral and milled around with a few hundred others — seemingly almost all locals, we didn’t see any other obvious foreigners there. Participants were all dressed up and chatting, adjusting hoods and shaking their glow-sticks to life (Glow sticks! How could they!).

As the sky began to darken and the cathedral’s bells rang, people shuffled around to face the cathedral’s entrance; those participating were lined up in parish groups. Down the steps came the first station of the cross, borne by men in gold and black — an angel, presumably, although neither of us knew the significance. This was met by the first group who marched onwards, as the next float came down, four or five pikes sticking up.

The procession continued, winding around the piazza and leading down a small side street as we gathered and watched them go. Almost everyone in the crowd around us crossed themselves as the float carrying the body of Christ went past! Finally, the musicians followed, violins, flutes and a variety of brass instruments, and the choir.

There was a sermon in Italian, broadcast through speakers being borne along with the procession, and the orchestra and choir started — quite moving, and impressive with the acoustics of the square.

We followed the crowd down a different street to meet the procession there, and heard another run through of the speech, and another Miserere. We waited at the side of the torch-lined street, noticing others doing the same, for the procession to come back around so we could get a better look. Half an hour or more passed, watching kids race around each other making gzzzsh gun noises at each other, then an amusing scene with a little girl standing and pointing at another girl holding an ice-cream, getting increasingly upset in her envy as the ice-cream bearer returned her gaze nonchalantly. This is where we learn about not always getting what we want!

Police motorcycles cleared the road, and the first of the procession arrived, two rows passing beside us, with the floats in the middle. Kinda creepy, with those masks!

The trailing orchestra reached us, and started up as they walked past.

Those voices belting out right beside us was quite a thing to behold — quite powerful and moving! We shared an impressed glance as they came to an end, then as the crowd dispersed, set off on the walk back home.

That was absolutely awesome! The whole thing felt authentic and genuine, no touristy stuff here, just a fine tradition that we were fortunate enough to get to witness.

So, the immense to-do list remains outstanding, except a couple of items we managed to find. Our community of mould gets to live another day!

We had a quick snack, parked by the noisy road, then hopped back on the autostrada and headed east, bound for Chieti near Italy’s east coast.

Our TomTom navigator — we dubbed her “Nigella” for now — took us off the motorway, and onto some fairly small crowded roads in an outer suburb. We were directed to make a turn onto another motorway, which looked oddly familiar, and turned out to be the same motorway we were directed off — we even passed by the exit we’d previously taken! Oh, Nigella.

We’d decided to avoid the tollway, preferring to take the surface roads and avoid the hefty €14 toll charge, so we’d disabled tolls in the navigation app. This plan was thwarted by Nigella, who apparently knew better: We found ourselves taken straight onto a toll road and, with no other options, paid the toll and continued onwards. Last straw!

We found our way to the exit, and then the navigator’s directions took us straight onto a different tollway! We spluttered furiously for a little while, pulled over at the next opportunity and brought out Google Maps to try to figure our own way out of this mess. We decided the TomTom app was “the little GPS navigator that couldn’t, then shat itself. Then ate it.”, and dissolved into childish giggling for a little while (that eating bit was Katherine’s suggestion; I’m not that filthy).

Armed with a new plan to continue on the toll road for a way, not really having any other options, and then exit when we could, we proceeded. We found the exit, took it, then pulled over to set up the TomTom app one more time.

After leaving the tollway the drive became quite pleasant, a winding road through little villages and bare-branched woods. We passed by several quite spectacular hill-top villages, the sight made even more impressive by the gleaming snow-capped mountains in the distance.

We stopped in the little town of Tagliacozzo to visit its supermarket, then drove on for a way in search of a suitable place to park up for the night.

The surroundings had become suburban plains, so we continued on a bit longer, climbing upwards again. Katherine remarked on the difficulty of finding suitable wildcamps here, and compared it to the near-impossibility of doing so in the UK — as opposed to Ireland, where we found it absolutely effortless. I guess it’s a population density thing.

Eventually, though, we found a very quiet side road in the mountains, amongst whirring wind turbines.

The following morning, we set off again along the winding mountain roads. The region had a very alpine look to it, and the surrounding snow-capped hills looked quite close.

We wound through the wooded hills to the east, dotted with startlingly purple blossoming trees, and eventually made our way through the pass and out of the mountains, and across the hilly plains to the town of Chieti.

In the time we’ve been residents of the odd backyard sosta in Castle Gandalf, equipped with nocturnal whining dog and weird grotty foreshore, Katherine’s done lots of painting and I’ve done more work on an upcoming app, which we’ve been using during our trips into the city.

We’ve headed into town four times, on the train. On the 45 minute ride in, we pass first amongst hills covered with vines, then through the crumbling remains of a huge ancient wall made up of arches, that runs for at least hundreds of metres, then into Rome’s suburbs, the train line dotted with red poppies.

Our first day in Rome I’ve already mentioned: Our search for Vegemite, and a few other things that mostly pale in comparison to our Vegemite victory.

The second time we went in, last Sunday, we were hoping to visit a flea market that occurs every second Sunday. Instead, we encountered a marathon that wound its way through Rome’s streets. We think it may have been an international affair — we spotted a variety of flags in there. It seemed to be quite a large event, lots of people spectating.

With the market closed for the marathon, we had some time on our hands, and decided to go and visit the Capuchin crypt under the church of Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cuppuccini, located right beside a very busy roundabout/piazza. The crypt is a somewhat macabre series of rooms containing biblical artwork constructed from the bones of thousands of Capuchin monks, extending up the walls and over the roof, with intricate patterns made from various unidentifiable little bones. Pretty crazy.

We attempted to find a cinema to see Avatar in 3D — we headed out to Furio Camillo (we decided it meant “Furious Camel”; been there, done that), which turned out to be a rather wretched suburb; the cinema looked like an abandoned building, and didn’t look much different on the inside. We got a weird look trying to buy tickets to a film screening in a language we didn’t speak, but we had it covered: We had downloaded a bootleg copy of the film earlier, to extract the English soundtrack which we carried on our iPods to sync up while watching — how’s that for creative problem-solving? Unfortunately we were told the session was full, so that was that.

We visited the city another day, to visit the huge Porta Portese flea market — this one, we found open, thankfully, after a long walk from Termini station. Lots of discount clothes and shoes, probably made by little slave kids, and many random-crap stalls with all the same merchandise. But plenty of cool stuff in there, too — various antique items: tools, kitchen utensils, jugs and pans, old cameras, clocks, antique maps and handwritten letters, as well as various artwork for sale. Katherine picked up some arty things while we were there. We showed our tourist-ness by ordering a couple of cappuccinos at midday.

We also found a whole street of bike shops, and saw some cheap second-hand bikes that could’ve worked for us. We weren’t quite ready to make a decision though, so we postponed. We were going to go back the next day in Rome, but it ended up being unfeasible to get the damn things home on the crowded train system, so we aborted. Seven months on the road, and still no bikes — what’s wrong with us!

The final day in Rome we made a beeline back to the deli where we found Vegemite, and bought another two jars and some Lindt easter eggs. We visited a street that Lonely Planet generously described as the place to go for vintage boutiques, and found a grand total of just three little vintage clothes shops! Lonely Planet, you are rapidly losing your credibility…

Lunch in Piazza Navona for old times’ sake (that’s the one with the four rivers statue, where we stopped for lunch last time we were in Rome); bread, cheese, olives and sun-dried tomatoes we found in a nearby supermarket, and very bad jazz saxophone busking.

We made our way back out into the suburbs — a grotty Furious Camel again — and walked up to the Dorothy Circus gallery. Over to Katherine:

The discovery of the Dorothy Circus Gallery was something of a revelation for me. Turns out the type of art I am most excited and inspired by (apart from mixed media) has a name and it’s name is “Pop Surrealism“. Although there is much debate about how fitting the name is and indeed whether or not there should be a name at all, regardless it certainly has the very practical result that I can now find more art like it. Yay for labels!

On our penultimate day before moving on, we finally managed to see Avatar — we drove up to Frascati, a quite pretty town that felt like it was tucked into the trees. The iPod scheme went well — I felt quite smug — and I loved the 3D. Katherine was less enthusiastic, finding the image lacking in sharpness — she was glad we’d seen it on my laptop last night (which is what made us decide to come out to see it on a proper screen the following day), thinking she would’ve enjoyed it less otherwise.

And now we’re off to visit a camper accessories shop to attempt to get a few things sorted — of particularly high priority is a mattress raiser to combat our rather awful mould problem, caused by a badly designed bed base with no ventilation, and a new bathroom tap that doesn’t dribble down into the cabinet underneath when we use it.

Then we’re off East to visit the medieval town of Chieti, to see the ancient tradition of the Good Friday procession through the town. We were hoping (again) to drive through the Apennines, but after deciding upon a route, I discovered one point that we pass through right at the 1600m level. I’d determined earlier, with the help of a webcam in Pescasseroli and Google Earth, that this was approximately the snow level. Not worth it!