sporca citta

// dirty city

They all say Milano is dirty but I didn't notice any unusual levels of dirt. The sights are conveniently close together. Starting in the centre, you visit the huge Duomo. Its pale white stone blinds tourists in the sunlight, its interiors are refreshingly understated ‑ partly because most of the decoration is so far above your head that you can't see it properly. There are gargoyles, biblical figures, animals and decorations carved high on each pillar. Stained glass windows send shards of coloured light bouncing off each other, but the size, grey walls and sombre mood of the place leave a feeling of doom. Not the kind of place I'd like to go to worship.

The outside is far more interesting. For some strange reason there were empty bottles of water arranged in a blue, white and green path just outside the entrance. As usual there were men with little bits of string trying to get the tourists to hold something long enough to be pressured into buying it. I had a panino from a streetside café and a Chinese guy spoke to me in German because he thought I was from Austria, not Australia. His friend laughed at him and said "stupido!". It's not the first time someone has confused Australia with Austria. Perhaps it's my German‑in‑Italian accent that throws them.

I lingered in the main square for a while, trying to awake my travel weary senses so they could tell me how wonderful and exciting this yet‑another‑church was, before I gave up and headed for the Galleria.

The Galleria is one of Milano's famous landmarks. Once a crossroads, it was covered by a glass dome and now resembles the Queen Victoria Arcade of Melbourne, with ritzier stores and a giant McDonald's re-branded to match the surroundings. I took a couple of photos, skipped through and found the world famous La Scala Theatre at the other end.

Ok, I have been travelling for a long time now, and I'm somewhat harder to impress these days, but to me La Scala more closely resembles the Brisbane Hotel pre‑renovation than an internationally renowned theatre. The Maj on Hay St is much more interesting. In fact it was only the signs outside that alerted me to the building's location.

Trying not to look too disgusted, I went on into the Quadriletto d'Oro - Golden Quarter - Milan's famous fashion district. The most famous district of the world's most fashionable city, totally on the cutting edge. Giant careers have been made here, the biggest, best and most beautiful brands in the world line the streets. People wander the streets toting bags upon bags of the latest clothes. Famous models turn their coke-powdered noses up at the mere mortals who dare invade their territory. The criss-crossing streets echo with the squeals of delighted bargain hunters who consider anything designed by Tom Ford a bargain if it costs less than a grand. at least, that's how I imagine it is every month of the year except August. Yep, even Milan shuts down for Ferragosto. I shrugged, having had a vague expectation that I'd find Milan in this state.

Most of my photos of Milan are photos of shop windows and graffiti.

ferrero rocher

Did you know they come from Torino? As do Nutella, Tic Tacs and Vermouth, while the world's highest quality mint is grown in nearby Pancalfieri. Torino is also the 2008 Design Capital of the world and was the capital city of Italy in the early days of unification.

With the river Po cutting through her centre like a winding blue ribbon, Torino is stunning. Art sculptures mix with ancient palaces and huge paved squares lined with decorative white buildings, with a wide open sky and a refreshing feeling of space. For once, the churches aren't the main attraction touted by locals. Because the city's expansion was planned and therefore designed, the streets follow a sensible pattern, drawing the visitor into the centre of town along the wide and welcoming porticoed walkways of Via Roma. There are fountains, large piazzas and expansive public gardens. (One of the items on the ever increasing list of claims to fame is that Torino is Italy's greenest city.)

Visitors are made extremely welcome in this town. There is a Torino card which you can buy for your chosen period of days, from 1 to 7. The card grants you free access to all of the public transport in the city and every single museum in the whole region of Piedmont. There are no limits and it only costs 20 euros for 3 days. Needless to say, I had saved up my museum visitation urges for coming here. My feet still ache when I think of it, but I spent three consecutive days covering just about every type of museum there is.

I wandered through the Palazzo Valentino and its riverside gardens, a typewriter museum (boring but I didn't know what it was until I was through the door), an automobile museum where I was the only woman with lots of car freak men, the Mole Antonella and the giant cinema museum inside (cinema was invented in Torino), the Egyption Museum (biggest one outside of Egypt, with real unwrapped mummies, tombs that were dismantled and reconstructed inside the museum, and many other amazing artefacts).

There was a photography exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art, Eataly (local food and wine), a trip on a 1930s tram uphill to the Basilica Superga with an amazing view of Torino and a tour in Italian of various tombs of past Italian kings. I held my breath walking within centimetres of ancient paintings and other pieces in the Palazzo Madama. There were textiles, baroque and renaissance paintings including Antonello da Messina's "Portrait of a Man", Anguissola's "Chess Game" and even works by Caravaggio. (Incidentally the town I'm in now has paintings by Molineri, just sitting there in one of the churches.) I also had a personal guided tour in Italian of the many rooms of the Decorative Arts Museum, a palace furnished in the style of the height of Torinese decadance. Winding down, I dropped into an exhibition of Japanese Terracotta warriors (incidentally "terra cotta" translates to "earth cooked") and a few other smaller exhibitions. Feeling puffed? After those three days I spent a whole day in the park reading a book.

I really enjoyed my time in Torino, it was the perfect mix of socialising, museum hopping, wandering, eating and relaxing. Unfortunately the open, clean, modern feel of the city will be left mostly to your imagination; I took very few photos. Torino's beauty is in her history, her modern flourishes, her willingness to embrace visitors, and the soft, contented hum of the crowds wandering through her piazzas.

dove sono tutte le penne?

// where are all the pens?

I am typing this next to a little fountain, the water tripping over the edge of the rocks and stumbling along the path cut for it down the grassy hill. There are shady trees, birds, flowers and secret pathways and above it all, Monte Bianco is the dancing Salome, with the clouds as her seven veils.

Monte Bianco (or Mont Blanc in French) taunts the surrounding peaks with her pale majesty. All through the four seasons, she is dressed resplendently in snow while the other mountains don shades of green and brown for the warmer months. The little town of Courmayeur (where I am today) rests at her feet and caters for the hiking and skiing desires of Europe's very rich. In summer, hikers are everywhere. One imagines they will give way to the skiers in a few months time. The shops here are Cartier, Armani and Mikimoto getting cosy with Timberland and small hiking boutiques. There are many familiar brands and many others I've never heard of, but I have not seen a single Mont Blanc pen.

By now, I have admired Monte Bianco from almost every angle possible in Italy. This morning I saw her from the Valle d'Aosta, casually drifting along at 870 metres above ground in a hot air balloon. I was booked in with others but the rest of the group pulled out, so it ended up being a private flight just for me! I felt very bourgeouis. I was collected from my hotel at 6am by Margot, a friendly girl the same age as me, and she took me to her grandfather, the balloon pilot. I helped them fill the balloon by holding the base wide so that a big fan could blow air inside it. After about 15 minutes they turned on the gas and the balloon began to float.

The first minute or so left me light-headed, it's a strange sensation to float so high, so suddenly. I stared at the ground beneath us as it became further and further away and turned my face to the wind.

The three of us sailed through the valley, dropping and ascending depending on which wind we wanted to catch. Nestled in a tiny basket in the middle of the sky, we watched the sunrise over the mountain peaks. Margot pointed out different places to me, the local prison which she is sure must be empty because there is no crime here ‑ if someone tries to rob you, you just threaten to tell his mother ‑ her apartment, the dairy fields and the cows. She told me that the cow is the symbol of the valley of Aosta and that ever year in September there is a "cow battle festival" when they dress up the cows and bring them into the town to do battle... Not too sure what kind of battle it is but it sounds like fun.

After we landed (with a bump) Margot took me to a bar she used to work at and we had breakfast together, which ended up being free! Then she gave me her email address and told me to write to her when I am back in Turin because she works there. So, in the middle of the clouds I made a new friend.

Now, after a lunch of prodotti tipici (of course) I am going to wander Courmayeur some more and then head back to Aosta. Tonight there is a jazz party in the main square so I'll sneak some wine and a cup and check it out. Tomorrow, rafting and then back to Torino on Sunday.

It hasn't been a cheap trip to Aosta, but it's been worth every centissimo.

uno di tanti

//one of many

There are some things that even the least observant person will notice after only a few days in Italy. The first thing that becomes apparrent is that all the cities in Italy share the same major street names, mostly relating to the unification of Italy. The second is that the Leaning Tower of Pisa is anything but unique. Almost every town has a building somewhere that leans dangerously; the only difference is that Pisa's started doing it during construction.

I'm in Pisa today but am confined to the train station. I have a couple of hours here until my next train but today there is a train and bus strike (scopiero) which apparently affects not only (most of) the trains, but also the baggage deposit lockers. In Italy, even the machines want in on the sciopero. So, rather than carry my luggage on the hour long round‑trip from the station to a tower that I've already seen (and wasn't that impressed by), I'm sitting here in Maccas, listening to music and typing this.

I'm on the way to Torino from Florence. One night in Torino and then a week in Aosta where I hope to get in a bit of adventure sport (nothing too dangerous mum, just white water rafting). My frist trip to Florence in 2002 left me cold, but this time around I had a lot more fun. I met up with Maaike and two of her friends, so we spend a night drunkenly wandering the streets of Florence, giving directions to tourists and visiting all the major sights in the moonlight. Pretty cool having the Duomo to ourselves at 1am. We failed in our attempt to find an open bar, instead we drank on the streets which, thankfully, is perfectly legal here.

In spite of enjoying myself, there isnt much to say about Florence. There were some cool shops and a funky bar slash library, and I had the best lasagne of my life there. Oh, and Maaike and I had a picnic on the bridge overlooking the Ponte Vecchio. Yeah.

mi piace roma

// I like Rome
Fontana Trevi, Piazza Spagna, Vittorio Emmanuele, Piazza del Popolo, Santa Maria Maggiore, Pantheon, Piazza Navona, Quattro Fontane, Colosseo; Rome is monument after piazza after monument. Everyone I've met here has been here for a whirlwind three days, seeing the sights and running around in the heat, rushing from one must‑see to the next. It's an insult to the city, in fact it's an insult to any city but especially to Rome.

My favourite hours here have been spent wandering the streets at night (don't worry mum there are always people staying in the hostel who come with me). The Trastevere quarter is especially charming at night, with bars and shops lining the Fiume Tevere (the river that runs through Rome) and a little island where you can sit on cushions, sip a spritz and marvel at the beauty of Italian men. Sadly it's only the old ones who ask me out, upon my polite refusal each of them has said "well, I am Roman, it is in my blood to try. Buona sera, bella."

In a city as ancient as Rome there are of course many idiosyncrasies and it's these that I have been seeking out. I've been rewarded with many little discoveries, such as the coolest shoe shop in the known universe tucked away in Trastevere. I've also come across 17 of the 666 known Madonna and Child mini ‑ sculptures (there would be a word for them but I don't know it) adorning the street corners throughout Rome. I was delighted to stumble across a pyramid a little south of the centre on my way to a whole suburb made up of thousands of ancient broken pots. There's even a Necromancer's Magic Doorway just near my hostel. The inscriptions lining it are the remnants of the notes written by a necromancer who fled mysteriously sometime before the 9th century. A marquis had been funding his research, and after the experts of the time were unable to translate the Latin inscriptions, the marquis had them carved into a doorway in the hopes that someday a passerby might be able to translate them. Indeed, they were eventually translated, but not until 1963, several centuries too late.

The Cappucin Monks are an old favourite that I returned to; monks who celebrated death as merely the portal to the next life, and used each other's bones to decorate their chapels. You come face to face with Death as he should be; grinning at you from between a pelvis, finger bones and femoras making up his scythe and scales. He reminds you that "what you are now, we once were and what we are now, you will be".

Un piccolo giro ‑ a quick trip ‑ around the ruins of Rome leads one to marvel at how the seat of ancient civilisation has evolved to become the centre of such a chaotic nation. Nevertheless, Rome is everything it should be and more, and even though I didn't bother to throw a coin into the Trevi Fountain, I know I'll be back.

napoli crapoli

"The city of Naples is resplendent with her crystal clear waters, the Isle of Capri winking from across the bay, the sparkling..." I lower the little pocket guide book I'm reading and stare dubiously across the Piazza, past the by now infamous piles of rubbish and across to the brown waters of the bay, crowded with people and cruise ships. Due to a mixture of problems involving the government and the Camorra (the local mafia) Naples has been steadily drowning in rubbish since 2004. The problem escalated recently and the EU stepped in, but the city is still overrun with waste which the citizens have been known to burn on the streets. Naples is chaos, crime, grime, and a few (ugly) monuments here and there.

If you wrench your mindset around to that of a wide‑eyed, excited, open minded traveller, who doesn't hail from one of the world's cleanest cities, you can detect an undercurrent of excitement beating steadily beneath the dirty, smelly, winding streets. One night I met up with Stu (college Stu for those in the know) and we watched Italy beat France in the soccer, with terrifyingly loud fireworks going off a few metres away every time Italy scored a goal. One firework in particular was reminiscent of WWII, but all it did was make noise ‑ no pretty lights! It's almost as though Naples takes for granted that its beauty has been touted for centuries (the guide books quote Goethe, Napoleon and the likes ‑ anybody who visited more than 50 years ago) and feels it's done its job; pretty is so passè.

However ugly the city may be, it charmed me in a strange, I'll probably never bother to return but I'm glad I came, sort of way. After all, Napoli brought us pizza, it's the gateway to Pompei, Erculano and various other sites of archaeological importance, it has some of the best museums in the world and the traffic is crazy enough that it's a tourist attraction in itself (best seen from the safety of your hotel balcony). Cars whizz in behind ambulances to get a free ride through the traffic, motorcycles zip along the footpaths, horns beep at each constantly, the modern music of an ancient town.

Food, ruins, friendly waiters and fireworks aside, the city left me underwhelmed. Arriving in the wide, clean(er), marble streets of Rome after three days fruitlessly searching for anything beautiful in Naples was a true relief.

forse non sono normale

// maybe i'm not normal

Am I a failure at culture for comparing the Cinque Terre to Dunsborough, and thinking that the waters at Dunsborough are a little cleaner, the beaches nicer, and the tourists refreshingly less ignorant?

In truth, it really is beautiful here, not to mention miraculous that it exists at all. Dry stone walls, hundreds of years old, scale the steep hillsides, supporting wild flowers, vineyards, and houses. Considering how much effort it takes just to walk along the established pathways, it's incredible to think that somebody once built all of it. The walls have been calculated to be at least equal to the length of the great wall of China.Even today the hills are so steep and the paths so narrow that people carry their groceries up by hand, with the occasional assistance of a sort of train style elevator contraption that runs up to a certain point.

For mum and I, the main beauty of the hills and the towns clinging to them lies in the way they show people's defiance in the face of the impossible. Just to get to our room from the street it's 41 steps! Of course, far from being a mere triumph of engineering, the terraced rails are pretty too, especially covered as they were today with wild flowers. Mum was annoyed to see so many flowers growing wild that refuse to take root in her garden at home.

We also had a little excitement on our first day. After finding a room and settling in, we went for a wander with some wine and olives and sat on the pier, watching tourists walk past with their walking stick/ski pole things (honestly, if you need those on the bloody jetty I really don't think you should tackle the trail tomorrow). We were treated to a spectacle when a bunch of cops suddenly appeared to greet a boat with Danny Devito on it! Ok, so it wasn't Danny, it was actually the minister of work according to a nearby Italian guy, but he was certainly short enough to be Danny. He thanked everyone profusely and he and his standard issue token blonde girlfriend posed for a few pasted smile photos before wandering off to do whatever, and returning half an hour later. The locals got a kick out of it and made jokes about short men,

It's a lovely place with plenty of people to watch and some really pretty places to see. Still, if you've been to Dunsborough, don't expect the tiny black beaches, overpriced souvenirs and the pale blue ocean to impress you all that much.

Of the five lands we are in Vernazza, which we think is the most picturesque, the perfect place for a picturesque meal on the beach, freezing our butts off and telling ourselves that we are more cultured because of it. At least we don't have hiking poles.

i canali e i muscoli

// the canals and the muscles

After two days of treating our taste buds to the flavours of Bologna, we moved on to Venice.
Venice wears its fame with a humble grace. The canals, the tiny streets, the masses and masses of tourists, the bronze and delightfully muscled arms of the gondoliers; the town is quietly charming.

As we rambled across the little bridges, following the signs that point in every direction to St Mark's square, I tried to pretend to mum that the place I was casually drawing her towards wasn't really anything that great. When we got to the square, she said something like wow and I was satisfied. The last time I was here, the town flooded in the afternoon (a daily occurrence at certain times of the year) so it was a far more crowded square that the one I had experienced before.

Saint Mark's square is the main feature of Venice, big and full of people and pigeons and cafes, and adorned with a duomo that stops you in your tracks. At one end of the square, sits the giant church like a jewel, a trail of people lining up for the privilege of peering inside. The building is supported by pillars of marble in different colours and patterns from purple to green. Paintings of various scenes stare down at you from the ceiling above and every tiny space on the rooftop is proudly occupied by a gargoyle or a statue or a carving, as though a swarm of little magical creatures stormed the church and each claimed their own little spot hundreds of years ago.

You walk around in awe, hoping a pigeon doesn't drop something distasteful into your open mouth, and you take a billion photos that will never do it justice, before you turn to be met with the sight of the clock tower, the sea, the people, the white stone, the overwhelming beauty and madness, and you think 'jesus, I need a drink' so you head for the nearest bar.

Venice is one of the few places in the world that can't be ruined by an over-abundance of tourists. The prices are high but you're ON a high (what exactly is in those canals anyway?) so you pay them without grumbling. You wander around, looking at the masks, glass, lace and leather for which Venice and her surrounds are famous, and you try to get lost. Everyone says it's easy to get lost but the town is only about three metres square and every steet leads to the Grand Canal so really, it's pretty hard to lose your way, but you do stumble across some pretty special things in the process.

(Side note: we ducked into a museum containing dresses and other items made by a single woman, from paper. Impossible to believe, her skill and patience were incredible. One of the best exhibitions I have ever seen.)

The whole place is indescribably impressive so I'll leave it at that.