I'm Home

The last days of my amazing holiday got very hectic and I was away from wireless connectivity. When I next got near a PC I was in the flight lounge and on my way home. No pics for this blog. I got on the plane, turned left as you do, changed into my provided designer pyjamas and after a champagne nightcap, went to bed.

Thanks for following my journey and for all the email responses. Watch for my next amazing adventure only made possible with the support of friends at home; Herman, Herman, Herman, Jan, Rod, Wendy, Gary, Wieland, Jarrod and many others.................................. thanks

Nathan

Berlin Pics

The Trabant was an East German car, a P 50, powered by a smoky two-stroke generator that maxed out at 18 hp; the P stood for plastic and the 50 signified it’s 500cc engine that used only 5 moving parts. To conserve expensive metal, the Trabant body was manufactured using a form of plastic containing resin strengthened by recycled wool or cotton. There was a waiting list of up to ten years to get one so old ones sold for the same price as new ones.



Most of the beer gardens in Berlin face the canals and are made to look like beaches. Every lunch time you head for the canal beach for a quick beer and a sausage and watch the passing boats.

AlexanderPlatz - the centre of former East Berlin

Berlin - 1.5 Litre beer glasses, Oh boy!

Berlin, population 3.5 million, is the capital of Germany, population 82 million. Post WW2, it was divided into East Berlin, governed by the Russians, and West Berlin, governed by the Americans, British and French. When many East Berliners decided they liked the West better a 155 kilometre, 3 metre high wall was erected, overnight, to stop the mass exodus. The wall came down in 1990.

Although not a beautiful city, Berlin has some world class architecture, albeit pock marked by the weapons of a world war. Berlin has as an extraordinary collection of museums which rank among the very richest on the planet that take days to get through, and an amazing outdoor eating lifestyle centred around the canals and many plaza's. Berlin is pushbike crazy, everyone pedals around and most of the taxi's are pushbike based for inner city travel. One bike has six seats in a circular design and everyone pedals to make it move forward, you have to see it to believe it.

During a single meal, in the Jewish Quarter, no less than six wandering street theatre acts presented in front of us, ranging from acrobatics to quartets to opera singers, all touting for the odd dollar. Berlin has a plethora of parks, forests, canals and lakes and is not a place that is appreciated easily or quickly and not without a broad range of emotion. 

 One of the first things we did, after tasting the local brew, was to take a three hour tour of the canals in a river barge. Yes, Berlin, like Paris and Venice, has water as the vital lifeblood of the city. A series of canals, connected by locks to control the water height, provide much of the public transport, movement of goods and social nightlife for Berliners. 979 bridges cross 197 kilometers of innercity waterways weaving between east and west.

The Radisson Blu Hotel has, as it's architectural centrepiece, a 1 million litre, 30 metre high fish tank with over 5000 fish, cleaned daily by scuba divers. All the rooms face the fish tank. You could watch this for hours. To get a sense of the scale of this tank, look at the coffee tables and chairs and the glass lifts at the right side of the pic.

There are many museums in Berlin, the most interesting to me being the four floor Altes Museum that contains more Egyptian antiquities than the two floor Cairo Museum. The collection of artefacts is grander, better presented and in far better condition than the Cairo exhibits. I asked a Guide where it had all come from and got the answer that much had been donated over time and received in good faith. The Guide added that a lot of the provenance on items was shady. Possession being nine tenths of the law seems to hold where Egyptian antiquities and heritage are involved, worldwide

I visited the iconic Brandenburg gate, through the maze of pillars at the holocaust memorial, had my passport stamped with an East German stamp at Check Point Charlie and ambled through the gardens of Potsdam Castle.


Everywhere we went, the Berliners were friendly and accommodating with conversation and guidance. Our Australian accent attracted many people wanting to practice their english and talk about Sydney. We refused so many free beers for conversation mainly due to the size of the glasses and lack of time to drink them all :)))

I regularly bumped into remnants of the Berlin Wall seemingly forgotten and ignored by modern culture. I won't speak to the atrocity that preceded its construction or the oppression that it visited on the people and community of post war Berlin.  Everywhere you look there are bullet holes and blast marks, in a city founded in the 12 century AD, that tell a story beyond any words. 

Brighton Beach on a rough day, so they said

The Butchers Home Delivery Service

London - no thanks

What a difference a few kilometres north can make. All the stories about England weather are true. Paris was sunny, hot and humid and Southampton is cold, windy and miserable, almost as bad as Sydney.

There was a rush on buying tracksuits in the onboard clothes shop and, quite clearly, there were only two colours, grey and pink, in uneven proportions. There are quite a few men in pink which is refreshing but a little odd on the eye.

The gangways opened and we all went ashore. A ripple of conversation went through the crowd and a quietness washed over the dock as we realized that we were standing where the passengers of the Titanic had stood in 1912. Almost as a single group everyone turned and looked toward the sea as if expecting to see the Titanic returning to Harbour. No-one threw any large diamonds into the harbour so in true Anzac style, after a minute or so, the hustle bustle and buzz of excited septuagenarians picked up again.

So, all rugged up we headed for London through some of the greenest countryside you might want to see. Every few kilometres there was a little village with cobbled streets, fish and chip shop, tea-rooms, large castle, large church and Morris Minors by the bakers dozen. I was living an episode of “Heartbeat”.  

The United Kindom has a population of 62 million with 7 million living in London.  London is Sydney on Ectsasy but every bit as architecturally and historically rich as nearby Paris. The Romans founded London as a communication centre shortly after they invaded Britain in 43 AD. Londinium, as it was called then, was a little village on the Thames. London rapidly grew to become the biggest city in Europe.  

London City is not a nice place to walk around when compared with other large cities, the streets are narrow and cold and its as busy as downtown Mumbai with all the aggression of lunch hour in Sydney. I can see why I was warned about pickpockets, you are jostled and bumped into constantly as you walk around. 

We jumped a red double decker topless bus and worked our way around the obligatory sights so we could leave the city. There was a lot to see; Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, 10 Downing Street, the Tower Bridge, Barbican Arts Center, Nelson's statue in Trafalgar square, the wax museum and Buckingham Palace.

We were relieved, a few hours later, to leave London and head down to Brighton. One of my goals was to visit Brighton Pier (note the pebble beaches). Brighton and Hove were much more civilized and calmer to walk around. Both towns were essentially seaside homes for the English Gentry and even the Royal Family had their summer Palace here. An absolute must is to visit the Summer Palace as you can walk through every room and have tea and scones on Queen Victoria’s private balcony, left of Dome in picture (which I did of course). 

Paris pics

Paris

Paris, the capital of France, is located in northern France on both banks of the Seine River, 145 km from the river's mouth on the English Channel. A total of 2.2 million inhabitants live in Paris proper, and almost 12 million live in greater Paris, which is one of Europe's largest metropolitan areas. Paris owes its prosperity in large part to its favorable position on the Seine, which has been a major commercial artery since the Roman period.

The first thing you see when entering Paris is the Eiffel Tower. Three hundred French folk built the Eiffel Tower, over only two years, for the 1889 World Fair. The Tower was simply the front gate to the Fair and an amusement with 2 francs being charged for people to walk up its structure. The builder, Alexandre Gustave Eiffel, paid for the entire construction and was given a twenty-year lease to recover his costs. At the end of the twenty years it was to be dismantled. The French largely hated the Tower for most of its twenty years with many protests at the ugliness of the Tower. Newspapers of the day reported that the Tower was killing all the fish in the River Seine and had changed weather patterns across France.

At the end of the twenty years, under threat of an official order from the French government to pull down the Tower, Alexandre Eiffel convinced the military that the tower could be useful for military communications via newly invented radio transmission. The first antennae were installed at its top just in time for World War I thus saving the Tower forever. Sadly, over 300 people have committed suicide off the Tower and now the lower floors are wrapped in a visually unpleasant steel mesh to stop further deaths.

A short list of must see attractions in and around Paris;
• The 9000 seat Notre Dame Cathedral
• The Louvre – former Royal Palace housing the Mona Lisa, Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, along with 3000 other world artistic treasures
• The Invalides – Napoleon’s Tomb
• The Champs-Eleysees running through the city centre (ANOTHER Egyptian Luxor Obelisk is at its centre)
• The Arc de Triomphe
• The Paris Opera Theatre – largest in the world
• The Palace of Versailles
• Claude Monet’s home
• Rouen, where Joan of Arc was martyred
• Jim Morrisson, Sarah Bernhardt and Oscar Wilde are buried here.

Getting around Paris was much easier than reported. We got to most of the sites by either bus or river barge. The highlight of the day was a late dinner cruise down the Seine over a classic French meal, duck breast with pears and roasted potatoes millefeuille, poire William reduction, washed down with a 2001 Canon Fronsac Ch. Cassagne Haut Canon " La Truffière ". Even in our underdressed tourist couture, it was still a genuinely emotional experience.

As I took in the surreal scenery on deck an Australian woman standing beside me, Alyce, began quietly crying. Alyce was so overcome with the opulent splendor of Paris, particularly the riverside milieu, that she had to let it out. I empathised with her emotion and offered a glass of my red wine. It was at this time that the roaming violinist arrived beside us on deck and began playing an Edith Piaf classic Non Je Ne Regrette Rien.

Alyce’s heart-sourced tears rose in audibility and passion and threatened to upset my own fragile state of well being so I refilled my own glass of red, nodded to the violinist, bid adieu to Alyce, and moved to a different part of the barge, problem solved.

Now where was I? Paris is a city that stirs emotions and moves even the hardest soul, if only from one end of the barge to the other, non, je ne regrette rien!!

What do we do when at Sea?

Here is the winning entry in the "Make a self propelled boat that will carry a slab of beer from one end of the pool to the other" competition.

The red thing in the centre of the boat is an upturned battery powered drill, borrowed from maintenance, connected to a plastic shaft, that was once a kitchen mixer handle, and then to the propeller, a former exhaust fan blade from a bathroom. Incense sticks are in the funnels for smoke. Attention to detail scored more points.....

It's a busy life we lead onboard!

Gibraltar

Gibraltar is a small but critical sea and military connection between the Atlantic and Mediterranean Seas.  The rock of Gibraltar houses 28,000 people with goat like traits. The many walkways are steeper than the Santorini donkey tracks.

Gibraltar is an English Colony with Pounds Sterling as its currency. This place is steep, steeper and ridiculous with a bunch of rare, tailless Barbary Apes living at its highest point. Admittedly, most people live in the few flat bits around the base of the rock and have reclaimed so much land from the sea that the Spanish are currently complaining that the British Colony is stealing their land.

The international airport has an interesting tourism feature; the main (only) road from Gibraltar to Spain cuts across the centre of the runway and when planes land, cars are supposed to stop at the stop signs on either side.

The “rock” also hides a carved out fort of over sixty kilometres of underground tunnels, complete with artillery, currently in use as part of the Iraq theatre of war.  Back down on the ground a true British flavour is evident in the town. There is a Marks & Spencer store and many fish and chip shops that offer vinegar with your chips.

Beer, fish & chips, a bit of shopping at Spencers and back to the boat, that’s a good day. The Captain has pointed the boat at Paris so into the deck spa for the sail-a-way party and evening martini.

p.s. The British Royal Guard march to the Spanish border every day, about 1 kilometre away, to protect the border, across the international runway :) 

In this next photo look for the road crossing the runway, on the left. The runway is on reclaimed land and four international flights land per day. The Spanish border is immediately on the other side of the runway. The foreground is the rock of Gibraltar and the background is Spain. A fun tourist thing to do is to get a taxi across the runway, pass the border post into Spain, turn around and come back. You get a Spanish and a Gibraltar stamp in your passport. The Spanish hate you doing it and the taxi drivers demand double payment to take you. Did I do it? Is the Pope a Catholic?

The big white area in the middle is the cemetery and it appears to be eating into the side of the runway.

Barcelona

Cashed up and in Barcelona, time for SHOPPING!...... later

Spain has 40 million people with over 3 million in its capital, Madrid. Barcelona. the second largest city of 1.6 million is the home of Pablo Picasso, Salvador Dali and Joan Miro. The Dali and Picasso Museums had to be paid homage to. Picasso’s 14^th Century former Aguilar Palace, in the Gothic Quarter, houses his largest life collection and should be on everyone’s bucket list.

Did you know that Salvador Dali once sent a comedy script he had written to the Marx Brothers, in the USA, for their consideration? They rejected the script so Dali responded by sending a gift of a harp to Harpo Marx with barbed wire for strings, temper, temper!

Ok, OK, one more church. I dragged myself to the Antonio Gaudi’s La Sagrada Familia, known for its art nouveau modernismo façade. I was pleasantly impressed with the lack of gargoyles, demons, skeletons, tombs or other gothic/greek/roman influences despite it being commenced in 1883. The natural organic lines lean more towards the style of the early Minoans from Santorini but what do I know about these things?

All of the above is made easy as it all sits around the famed Las Ramblas shopping district. Flowers, street theatre and the July sales all made for an entertaining afternoon. 

Las Ramblas is a very long mall sitting between two streets and is the centre of the social scene in Barcelona. Many of the recommended restaurants are in this area. There is the most amazing street theatre every few metres, animated characters, soccer skills demonstrations, gambling on guessing which cone hides the pea, really good singers fighting to be heard.  This is truly a unique area where anything artistic is accepted and applauded.

Cannes

What to say? Still deeply affected by Stendhal’s I decided that some therapy of the retail variety was urgently required to balance the cultural overload.  Cannes (pronounced Can) is a small French town, in France, sitting on the French Riviera. It was a Greek Trading Post conquered by the Romans and then by the British. It is infamous for its nearness to the sovereign state of Monaco, Nice, Saint Tropez and Saint Raphael.  

Having been ejected from the Burj Hotel in Dubai for being under-dressed (Target was not one of their accepted labels) I donned smart casual French linen pants and shirt and headed for the Casino of Monaco. It is true that the cars around the casino are the very best of the best parked as casually as if in a Kmart parking lot. The lower end of the betting limits on baccarat tables would pay for a meal at Rockpool in Sydney. I bought in at the lower end for two hundred Euro and left two hours later with seven hundred Euro.  Don’t say it, I am not a gambler and Lady Luck was with me, I met her in the catacombs in Rome.

 I wasn’t the only high roller in town either. When I got back to the ship, Frank Lowy dropped in and had anchored the fifth largest super yacht in the world, Ilona, alongside. Not one church or temple or Roman edifice was to be seen; my Stendhal’s symptoms are beginning to fade.  

Livorno

This was an easy itinerary to manage after Rome. With GPS locked and loaded, we drove out of Livorno to Florence, picked the best to see and then left for Tuscany. Breads, and Chianti, were taken in the Monterinaldi winery. We headed out of Tuscany down to Lucca to have a look at the Field of Dreams, Tower of Pisa, and Tintoretto’s Last Supper. The Tower leans far more than photo’s portray. A slow roll back to the ship, day done !

Livorno is Italy’s third largest seaport and is all about access to Florence, Pisa and Tuscany winery area. This is the home of the Renaissance and the Medici family with Florence as the jewel of that Renaissance. Piazzale Michelangelo, the Palazzo Vecchio, and Brunelleschi’s Cathedral Dome are complete examples of the period. Florence is also the home of the statue of David at the Academia of Fine Arts. There are finer, more accessible, examples of Michelangelo’s marble work at the Museo dell’ Opera del Duomo, just around the corner.

Lucca is an intact walled Roman City. The walls were to defend against the evil citizens of Livorno up the road. The rivalry still exists today. We walked the city, popped in for a look at “The Last Supper”, tasted the local Rose’ and headed for Pisa.

The Tower of Pisa is one of three buildings and the only one unstable despite the others being much larger. Three architects were hired and fired in its construction. The first level leans and the second and third levels are straight to compensate.

This pilgrimage through the roots of culture and civilisation has left me suffering from Stendhal Syndrome, dizzy and overwhelmed by the magnitude, volume and genius of our heritage. A form of cultural indigestion………..

Rome

Italy has a population of 58 million with 2.5 million living in Rome. Rome came into being because geographically it had seven high hilltops that were easily defended with swampland between to ambush unpleasant visitors. Over time the swamp was reclaimed and became the meeting places between hilltops and the city of Rome.

From the 3^rd century Rome has had multiple owners starting with the Estruscans. Around 500 BC the Romans overthrew the Estruscans and declared a Roman republic. The Romans, the best engineers of the time, set about building some lasting engineering feats;

·      the now 3000 year old roman sewer system still in use;

·      the Circus Maximus for chariot racing and 250,000 spectators (Ben Hur was filmed here);

·      the Colosseum for 50,000 spectators, some lions and a few very stressed Christians. The Colosseum could be flooded to have mock sea battles;  

·      the Pantheon law library where the painter Raphael is buried

·      St Peters Basilica, designed by Michelangelo, to mark the grave of the Apostle Peter executed by Emperor Nero

·      The Vatican, from 1377, where the Pope still resides. In 1400 the Pope Sixtus engaged Michelangelo to decorate his new chapel and then to paint the famous “Last Judgement”.

·      Countless other treasures from the byzantine and renaissance periods

Today was going to be faster than an episode of the Amazing Race. The day began at 0530. There were eight ships in Civitavecchia Harbour with an unhealthy number of symbiotic buses lurking ashore. I had arranged for our driver to meet us early to try to stay in front of the coach convey as we moved around Rome.

First stop was the Piazza Navona and the la Fontana dei Fiumi  which is the fountain used to try to drown a Cardinal in the Tom Hanks movie “Angels and Demons”. All the fountains in Rome are fed from the Roman Aqueducts and natural springs in the mountains so everyone DRINKS the directly water from the fountains. The water is blue/green and crystal clear.  This took a lot of getting used to.  

Next was the Trevi Fountain and, humorously, it was empty as it was being cleaned. The sculptures were amazing though. A quick jog and we standing at the top of the Spanish steps looking down on to a beautiful marble Obelisk that originated in Luxor, Egypt. Shelley and Keats lived in this Bohemian corner of Rome. The steps are so named as they were once part of the 16^th century Spanish Embassy. The Via Dei Condotti, the Rome version of Rodeo Drive, leads off from this area and did distract us for a while.

Off to the Colosseum (Flavian Amphitheatre), built in 80 AD, and we were still in front of the coaches. Wow, this is worth seeing. In its day it could be flooded for mock sea battles with real boats and cannon. Gladiatorial fighting and feeding Christians to lions was abolished in 438 AD.

We found some very unusual practices by the Monks in the Capuccina Vieneto Dominican Church. It seems that when a Monk dies the body is buried until all the flesh is decomposed, the skeleton is then dug up and placed on display in the church. The skeletons of every deceased Monk of the Church is either displayed in robes or used to make light fittings, wall decorations and other religious focused displays. The chandelier is gross!  No cameras were allowed in this area so I will only mount one of the photos I took.

Keeping with the theme, we headed underground to the catacombs of St Callisto. The catacombs are the ancient underground cemeteries, used by the Christian and the Jewish communities. The Christian catacombs began in the second century and continued until the first half of the fifth.

In the beginning they were only burial places and later became real shrines of the martyrs, centres of devotion and of pilgrimage for Christians from every part of the empire.

 Imagine thousands of burial niches, fifty metres underground, through 17 kilometres of winding narrow tunnels woven into four ever-deeper underground levels. The tunnels are black, cold and airless. There are scarce low-wattage light bulbs at tunnel turns in place of original oil lamps.  Many of the niches are still sealed. Double creepy....

All of this before lunch. The afternoon saw us queuing for access to the Vatican City, Museum and Sistine Chapel. A few words cannot conjure an adequate description of the Rome midday heat, combined with the length of the queue, let alone the visual treasures waiting once we got inside the Vatican City. I will leave this part of our Rome tour to post-holiday repartee.

Dubrovnik pics

The daily fruit & veg market inside the walls

Life inside the city walls is a bit tight.

Life outside the wall is less protected from bloodthirsty Crusaders but a bit more spacious

Dubrovnik

Beneath the frowning limestone mass of Mount Sergio, the brilliant white marble of the city’s walls contrast remarkably against the sapphire blue waters of the Adriatic Sea. The walled city is made entirely of marble and is a breath taking visual and architectural sight. I liken it, architecturally, to a version of Venice without the canals. The streets are narrow and the houses very tall to ward off the heat of the sun. The strong Venetian, Gothic and Renaissance influence is evident on every building.

Croatia has a population of 4.5 million with 200,000 living in Dubrovnik. The Slavic name Dubrovnik means “well wooded” referring to the bountiful hardwood forests that provided the timbers for most ships of the time. A story typical of many coastal towns is that Dubrovnik came about as refugees and survivors of the pillaging Roman Empire fled to a small rocky offshore island where they could defend themselves better. Yes, Dubrovnik was an island. As time passed, several centuries, and the mainland Slavic people calmed down a bit it was agreed to build a Stradone (meeting place) from the island to the shore, which was obviously not very far away. This happened in the 12^th century. The marble battlements were extended to include the new neighbours and Dubrovnik was now a mainland thriving port city, not just a small rocky island.

The population is split between living inside the walled section and a growing number spreading along the coast outside the walls. The main attraction of Dubrovnik is inside the walls.

The ship was portside here so every coach in town was waiting, all three of them. There are also only a few taxis so they were charging ridiculous prices to get to town. We decided to wait for a local bus on the street and after a long hot queue we got onto the bus to be told that they did not accept Euro’s. This caught out everyone on the ship as the currency exchanger is in the city and you can’t get to the city without local currency etc, etc, etc. Dubrovnik uses the Croatian Kuna.

A short, but expensive, taxi ride (he took our 10 Euros happily) to the city had us at the walls of the old city. A sad part of this day was that we noticed five cruise ships in the port as we drove in. This meant thousands of tourists in this small port and it was hard to move about. After a meaningful attempt at seeing all the attractions such at the Franciscan Monastery, the Maritime Museum and the Rectors Palace we jumped a ferry to nearby Lokrum Island for a dip in that sapphire blue water.

After a relaxing afternoon away from the now seven cruise ships we ferried back to the Port for lunch at one of the best eating places so far on this world cruise, Restaurant Dubravka. We tried the obligatory local draught beer coupled delicately with swordfish capaccio, Salata ad hobotnice and Pivo toceno. It worked for me!

Venice- xtra pics

just a normal day for most Venetians..........

 

Venetian Grafitti