Skiing Italy 2009

This has been a trip long in the planning. We started in August last year after we so thoroughly enjoyed our few days in New Zealand. If you’ve glanced though the New Zealand page you’ll see that we were thinking about Andorra. After doing a lot of research on the internet and coming empty as to Gina’s visa requirements we decided to come to Italy, to the Dolomites to be precise, up in the north east corner, near the Austrian border. In fact, if we wanted to we could ski to the border, it’s that close. So far everything has gone smoothly, unlike the auspicious beginning of the New Zealand trip! We arrived at Perth airport with plenty of time to spare (thanks mum) and made our way though customs and onto the plane. 5 hours later was Singapore, a couple of hours of shopping in the new airport terminal there and then the 13 hour flight to Milan. Ouch! We managed to sleep on the flight so the time zone change wasn’t too difficult; Milan is 8 hours behind Perth, but years ahead. This was one of the few times I wasn’t on the ‘red-eye’ so I had a great opportunity to have a good look at the Western Australian coastline. It is spectacular, and here a few of the photos I managed to get. Unfortunately the photos don’t do it justice, but they’re worth a look anyway. The water visibility was unbelievable; I was able to see features on the seabed in water I knew was around 20 metres deep!

This is the township of Two Rocks and its marina.

Here is the mouth of the Moore River and the town of Guilderton.

This is Lancelin. I was particularly interested in this one as we launch the boat here for dives on the wreck of the Key Bicane. You can clearly see the sand dunes behind the town that the 4WD enthusiasts use. (It’s great fun!)

Enough of these. I have heaps more but it’s not really relevant to Italy. So, on the Milan. We arrived at 6am and made our way out to a taxi. I must say that I am very impressed with many of the features of European cars. We are missing so much in Australia as far as motor vehicle development goes. We are still 20 years behind the restof the world! One thing I am pleased we don’t have in Australia is the European fuel prices…. A litre of motion-lotion is around €1.20 (€1 is very close to AUD$2). The trip from the airport to our hotel, around 5 kilometres from the centre of the city, cost €90!!! As far as the architecture goes, it looked a bit like Melbourne to me. The hotel was very good for only 3 stars. I was expecting a bit of a dive, but no, it was clean, tidy and quiet. We caught up on a bit of sleep and then made our way out into the world of Milan around lunchtime. Any mealtime is a great time to be in Italy. We had a look at a couple of clothing shops (Gina wanted to buy new ski pants and jacket for Ulka (her daughter who will be joining us on Wednesday). The prices were ok, but not having her there to try the items on was too risky, so we left the clothing shops and started to look for an eatery. We found a small deli-like pizzeria and indulged our taste buds. And what a treat it was, we started with one small piece of pizza between us. It was so good that we had another. Yes, I can hear you all saying the same thing…. Greedy pigs! Well, it was worth it. And it has probably spoilt us for ever eating pizza in Australia again.

We then became more adventurous and caught a bus into the city and walked around there. Almost immediately we both said how much the city architecture reminded us of St Petersburg. Buildings and street features very similar, which is not all that surprising really. A lot of older European cities ‘shared’ architects. When the leaders of a particular city saw another city they liked the look of, they would hire the same architects.

And everywhere were small shops with nice looking window displays…

Milan is well known for being a fashion centre and we found this ‘monument’ rather interesting. It looks like a giant needle and thread that’s been threaded under the road. Very clever and I would think, quite unique. Well done city

planners.

We found a very nice, very old looking castle and had a walk around inside.

We found this monument and an Asian couple taking photos. We offered to take a photo of them with their camera if they wouldn’t mind taking one of us with ours.

We got talking to them and found out they were from Singapore. We talked a bit more and they said we must see the Duomo. They showed us pictures in their guidebook and said that it was only 2 stops on the subway. Now I am use to using the trains in Perth, Singapore and recently Moscow and St Petersburg, so the Milan set up wasn’t difficult to follow. A very friendly cleaning lady in the train station, although she didn’t speak a single word of English, was very helpful, showing us how and where to buy a ticket and where to go to find the correct platform. When we arrived at the Duomo station we got off the train (obviously) and climbed the stairs to street-level and were immediately greeted with this most spectacular building. Its scale and magnificence is difficult to perceive in the photo, but we are standing back about 200 metres to get it all in!

Gina saw a large flock of pigeons and said I should take some photos of her with the ‘rats with wings’. I started taking photos and a guy came up and said he’d take some photos of both of us. So I gave him the camera and he took a heap like this.

He then gave the camera back to me and asked for some money for food for the pigeons’. I was going to give €5, but found I only had a €10 note. He then said that the going rate was €50!!! I told him he was dreaming, gave him the €10 and we left, quickly, as a couple of his mates were arriving on the scene.

We moved on to some more shops (they’re everywhere here!!) and looked around. We even found this.

Yep! In the bottom corner is a ‘Ferrari store’. We went in and had a quick look around, long enough to see that the prices of tee-shirts and baseball caps were as overpriced as their cars! €29.90 for a baseball cap, that’s AUD$60!!!

At around 4pm we decided it was time to head back to the hotel and start looking for somewhere to have tea. Nice idea, but where are we, and where’s the hotel????? Much travelling has made me pick up (some say ‘anal’) habits, like grabbing up a hotel business card on arrival and putting it in my pocket. We also had a poorly photo-copied Milan city centre map, so we should be able to get back to the hotel, but it started to rain a bit harder and each time I pulled the map out to try and find out where we were, it got a little bit wetter, and harder to read. Thankfully the people of Milan are very friendly and helpful. We were directed and shown exactly where we need to go, and got back to the hotel about an hour later. The guy on reception showed us where there was a nice restaurant, and he wasn’t wrong! As soon as we walked in I could smell the very familiar odour of cooking shellfish. Gina had a seafood soup to die for, it was a plate heaped with mussels, scallops, pippies and cockles, all cooked and served in their shell. I had a steak (I don’t eat seafood unless I’ve caught it myself), and asked for ‘rare’. One of the items I bought in Singapore airport was an English-Italian phase-book, and it was now earning its keep, and then some! The steak came out just the way I love it. It twitched every time I stuck the fork in….

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