Naples

Although Naples has somewhat of a poor reputation owing to the rubbish problem a few years back, the pickpockets and the traffic (lets just say road markings, signs and lights have little value!), we had a fantastic time in and around the city.

We really hadn't done any research on Italy before coming here, let alone Naples...which may have actually been the reason we enjoyed it so much! Imagine what we were thinking when after one day of exploring we had visited Pompei and climbed the volcano known as Mt. Vesuvio, with its spectacular view over the bay of Naples.


Thanks to the staff at our hostel (the Welcome Inn - can recommend!) we were asked if we knew about the 'manifestation' known as 'Adota un turista'. I have to admit I thought he was saying there was an outbreak of bedbugs or something but we soon realised that he was inviting us to attend the first 'Adopt a tourist' day in Naples! Of course we figured why not, given that we are always hoping to see the real side of a place. Basically some locals adopt you for the day and show you around the things you'd like to see or, as we did, let them take us where they thought would be good. This afternoon event turned into one of the best experiences of our trip, and also became a massive weekend full of fun! Firstly, we had about 5 guides (Ida, Enzo, Luca, Paulo, Guiseppe) for 3 of us tourists an we wandered around for a bit before we had lunch at Sorbillo's pizzeria which is locally famous as having the best pizza....we have to agree that it was the best pizza we have ever eaten, and given that pizza was invented in Naples, this makes it potentially the best pizza in the world.


After that we did the subterranean tour which is tour of the Greco-Roman aqueducts and theater under the city of Naples...a phenomenal piece of architecture with a long history. During WWII Napolitans took refuge from the bombing in these aqueducts. Although the day was very hot it was bloody cold under there! Our hosts also took us to one of their friends birthday party. They know how to bounce because there was so much food and drink on offer that we ate and drank for hours...we were also very popular and spent a lot of time fielding questions on every facet of Australian life, which of course we were more than happy to do.


The following day (Sunday) we were invited to a traditional Napolitana Sunday feast with all the family. My god. For 3 hours 13 of us ate about 8 courses, while the soccer played in the background (complete with swearing and cursing in Italian). We followed this up with about 20 games of fuseball too. I think I'm safe in saying we got the authenic experience for the whole weekend...certainly one we will never forget, and some of the kindest new friends that we hope to see in Australia in the near future. They knew so much about their city and were so proud of it that its hard to explain.

Now we head camping at Baia Domizia en route to Rome...can't wait to get to the beach!

A Rainbow Beach Wedding

After a good start at our travels, we headed home to Australia for Anita's sister's wedding, held at Rainbow Beach. The wedding was fantastic - great location, beautiful bride, and fantastic weather (after a wild rainy start to the morning).
Then after a few very relaxing and enjoyable days at Rainbow Beach and Brisbane, we headed north to Koah/Cairns for some more well deserved warm weather. This was a pretty busy pit stop - in about 5 days we crammed in a stint of crabbing off the esplanade, some NRL test match action, a jam session with the Loaded Dice, accountant appointments, random shopping and repacking of the total sum of our Australian possessions (9 boxes, 11 guitars and a saddle). Then after a welcome exchange of winter woolies for summer singlets, we hoppped - somewhat reluctantly - back on the plane for another screaming-baby-and-uncomfortable-seat-type long haul flight to London. We're currently in Italy sampling plenty of the classic dishes... more on that in the next post.

Holland by Bike

Much to our surprise and the approval of many Dutch locals, we must be the only travellers visiting the Netherlands who didn't go to Amsterdam! Instead we decided to base ourselves in Utrecht, which is a beautiful city with plenty of canals located pretty much in the centre of the Netherlands. We made a decision to get more involved in couchsurfing and figured our 10 day stay in the Netherlands was a perfect opportunity. We found a host (Lars) in Utrecht with whom we stayed initially and left most our gear with when we embarked on 3 main trips within Holland:

Trip 1: Riding to Deventer

After everyone told us how flat Holland was, the logical thing to do was hire some bikes to get around. We weren't sure how far was a reasonable distance to ride each day given we are bludgers, but we decided about 100km a day was suitable. 100km/day wasn't suitable....it nearly killed us. Well to be fair, what people hadn't told us was that riding from Utrecht to Deventer through the national park was actually one of the only hilly parts of Holland, and with a strong headwind for about 90km (in EVERY direction we turned) we struggled. We eventually did make it to Deventer (it was looking shakey at one point) and met our next host (Mathieu) who looked after us really well and his spaghetti bolognaise was most appreciated. The next day we were planning to cycle around the area but couldn't bear the sight of our bikes so we just stayed local, and Mathieu showed us around the beautiful little city of Deventer and introduced us to some of the traditional snacks eaten in Holland, most notably the Kroket. We spent that night with another host (Alex) who is a sound engineer and a generally all round interesting guy with a love of tea, well...and beer too which we did have first at the Witches Hex bar. The next day we headed back to Utrecht and met up again with Lars.

Trip 2: Sailing in Freisland

As it tured out, Lars actually was co-owner of a little sailing boat which he kept up in Freisland (home to the Freisian horse). He'd lined it up so we could all go up sailing for the weekend. We drove up there through the reclaimed land which is an amazing project really....in a nutshell they built huge walls to retain the sea and then pumped out all the water to leave a huge amount of farming land that is actually below sea level. The saying God created the world but the Dutch created the Netherlands seems to have a litertal meaning! We sailed around for the weekend, with beautiful weather and beer in hand while Lars and his friend Marc did most of the "work" although both Anita and I had a go at sailing which was pretty cool. On the Sunday we sailed to another town, tied up the boat and had lunch. We had a very relaxing weekend and still managed to see a lot of Holland.

Trip 3: Utrecht to Leiden, Haarlem, Zaanstad

The nicest ride in my opinion was between Utrecht and Leiden....along waterfronts, back roads, fields and small towns. Now this was flat...we rode 50km and barely broke a sweat, which was most welcome after our near death experience of the last ride. This was the kind of riding I had in mind...easy, pancake and Amstel filled, and beautiful. We spend that night in Leiden with our next host (Ellen) who showed us around the town on bike which is a great way to sightsee...its really quick and easy and you can see more in a short space of time.

The next day we rode north to Haarlem along the Tulip trail stopping at the Keukenhof along the way. This is the most amazing flower show I have ever seen and although Canberra's Floriade is also nice, it makes it look like an amateur's copy of a masterpiece. There were so many people there and we were at least 40 years younger than 97% of the visitors.

The next day we rode to Zaanstad and visited the Zaanse Schans...a village recreated in traditional Dutch style, including a mustard mill, saw mill, oil mill (literally windmills!), wooden shoe craft shop, cheese shop and heaps of other things. Although we were a bit worried that we were going to be paying through the nose for such an obvious tourist activity, we were surprised that everything was pretty reasonably priced and really relaxing. We ended up staying longer than expected and this is why we never made it to Amsterdam, and had to view it from the train as it sped back to Utrecht.

All in all we got to see a lot of the Netherlands and got to experience many 'typical dutch' foods, activities and sights. We couchsurfed with 4 different hosts and had great experiences....it's really good knowing someone in each place who can show you around a bit, point you in the right direction, and speak the language if you need help. It really takes some of the cognitively demanding aspects out of travelling. Also, there is the chance to do something that you otherwise wouldn't have been able to - such as sailing - and helps you get a genuine experience, otherwise you just wouldn't know where to start! As an added benefit we paid for accommodation on 2 of 9 nights in the Netherlands. I think we will be doing a lot more couchsurfing through Europe.

Easter in Brussels

After Luxembourg, we were somewhat stumped as to where to go next. Europe is fantastic in that everything is so close, but when you have no real restrictions guiding you, you could end up anywhere. In the end, we chose Brussels, Belgium - mainly because we got cheap open-return tickets for less than the price of a one-way. Ha ha. Turned out Brussels was a pretty popular choice of Easter destination though - we got about the last 2 beds in our hostel for the first night, but it was fully booked out for the Sat/Sun nights (same with every other hostel within walking distance of the city center!). The city center was absolutely chockers, with thousands of tourists packing the Grand Place (main square) and cobbled street surrounds.


The Brusseleirs are called the 'Kiekefretters' - chicken eaters - because, according to legend, they preferred eating to fighting during the middle ages! This is pretty much on par - there are so many restaurants, cafes, bars and other food outlets that it's impossible to walk a dozen steps without getting a whiff of some fantastic new smells. Plus the waffles and chocolates are beyond contestation! Hopefully on our way back to London we'll get a chance to drop in and stock up...


In the meantime, we're off to the Netherlands to work off some of the waffles, beer and chocolates by cycling around the north of the country...

Luxembourg Hiking: Part 2

Day 3: Larochette to Hollenfels

The start of this section was again easy going and very pretty – the trail wandering alongside a mossy, tree-lined stream and coming to a junction at the base of a private castle almost hidden by trees. After lunching in Mersch, we headed up the hill at the back of the town and discovered that this section of the trail probably hadn’t been walked in a while. Parts of the trail felt a bit creepy – big open forests of bare trees carpeted with remnant autumn leaves that turned out to be full of tiny ticks and spiders (the spiders had us constantly on the lookout for some giant creature like Aragog in Harry Potter). After some frustration at having to constantly flick the ticks off our pants and also the lack of anything resembling a marked trail, we did another scramble down the hill and walked along the roadside for a few k’s until we found the home trail.

On entering Hollenfels we were greeted by a huge fairytale castle perched on a hillside, and overlooking a green field that in its day was probably perfect for jousting, archery and all the rest of the medieval sports. Except whoever designed this trail had a sick sense of humour because we had to ascend about 120m elevation in the space of about 500m. Not fun. After exploring the entire town (and there wasn’t much of it), we failed to find anywhere that looked like it would serve food. It was looking like we might have to use some Survivor skills and make a meal out of one of the backyard chickens… but thankfully, it turned out we could buy dinner at the hostel, so the chickens were spared.

Day 4: Hollenfels to Luxembourg City

By this stage, our legs and feet were pretty stuffed, and we’d decided that if it looked like rain in the morning, we were catching a bus. However it was clear and almost sunny by the time we’d scoffed breakfast, so once again we set off on foot. This leg turned out to be the longest of the trip – 25km. One section of the trail was confusing to follow (due to poor markings and other trails crossing and overlapping with ours), but once we got going we had an easy trek along the ridge of the mountains. We even saw some wild deer and rabbits. Annoyingly, a lot of the towns (especially the smaller ones) didn’t seem to have anywhere open where you could get food. This is especially frustrating when you’ve just walked about 15km, and then have to walk another 2km straight uphill to the next town which may or may not have any food either. To add to this, the temperature seemed to drop about 5 degrees, the sun disappeared and the wind picked up. It was a very good feeling hitting the outskirts of Luxembourg City, even with the added disappointment of still having to walk another 2 km to the youth hostel to get our bags, up a heartbreakingly steep hill to catch a bus, and then walking again to the flash hotel we’d booked into for a couple of days. In the end, it was all worth it – it was hard work and tiring, but the countryside was picturesque and pretty spectacular in places, and now we’ve got two days of full buffet breakfast to enjoy before we say goodbye to Luxembourg.