Well, we are still travelling around Italy. The camping here is very different to France, where we found lots of small camping grounds that were quite cheap. In Italy, however, it is two to three times the price. The grounds are tourist traps - full of swimming pools and tennis courts - all very nice if you like that sort of thing but we only want a shower (which you may have to pay extra for!). The fact that you may have to pay for a shower isn't disclosed in the price schedule - on my birthday we got told a price and then set up the tent, only then were we told about the extra price for showers. The woman was very rude and said that if we didn't like it, we could go somewhere else, so I lost my temper and we went to the next place. Poor Jim was very tired by the time we found the next ground and set the tent up again. Ironically, the second place was more expensive; it was my birthday, and I could cut off my nose to spite my face if I wanted to!
Yep, actually K saved us from having 6 showers each, so was very good choice to move...
OK, back to our lectures on The Real Europe.
Italy, on the other hand, has a very peculiar metric structure that we have discovered by driving.
For example, consider a trip back to Assisi from Gubbio.
At one point we followed the sign to A, 12kms.
Around the corner was the sign to A, 17 kms with another town 7 km away in the same direction.
When we got to that town (which was indeed 7 kms away), we found the sign to A, 16 kms.
Well, surely it all works out, probably we have a very strange choice of local coordinates and are not using an invariant distance...
This experience was far from unusual.
The other amusing thing is the directional dependence.
One can often only find the appropriate sign by approaching the intersection from all possible directions!
One exception is if there is a tree at the intersection -- in that case the sign will certainly be behind the tree if one can see it at all!
OK, better go -- will have to put off my schtick for the next time. We have 21 bottles of wine, and one bottle of whiskey to drink before leaving for Romania in 3 days -- hoping to meet up with Sarah and Alex!!
Friday, September 7, 2007
Tuesday, September 4, 2007
Italy
Hi all!
Sorry for the lack of updates, but internet cafes are hard to find in Europe, and they are expensive - sometimes as much as 3 euros for 15 minutes.
We travelled quite extensively around France. We managed to see most of the regions in our turist book. Our routine every morning was to first pack up the tent if we were moving campsite, then sit in the car and decide where we were going for the day. The next task was to find a baker (boulangerie) and a butcher (chacuterie) - fresh bread and cold meats (and cheese when we could find it) for lunch. It is very important to do this early in the morning because everything shuts for lunch from around 12 to around 3 - so if you don't have food you can only eat at an expensivish take away shop. Our routine has been similar in Italy, the only difference being the type of bread, cheese and meat!
We spent the night of Jim's birthday in Torino with his friend Anna (and her husband Ricardo). It was very nice to see Anna again after she visited Australia last year; she was very excited to discover that it was Jim's birthday, she searched for candles and did indeed find the correct number. I think we nearly set the fire alarm off when he blew them out!
My turn to type apparewntly... sorry about the messy typing...
Well, another interesting thing about france is its complicated topology: multiply connected since every town has a point ''centre ville'' inside; and singular as can be deduced by the sign pointing to ''toutes directions''.
This has caused durprisingly few problems.
In fact, getting around F was great, perhaps I felt comfortable after the weeks of cycling.
Even the driving was easyish once you get used to the mm-scale calculations at 50-130 kph.
Italy is a bit more confusing to us so far.
Still, wonderful.
Beautiful little towns, and Amazing biggies like Florence.
Anyway, K's back and we're out of time, next time tell you about my schtick for the wedding speech... oh, and ---- blaarg!
We have a minute left on the machine - so we will email next time! Love you all!
Sorry for the lack of updates, but internet cafes are hard to find in Europe, and they are expensive - sometimes as much as 3 euros for 15 minutes.
We travelled quite extensively around France. We managed to see most of the regions in our turist book. Our routine every morning was to first pack up the tent if we were moving campsite, then sit in the car and decide where we were going for the day. The next task was to find a baker (boulangerie) and a butcher (chacuterie) - fresh bread and cold meats (and cheese when we could find it) for lunch. It is very important to do this early in the morning because everything shuts for lunch from around 12 to around 3 - so if you don't have food you can only eat at an expensivish take away shop. Our routine has been similar in Italy, the only difference being the type of bread, cheese and meat!
We spent the night of Jim's birthday in Torino with his friend Anna (and her husband Ricardo). It was very nice to see Anna again after she visited Australia last year; she was very excited to discover that it was Jim's birthday, she searched for candles and did indeed find the correct number. I think we nearly set the fire alarm off when he blew them out!
My turn to type apparewntly... sorry about the messy typing...
Well, another interesting thing about france is its complicated topology: multiply connected since every town has a point ''centre ville'' inside; and singular as can be deduced by the sign pointing to ''toutes directions''.
This has caused durprisingly few problems.
In fact, getting around F was great, perhaps I felt comfortable after the weeks of cycling.
Even the driving was easyish once you get used to the mm-scale calculations at 50-130 kph.
Italy is a bit more confusing to us so far.
Still, wonderful.
Beautiful little towns, and Amazing biggies like Florence.
Anyway, K's back and we're out of time, next time tell you about my schtick for the wedding speech... oh, and ---- blaarg!
We have a minute left on the machine - so we will email next time! Love you all!
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