Venice

In describing our trip to Italy, I'm not making these posts in chronological order. Instead I'm working my way through in order of least through to most favoured. So far I've completely dismissed Pompeii as a tourist trap and Naples as an ongoing crime scene.

Now we find ourselves at Venice, which is kind of okay as far as it goes. It would be a really inconvenient place to live, but I can begin to see the charm of the place. I totally identify with the locals who hate George Clooney for shutting down parts of the city during his nuptials there.  We arrived at Venice first, the journey we took was Air New Zealand and then Lufthansa which I've nicknamed Luftbastards. The route was Christchurch - Auckland - Singapore - Frankfurt - Venice. Singapore is a model of efficiency of course, but very humid, I don't know how people live there either. They've got flying insects the size of small birds. Anyhoo, flying Luftbastards was an eye opener, I'd never flown them before and found their in-flight entertainment dire. I imagine it was developed by some techie German working for Luftbastards. He should be sacked as the system barely functions it's that bad. Want to fast forward a movie? When you do that it is just as likely to fast reverse, and that's if the system works at all. Quite often you have to exit, go back to the start and try again. I'm not kidding, this system is the worst I've yet found. On one flight I had to have my seat rebooted twice. It's a joke.

Air New Zealand I try to avoid, but this time I found they've upped their game. Their staff weren't so arrogant and rude, and the meals were acceptable. The in-flight entertainment worked but had a very limited selection. Nothing like United from the USA, I swear they've got the Library of Congress loaded into their system. None of these even come close to the hospitality and efficiency of Thai Airways which remains to date, the best airline I've flown with.

Venice. We arrived via Frankfurt. For some odd reason only obvious to Eurocrats, we needed a stamp in our passports in Frankfurt even though we were only transiting, and then when we moved on to Venice we weren't checked at all upon arrival there. It was like a domestic flight. We didn't fill in an arrivals card anywhere.

At Frankfurt we bought a spot of breakfast after the long flight from Singapore. This is what it looked like, bought from a hotdog stand outside where our flight to Venice was leaving from:

Not so long after eating, we found ourselves on our flight over the Swiss Alps, and arriving in Venice. Once in Venice we found out what Italy's problem was, they've been invaded by Daleks, here they are:

Message to Italy, Daleks will only cause misery, you have to drop this as an option and go back to sensible government.

At our bed and breakfast we found Italians like sweet things, here is what our breakfast looked like on our first morning waking up there:

While this is basic, we found this not too dissimilar to what Italians eat every morning. Too sweet for me (more about this in later posts). But having said that, Italy doesn't appear to have an obesity epidemic. I hardly saw a fat person the whole time.

We were staying in Mestre, and took the bus and train into Venice proper, depending on how we felt that day. The bus has the advantage of going straight from the bus stop to Venice, whereas obviously you need to walk to the station to get there by train. Both methods of transfer are fast and cheap, no worries there.

I prefer the trains, and discovered that Minions are fighting back against the Daleks, here they are lined up for combat at the Venice Train Station:

The Daleks are not taking this lying down and have fifth columnists at work, trying to derail the Minions efforts. They're called Aids trains:

Venice looks like this on a good day in winter:

Like this on an average day:

And on a bad day like this:

The Bridge of Sighs er actually Bridge of Lies

You've got to hand it to the Italians, they're good at spinning a yarn full of romantic claptrap. I managed to get a picture of the Bridge of Sighs, without being jostled by the hundreds of tourists crowding to get a shot of this total lie. Here's the pic:

The bridge was for transferring prisoners from the courts on the left, to the prison on the right. Looking through those windows on the bridge is the last the prisoners will see of Venice. That's the story, and if you and your loved one take a gondola ride at exorbitant cost and kiss under the bridge as the bells of the Duomo strike 5pm (something like that), your love will last forever. Brilliant marketing guys. Actually, those prisoners were all released within a few months as they were almost always petty criminals convicted of minor crimes. The time when the prison held political prisoners being tortured and such was a hundred or more years earlier and long before the bridge was built. But, you know, never let the facts get in the way of a good story.

More about Venice tomorrow. But for now I'll leave with a pic of the post boxes we were told never to place a letter in, they'll end up with the Daleks otherwise. Instead we were told to post letters in funny little yellow boxes hiding in souvenir shops. What happened to Italy's postal service?

Told to never post a letter in one of these. Something tells me this is good advice.

Naples

On our trip to Italy we had decided to stay in Naples and make a day trip to Pompeii. A bit of a mistake that as it turns out we should have done things the other way around - stay near Pompeii and take a day trip to Naples.

Why? Naples is a dirty, grubby city, full of crime. It's not a nice place. We took a taxi ride once, from the outside the car looked like a taxi, but inside the cab it was just managing to hang together. The seatbelts didn't work and literally every surface was bashed, dinged, completely worn out. I've never seen any car like it and certainly no taxi. The driver was a happy enough chap, like most Italians he'd learned to accept his fate.

We didn't get to see Herculaneum. A decision had to be made as we ran out of time and I read somewhere that Herculaneum had been stripped of anything interesting. That must be right as our visit to the National Archaeological Museum in Naples seemed to confirm it. What we could read in English often provided the note 'from Herculaneum' or some such. And that English is sporadic at best, at some point all English just evaporated. Everywhere was like that in Italy, they make a half-baked attempt to explain things (and please don't email me saying I should learn Italian, I'm quite happy to learn some, but I'll make a concerted effort when Italy start winning wars <insert sound of crickets chirping>).

The museum in Naples is really the only place worth visiting. We saw the Alexander Mosaic. Kind of Yay, it's not that impressive really. The Numismatics room was closed so we couldn't see the Augustus gold coin or medallion. I believe that these random shut-downs occur all the time and so be warned, the very thing you went to see may be unavailable on that day. Good luck trying to find out if it is (available that is).

Verdict on Naples: it is hard to believe this place is the third largest city in Italy. Its much vaunted pizza is worse than all other pizza in Italy. The world heritage inner city is a dark featureless place and presents an ideal location for muggings. I'm sure you'll be mugged at some point if you stay there too long as criminality appears widespread. And I'm not talking about refugees and migrants. They're mostly well behaved and clean, they're too concentrated on surviving to be worried about committing crime. No, the lowlifes will be locals I'm sure.

Some areas of Naples are complete no-goes after dark. You wade almost ankle deep in blood, vomit, broken teeth, and animal and human faeces (intentional exaggeration to make the point). These places are really bad and they're everywhere. The best thing that could happen to Naples is it gets bulldozed quick smart and then rebuilt modern and fresh.

Naples has a sort-of Chinatown, but they serve up spaghetti as noodle. So that wonton noodle soup is wonton spaghetti soup. Just so you know, you know?

Pompeii

For most of January 2019 I have been in Italy travelling around. Over the next few days and weeks I'll report on my experiences and the impressions I formed of the people and places. Not all of this is going to be positive, be warned.

I was travelling with my wife and youngest daughter. This was going to be a rail trip, travelling between cities on the Italian rail system which I must say functions quite adequately as a fairly fast system, but nothing like that of Japan. Few can match the speed and efficiency of Japan.

For me, the ruins at Pompeii were near the top of my list of places to visit. I ended up disappointed and I can safely say this is a place to avoid unless you are absolutely obsessed with everything Roman and just have to go there.

We stayed in Naples, which is another city worth avoiding, but more about that place later. Getting to Pompeii turned out to be a mission. We wanted to get to Pompeii by rail and set out in the morning, we found out the hard way how to do this: go to Napoli Garribaldi station which is on a lower level of the central railway station, and take the heavily tagged, ugly and uncomfortable trains called the Circumvesuviana Napoli to Sorrento line. Make sure to get on the train indicated on the electronic signboard - (Pompei Scavi), in parentheses after the displayed final destination. This train will take you to the excavations themselves, and right at the entrance gate to the site, and not to Pompei city which is farther away. You can see the city from the hill Pompeii sits on, so it's not that far away but make every effort to be on the right train. Here's what that view looks like:

Our story about this is somewhat convoluted. Leaving our hotel thinking it would be easy to just walk to the train station (okay, it was me who thought this, I'll never live it down), I got us badly lost. Unbeknownst to us at the time we ended up at a station on the correct line, one stop closer to Pompeii (the station was called via Gianturco), but not knowing this we headed on a train back to Napoli Garribaldi. Note, at this stage we hadn't bought a ticket as this via Gianturco place had no ticketing at all. Strange indeed. We were soon joined on the platform by a group of young Spanish people, apparently they'd got off the train they were on as they'd found it wasn't going to Pompeii, so now they were on our platform looking to head back to Naples in order to start their journey again. You'd be right in thinking that a lot of people get lost on their way to Pompeii (as an aside, maybe it's best to stay at modern Pompei city or its surrounds, don't try to stay in Naples and make the day trip to Pompeii Scavi, just saying).

At Naples we approached an attendant and were promptly given some kind of fine for not having a ticket but being within the system. After much gesticulation he found out we were trying to get to Pompeii, and weren't coming from Pompeii. He refunded our money and waved us away. After some wandering around we found ourselves on the platform for Pompeii Scavi.

This didn't go as planned as an Englishman who thought he knew everything informed us the very next train was going to Pompeii Scavi. It turned out he only had half the information he needed, at best. We got on this train, and just past via Gianturco (that one again, we'd just come from there with the young Spanish speakers) a very nice Italian gentleman started telling us where we needed to be. We didn't understand a word of what he said but someone else on the train knew English and interpreted, telling us we needed to get off at the next station and take the train coming after this one, that would get us to Pompeii Scavi. On our travels we found Italians to be very helpful like this.

So we got off the train at the next station to see the Englishman there too, I avoided talking to him as I didn't want a Commonwealth incident in Italy, we were meant to be Allies after all.

So at last we were on the train to Pompeii. Yay. Then some hustlers boarded the train and began playing loud music, beating drums and shaking tambourines. I guessed they wanted us to pay to make them go away, but at the next station they were thrown off. Given the patience the locals had toward this din, my guess is they're used to it. The locals seemed amused at my appalled reaction. Do not pay these so-called entertainers anything (the noise-making hustlers that is).

Arriving at the site, there was no ticket check at the station exit and so we had just managed to travel to Pompei Scavi for free (going home at the end of the day we bought tickets at the ticket window and paid about 50% more for the privilege, the price displayed on the actual ticket showed less than we'd just paid). We were then constantly berated by more hustlers and swindlers just outside the main gates. Very low class and not a good first impression.

The cost to get in to Pompeii? 30 Euro, my wife and I had to pay, the child was free. Was this a good deal? No it wasn't, that was way too expensive. We collected our free map, which turned out to be useless as it contained such little information and virtually no English. Once on site, there is very little English and next to no information about what is what. So we wandered around all day, me being guide as it turns out I actually know what I'm talking about.

Were there highlights of this day exploring Pompeii? Yes, I enjoyed the Villa dei Misteri. I've looked around for a good map of the site to indicate where this house sits and found this link:
http://www.tourpompei.com/alex/sites/default/files/Itinerary_3_forkids_0.jpg

The Villa is illustrated at the top left of the above map, outside the city walls. What is good about this place is it is intact and you can see the art still on the inside walls of the house. No-one knew about this place until the twentieth century, so it hasn't been looted.

My suggestion; do not leave it too late to visit the Villa dei Misteri. It's a walk away from the main site, and knowing this I had it first on my list. When approaching the house which is a walk up and then down a small hill adjacent to Pompeii, a nice man called out from the house, were we English? No, I replied, New Zealand. He knew where this was; we found Italians generally knew where New Zealand was and they also knew Italy always lost to the All Blacks. They tell us that, we would never mention it of course.

Here are some pics from inside the Villa:

It turned out this nice gentleman was touting for his neighbouring family restaurant run by his mother. He proudly informed us that Morgan Freeman had eaten there. The place is called Bacco e Arianna. Yes, another hustle, but a good one as he sold us custom made takeaway sandwiches that were too big for us to finish, half the price of sandwiches selling on site that are a third the size.

A couple of photo's, what the restaurant looks inside the courtyard, and what those sandwiches looked like:

(This is the street view of the establishment:
 https://www.google.co.nz/maps/@40.7531859,14.4773121,3a,60y,13.6h,86.63t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sL_Ai38goZ0ytz31kVWqBZg!2e0!7i13312!8i6656 )

See the white hut at the end there? That's some kind of backdoor entry to Pompeii, and the turnstile was always open. The two guards just waved us through, one saying he'd remember us when coming back from the restaurant, but they didn't notice or check when we returned. Very Italian all this, as was the Mum making those sandwiches. Like some kind of scene from a movie. I must say they had a brilliant crop of Mandarins coming on there, diners can sit outdoors underneath the trees while they eat.

You may have picked up on my thinking here. If you're clever and scout around, you could easily get into Pompeii for free. They deserve to have this happen as the site is so badly managed. One of the major secrets is the museum up the back and next door to the amphitheatre, it appears devoted to Etruscan and Samnite stuff. There was nothing promoting this museum earlier, and by the time we found it we were running out of time. The amphitheatre was a waste of time and polluted with Pink Floyd blaring from below. As the young one pointed out, those vibrations are probably breaking down the structure. Message: leave Pink Floyd out, I don't care if they played there, they're irrelevant, pretentious twits.

While the Villa dei Misteri is very impressive, it's not where I could picture myself living. No, my favourite house was the sunken garden place, which funnily enough is toward the Villa in terms of direction (to the left of the Forum as you look at it upon entering from the main gate). This is the sunken garden house:

Walking back to the main gate my daughter asked if the pavement we were walking on was 2,000 years old. No, I could safely say, it was probably laid last week. A lot of the site was like that, new plaster, recent pavement, new roofs. Give the place to Disney to manage, they'd do the job properly.

Oh and one last thing; the Romans weren't stupid. Stupid people would have rutted roads impossible to use. Those stones in the surface of the city streets, those cracks would have been filled with sand. How do I know this? Very few of the stones were broken at the edges. Wagon wheels get stuck in cracks and break, or they break off the edges of the paver. But more prevalent were wheel ruts in the stone itself., meaning the wheels were running over an even surface.

Fill those cracks with sand and make the site easy to walk around, like it would've been back in the day. The other benefit (which the Romans knew about) is the sand locks up the paving stones, and they're less likely to move around plus the sand soaks up animal waste and also glues everything together. The site management have gone out of their way to make the site difficult to navigate, the streets could put your back out they're that bad.

Here's what I'm talking about:

Look at the road itself, nicely worn stones, those cracks would have been filled with sand to make the road surface flush. If they didn't do this all those stones would be broken away at the edges, and back in the day wagons would be breaking axles and wheels, and they'd possibly hit stepping stones used for crossing the street by failing to make clearance.

This looks better, more like this: