Parma

I like Parma, probably because they have their own fully professional rugby team and the city is on a scale I can identify with. I had to inform my wife that the road sign indicating in which direction a sports stadium lay, would not be a rugby ground. No doubt the place they play rugby would be in the opposite direction and I was right.

The train from Milan to Parma revealed more industry and so we were heading toward larger population centres clustered together. On the previous journey from Venice to Milan, we had seen shipbuilding near Venice (those large cruise ships, two under construction in fact), and then large quarries, one with large blocks of dimensional stone that had been cut recently, very impressive but for most of the time we saw only farmland and farm buildings.

Once again we could see rugby pitches as well as soccer and handball plus a few athletic tracks but not many of the latter. Then arriving in Parma we discovered not to trust Google directions too much. Turns out the hotel we wanted to find was directly over the road from the station main entrance, but Google had us going in the opposite direction and turning several corners to arrive at a place clearly visible....oh it's over there. This sort of thing happened a lot and I concluded that Google can be used as a general indication and is no better than that. For instance in Venice it put the dot on the wrong building completely.

Anyway did I say there is a lot to like about Parma? We grabbed a quick snack from a local shop that was very cheap and frequented by the locals:

Wandered the streets:

Checked out some culture:

Then on the day of the game we saw a marching band playing during some religious festival. Good to see this as New Zealand bands are just about extinct now:

Then we walked to the game between the Zebre and Cheetahs in the Pro14. The Zebre represent the local region and are the bottom team in Conference A, while the Cheetahs are from South Africa and sit just above them. So this wasn't going to be a display of outstanding skill but we enjoyed the day nonetheless.

The stadium the Zebre play at is called Stadio Sergio Lanfranchi, it's small with a capacity of about 5,000 but it's quite a nice place, well laid out and sits nicely to the sun. Why oh why has New Zealand gone to night games to keep the TV audience happy, in winter mid afternoon rugby games on a Sunday are the ideal times to play. The sun is almost always out. This day was no exception.

Without the help of Google, we found the place all right. Tickets weren't expensive but they didn't sell game day programmes. Ouch, we were told that's a Kiwi thing. Well yes, I need to know who the players are in each position. Therefore I was left guessing who each player was. Programmes are also a useful fundraiser and allow local businesses to promote themselves.

We were seated in the sunny stand and watched the warm-ups, which to us looked more like practise. The South Africans got their playing shorts muddy doing this, and when the game started all they'd done is change their shirts, they started the game with those same muddy shorts. What? Warm-ups are warm-ups, when do you guys practise and do you have no self-respect? Starting a game at kick-off muddy from the warm-up is naff if you ask me.

The result doesn't tell the whole story. The score was Cheetahs 27, Zebre 12. In fact the score should have been more in the Cheetahs favour as they completely dominated the second half. What kept the game close is the annoying pursuit of bonus points. The Cheetahs were going for tries and did not attempt penalty kicks which would have made the game safe. This is meant to be entertaining but I find it tiresome.

Then the pitch itself has a slight grade toward the right hand side as we look at it in the pictures which follow. Most points were scored at that end and all play tended to go in that direction. They really need to address this, the roll of the ball is biased to the administration end.

Then finally, the role of imported players needs addressing. With 15 men on the field imports cannot have as much impact as they do with basketball. New Zealand-born forward Jimmy Tuivaiti (North Harbour) was playing for the Zebre but he also played in the centres and at fullback. He was all over the place and is your basic highly skilled New Zealand player (he currently makes himself available for Italy). Italy have got to develop their own players to this level. My guess is they struggle to do that as other sports, notably soccer, get first look at anyone showing athletic potential. They've got the facilities, now they have to find ways of keeping the players.

Anyhoo, the game was like this in pics, the teams run on, Cheetahs in white are first out:

Followed by the Zebre in black:

The game gets started:

There are lineouts (most play heads to this side of the field and to the right as this is the slope - note):

Cheetahs score and convert against the slope of the ground:

There are more lineouts and such (spot the ball in this image):

And Jimmy Tuivaiti is everywhere for the Zebre, he's the guy in black with number 8 on his back, foreground and to the right:

The Zebre have enthusiastic supporters who cheer every effort, about 2,000 at the game, along with annoying drummers which reminded us of the Warriors in Auckland (League team, different code):

And then we had gelato on the way back to the hotel. An enjoyable day:

Why did the Zebre lose? Well, they had structure but not a vast wealth of individual talent. They're good players but the South Africans had the extra edge. Also, I noticed during the game that the Zebre backs started to argue amongst one another. That's not a good sign. The South Africans kept their discipline.

Milan

And so we said goodbye to Venice and headed to Milan. We took a fairly fast train that for about 15 minutes got up to speeds equivalent to Japan's bullet trains. Not bad then, we were really zipping along.

The view from the train windows was mostly of northern Italian farmland:

We could have been back in New Zealand if you ignored the obvious urban development and industry that goes with having a population 12 times larger. Something that surprised me was the number of rugby fields they had, I'd estimate that rugby occupies third place in northern Italy, behind the number one sport soccer (association football), and handball.

It didn't take long at these high speeds to arrive at Milan's train station, Milano Centrale:

Our hotel was only a short walk away. Of course my wife, forever gifted in walking in the opposite direction, attempted to get us off course. For once I resisted and got us to our hotel in a matter of minutes. But that was after we got a pic of the giant apple obliterating the nice view of the façade of the rather attractive station, and we later found out this apple was not advertising the American company (we think):

Then after checking in, we did some walking around and grabbed some lunch which turned out to be the nicest meal of the trip:

Later that evening we had a quick and cheap meal. The Italians appear to have only classic Coke and they drink it a lot. They have other nice drinks too, how Italians are not obese and appear in good shape is still a mystery:

Breakfast the next day:

And then shopping

But everything was way too expensive. The Adidas shop was three times the price for the same items selling in New Zealand or Japan, so we waited until we got to Japan before buying clothing.

We saw the obligatory cathedral:

Had some lunch while shopping in Milan:

Next stop Parma to see the Zebre play the Cheetahs from South Africa in the Pro14:

Verdict on Milan: Nice place, thought I'd like it more than I actually did. It's clearly a place for commerce and industry, has everything, the type of place you'd live rather than choose to visit.

More Venice

We walked all over Venice and took one boat ride, a free water taxi trip to Murano to see a free demonstration of glass blowing and maybe buy some glass. Yes, we'd been hustled near the Duomo but it wasn't such a bad thing, I knew that this wouldn't be the last day of the promotion as the salesperson said and this was confirmed when someone offered us the very same deal the very next day.

Anyway, off to Murano we went for the day, here's the boat trip looking back at Venice as it disappears out of sight:

Heading to Murano from Venice by Water Taxi

Once we arrived the glass blowing demonstration began. I've worked most of my life in sand so I found this interesting:

Sorry about the quality of the image but this shows the figure he's creating being stretched out from the molten glass.

And then we did buy some glass, but not a delicate figure. I don't know how they make money with this promotion as the cost of all this was well above the profit on what we bought.

This is what Murano looks like:

We ate at a not too expensive restaurant:

And this is what we consumed, standard fare for the Italians it seems, everywhere we went there weren't that many options, why aren't the Italians obese?

Then we took a crowded ferry back to Venice.

Random pictures of Venice:

The Railway Station

Fish Market

Museo Della Musica - free entry and some interesting stuff

Portrait of Maria Callas in the Gran Teatro

Railway Station and Ferry Terminal, there are also porters at the station to carry bags to your hotel if staying in Venice itself.

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.