Unexpected Trip to Cinque Terre

I had never intended to go to Cinque Terre as it seemed to be too far from our bases. However, one of the people at the conference told us that they were going to take a day trip on the Thursday. When I went to investigate, it looked like the trip would take 2 1/2 - 2 3/4 hours each way, which seemed reasonable.
So, on Thursday morning, we started out at 9.15. At Lucca, the train stopped and everyone got off. We didn't realise till about 10 minutes later. It turned out that even though the train said it was going to Viareggio, it was actually just going to Lucca. There was a replacement bus service to Viareggio. My theory (as we couldn't get a straight answer from anyone) is that the Lucca/Viareggio line was the one where the train carrying fuel left the tracks and slammed into a residential area, killing a whole bunch of people a week earlier. None of the other lines through Viareggio seemed to be affected.
Because of this change, we missed the next connection from Viareggio to La Spezia. We ended up taking a slow regional train instead. There was then another connection from La Spezia to the 5 villages of Cinque Terre. We finally arrived at Corniglia, the middle village at 1.15pm.
It is a spectacular coastline, with the villages perched on rocks. Corniglia is at the top of a 382 step flight of stairs.
After lunch (mmm, mixed seafood fry), we walked from Corniglia to Manarola, which is right at sea level.
From Manarola to Riomaggiore, there is a walkway called Via Dell'Amore (Lovers' Walk). It's a nice, easy walk, perfect for couples to walk together while fused at the hip.
We just missed the 16.52 train from Riomaggiore and had to wait an hour for the next one. On arriving at La Spezia, we found that the train we wanted to take was cancelled. On inquiry, we found a train going to Sarzana, from where we could catch another train to Viareggio, then the bus to Lucca and then the train to Prato. We finally got back at 9.35pm.
8 1/2 hours of waiting, travel and stress vs 3 1/2 hours of sightseeing...At least it was good sightseeing!

Tuscany

Florence

My two main objectives in Florence were the Uffizi Gallery and the Accademia Gallery, though we also visited the Duomo (a bit dull inside...), Baptistry (which has beautiful doors) & Campanile, Ponte Vecchio (really messy, with buildings built on top of each other and the Medici Corridor over the top of all of them), Piazza Della Signoria (with a group of sculptures on display, including Perseus with Medusa, The Rape of the Sabine and Hercules & the Centaur) and Basilica di Santa Croce (which contains Galileo's, Michelangelo's and Dante's tombs).

The Uffizi has so many wonderful pieces. Many people go to see the famous Boticelli paintings the Birth of Venus and Primavera but I prefer La Calunnia (The Calumny), which hangs between them. It shows an innocent man being dragged by Calumny, Malice, Fraud & Envy to face Midas, who is being advised by Ignorance & Suspicion while Anger, Remorse and Truth look on. Another favourite of mine was the Niobe room. The room itself was awesome as were the set of sculptures in it - the murder of Niobe's 14 children by Apollo and Artemis. Each statue is either running away, pointing at the sky or falling down, having been shot by one of the gods. I also liked the Caravaggios, like Medusa's head on a shield.

Michelangelo carved David out of one piece of marble. Two other masters had tried to use that piece of marble and had deemed it unsuitable before Michelangelo, with the arrogance of youth and talent, decided to give it a go. David is almost the only thing the Accademia Gallery has. Other pieces of interest were the 4 prisoners, which Michelangelo started for a Pope's tomb but never finished.

I had a particularly upsetting experience with gelati in Florence. Having gotten a cone with 3 flavours, it proceeded to melt much faster than I could eat it, which resulted in some of it running down my hand and me having to gulp the rest down as fast as possible. Definitely not the way to savour gelati. Consequently, I got cups with 1-2 flavours from then on, once in Prato and twice in Pisa, which was much more satisfying.

Prato & Villa La Ferdinanda (a Medici Villa)

We stayed in Prato, a town that is 17km from Florence and is the home of Monash Uni's European campus. The green marble that is part of the distinctive banded design of Tuscan cathedrals comes from this area. The Duomo of Prato has a holy relic (snicker, snicker) - a girdle of Mary, which is paraded on an external pulpit carved by Donatello once a year.

For dinner one night, we went to the Medici villa 'La Ferdinanda', a country mansion near the village of Artimino built by the Medicis (Ferdinand I), who controlled Florence and Tuscany on and off for about 300 years from the 1400s to the late 1700s. It is called the villa of a hundred chimneys because of the many chimneys across its roof. We had Tuscan antipasti in the cellars and then dinner in the Hall of the Bear. The typical Tuscan views from the front door were beautiful.

Siena

We took an evening trip to Siena and got there just before the Duomo closed. The inside of this cathedral was our favourite out of all of the cathedrals we visited. It was designed by the father and son combo of Nicola and Giovanni Pisano. It has a fantastic set of marble mosaic floor panels. The gorgeous Piccolomini Library was commissioned by Pius III to commemorate the life of his uncle Pius II, Enea Silvio Piccolomini, and to house his book and manuscript collection. The outside is crammed with statues and sculptures.

We had dinner at a little restaurant just off the Piazza del Campo, where we had the most delicious tiramisu.

Pisa

The Campo dei Miracoli is a really pretty square, home to the Baptistry, Duomo & the Leaning Tower.

The insanity of the Leaning Tower is that it started to sink when they were building it but they decided to keep going anyway. To compensate, they curved it around, banana-like with shorter columns on the 'top side' and longer ones on the 'bottom'. You can see the curve quite clearly.

The Baptistry has the most amazing acoustics. One of the staff stood in the middle and sang notes one at a time. The echo of her notes combined to create a harmony so that it sounded like there were several people singing. A choir would be a real experience.

The Duomo and the Baptistry have pulpits sculpted by Giovanni & Nicola Pisano respectively. Giovanni's one in the cathedral is bigger and better than his father's. He spent 10 years working on it. The coffer ceiling is beautiful, decorated in gold on blue with the Medici coat of arms.

One last comment on Renaissance artists. Everytime Michelangelo, Raphael or Donatello's names came up, I kept thinking of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. So much for culture!

The Vatican

From Athens, we flew to Rome before heading up to Tuscany. In Rome, there was only one place on the itinerary, The Vatican.

The Vatican Museum

We missed going to the Vatican Museum last time we were in Rome. I actually found the Vatican Museum itself more interesting than the Sistine Chapel. There are a lot of rooms, which contain magnificent frescoes as well as artwork, including tapestries, maps, paintings and sculptures. There is a set of rooms with some of Raphael's best frescoes (the Raphael Rooms). He was invited to the Vatican at the age of 24 and died at 37. I am continually amazed at how early in their lives some of the Renaissance artists were recognised at the highest levels. He was asked to wipe out the frescoes done by previous notable artists and redo the set of rooms (done by the Pope as his predecessor who had commissioned the old frescoes was particularly hated). The subject matter of one of them is interesting. 'The School of Athens' has a decidedly unreligious theme for a room in the Vatican Palace. It is about Philosophy and has figures such as Plato/Leonardo Da Vinci, Aristotle, Socrates, Pythagoras, Euclid/Archimedes and Raphael himself.

Sistine Chapel

The Sistine Chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum rooms. It is disappointingly noisy with lots of guides talking to their groups and people generally chatting about the artwork in very unhushed tones. It is interesting that even the untrained eye can see the differences between the various artists' work. Michelangelo's Last Judgement and Genesis are full of very muscular, semi-naked, well defined people. Boticelli's work also has quite a lot of depth but the people have flowing robes. Other works are more 2D. You get quite a crick in the neck looking up at the ceiling.

St Peter's Basilica & Michelangelo's Pieta

I loved Michelangelo's Pieta the last time I was in St Peter's Basilica 12 years ago and wanted to see it again. It is still my favourite piece of artwork. Even after seeing David in Accademia, I would say that though David is awesome to behold, with phenomenal detail in his anatomy (muscles, tendons, veins), furrowed brow and charisma, the Pieta is much more personal, with Mary's serene face, Jesus's limp body (how marble can appear limp I will never know) and details like Jesus's fingers caught in the folds of Mary's dress. It is unbelievable that Michelangelo created this piece when he was 21-23 years old.

The story of how Michelangelo was invited to Rome is very funny. He carved a statue of a sleeping Cupid and passed it off as a Roman antique. The cardinal who bought it discovered that it was a fake but was so impressed with it that he found out who the artist was and invited him to Rome to work for him.

Greece - the experience

Poor George...

At breakfast one morning, we overheard a Greek-Australian family having a discussion about what they were going to do that day. The son, George (of course he's called George!), was devastated to hear that they would be going to a museum in the morning, driving to another town and visiting yet another archeological site in the afternoon. Sigh...Poor kid. Slow death by archeological sites...

In fact, there were a lot of Greek-Australian/Greek-American families showing their children the birthplace of their parents and grandparents. It's great to see them do this despite the kids sighing and protesting all the way.

Greek Alphabet

Hey, learning all those greek symbols in maths actually came in handy! Well, that is, after I worked out what I was looking at! Having finally deciphered Λ (lambda) for L, Π (pi) for P, Σ (sigma) for S etc., I was able to make a good guess at many signs.

Modern Greece

The Buses
One surprisingly efficient thing was the bus system, KTEL (or KTEΛ as it is in Greek). Of all the various aspects of Modern Greece, this was the one thing that I was impressed with. The long distance buses left on time and arrived on time every time we took them (8 times) bar one (the Delphi-Athens bus arrived in Delphi late but got to Athens on time). They were, for the most part, clean and comfortable with the seat belts neatly folded underneath the seats, requiring tweezers to extracate them (!)

The Food

The food we had in Greece was fantastic and cheap. The Greek salads were fresh with juicy, plump tomatoes, the gyros were very tasty (even when they stuck chips in them - are they copying the famous British chip butties?) and the seafood delicious, particularly the stuffed squid.

The Heat

The heat radiating off the stone of the ruins was extremely uncomfortable. It was really hard going to tramp up and down the marble and stone pavements to see all of the sites. Away from the archeological sites, the temperatures were much more bearable as you could find shade from the buildings to walk in and duck into air-conditioned shops for a breather.

Everything Other Than The Buses And The Food

Everything in Modern Greece, other than buses, is disorganised and nuts. It must be said, however, that they are much better than the Egyptians. At least they have relatively clean cities and towns. They do have some of those same half finished buildings with reinforcement sticking out the top like Egypt, though. None of the countries that contain the great ancient civilisations has impressed me. Egypt, Greece, Italy, Turkey and China are all poor decendents dwelling upon the past achievements of their ancestors. I have no doubt that India and South America are the same. It is very disappointing that these countries have yet to pull themselves up by their bootstraps and stop reminiscing about past greatness. It is time to move on.

Greece - the sites

Athens

The Acropolis

When we arrived at our hotel, we were told to go up to the roof for views of the Acropolis. What spectacular views! The Acropolis is all lit up at night and sits high above the rest of the city.

The majority of the buildings on the Acropolis date back to Pericles in the Golden Age around 460-430 BC. The temple of Athena Nike is now completely enclosed in scaffolding. Much of the Propylaea is still intact and leads up to the Parthenon and the Erechtheion. Most of the statues, sculpture and friezes are plaster or concrete casts of the originals, which are housed in various museums around the world. The Parthenon is in particularly bad shape as it was used as a church in the Byzantine period, when the Christians defaced most of the 'non-Christian' carvings and then it was used as an arsenal in the 1600s and was blown up during the Venetian siege in 1687. It is always disappointing to see each culture take over and destroy previous ones with little regard for historical significance and beauty.

Ancient Agora

The Ancient Agora was the meeting/market place of Athens. Part of it has been rebuilt to house some of the statues. The Temple of Hephaestus is still in reasonable condition and gives a nice view of the rest of the site.

Roman Agora/Tower of the Winds

We accidentally stumbled into the Roman Agora, which contains the Tower of the Winds, while we were trying to get to the Theatre of Dionyses.

Theatre of Dionyses

A disappointingly small theatre. I was expecting a much larger and grander theatre given that it was next to the Acropolis. My favourite theatre is still the one at Pergamon in Turkey.

Olympian Zeus

The temple of Olympian Zeus has a really cool fallen column. The temple columns were the tallest in Athens at 17m. One of them has fallen sideways and broken into its component pieces in a rather orderly fashion.

Hadrian's Library

Hadrian's Library is part of the Acropolis ticket but is not mentioned anywhere in the literature. I was determined to find it but to no avail. Then, when we were looking for the train station, we happened upon it! The Library used to contain tens of thousands of scrolls, reading rooms and 2 lecture halls. Not much remains now except for part of the front facade.

The Acropolis Museum
The new Acropolis Museum opened on the day we arrived in Athens but we didn't visit it until our last day there as it was impossible to get tickets. The museum is laid out very well, with pieces from previous periods and lesser known sites on the Acropolis in the lower floors, leading up to the Caryatids (I love these 6 women who hold up the porch of the Erechtheion) and then up to a full scale layout of the Parthenon frieze, metopes and eastern and western pediments on the top floor. There was a heavy emphasis on all the pieces that reside outside of Greece, primarily on the large group, known as the Elgin Marbles, that sit in the British Museum (a note of BM is on each plaster cast that was taken from that collection). Not to weigh into the argument but the Greeks should just get over the fact that Elgin took all the good bits of the Parthenon and one of the Caryatids 200 years ago. There is no way the British Museum is going to give any of it back as this would set a bad precedent for them as most of their exhibits were taken from other countries without the permission of the currently recognised ruling governments. The Brits for their part should stop pretending to justify themselves with arguments like 'it is much better for the pieces to be in London as they are showcased as part of world history, not just Greek history' and just say, 'nope, you aren't getting them back!'

Delphi

We went on a day trip to Delphi, where I had a long discussion with the Oracle and asked her deep and meaningful questions (!) Seriously, the site is on a mountainside with the temple of Apollo, theatre and stadium on the upper side of the road and the gymnasium and temple of Athena on the lower side of the road. Nobody goes to the temple of Athena as it is very poorly signed and they are all exhausted from the visit to the upper side.

The Oracle apparently used to sit inside the temple of Apollo, in a crevice that you can't see now. There isn't much left of this temple. More impressive is the stadium, which is right up the top of the hill. Most of the seating is still intact and you can see how spectators would have watched the races inside.

The temple of Athena with its Tholos in the middle is in a similar state to the Apollo temple. Bemusingly, the UNESCO sign proclaiming it a world heritage site has been propped up against the railings with 2 pieces of rock to stop it toppling over. The lack of respect is just mindboggling.

Nafplio

Nafplio was our base for our trips around the Peloponnese peninsula. It is a nothing resort town that is slowly dying. We saw several abandoned hotels and houses that hark back to better times.

Epidavros

Epidavros was the site of the Temple of Asclepios, the god of medicine and healing, one of Apollo's sons. People went there to get help with curing various sicknesses from hearing loss to mental illness. They are still in the process of piecing together the ruins and rebuilding them into their original positions (with plaster casts where the bits are completely gone). Turkey did this years ago with their ruins and have done a particularly good job with the Library facade at Ephesus.

There is a precursor to Ronald McDonald House at Epidavros. A huge hotel-like place was constructed for friends and family of patients to stay while their loved ones were being treated.

The best find at Epidavros is a beautiful Corinthian column capital that is in almost perfect condition. It was found buried in the ground and is believed to be the template for the columns on the site.

Mycenae

Mycenae (Mikines for the Greeks) was the seat of the ancient Mycenaen culture, which flourished around 1600-1200 BC. The founder was said to be Perseus (of Medusa fame) and the wall of the city, which he got Cyclops to build for him is still standing. It is a phenomenal sight. Agamemnon, Menalaus's brother and leader of the Greeks at Troy, was king of Mycenae about 5 generations after Perseus. It is interesting that this site is more intact that the various sites that were built during the Golden Age (400-300 BC). They obviously don't make things like they used to!

Santorini

The ferry to Santorini was long and tiring. We had to get up before 5 to get down to the port at Piraeus and didn't arrive in Santorini until 3.30pm. Phew! Never again! I had heard about the Greek ferries being a popular form of transport but they compare unfavourably even to their attrocious airlines.

We stayed in Fira, the main town and took trips over to Kamari, one of the famous black volcanic beaches and Oia (pronounced ee-ah), which is home to the church with the blue top and white walls that everyone takes photos of. The problem with Fira and Oia is that there is absolutely nowhere to rest other than in exhorbitantly priced restaurants and cafes. There are no public squares or shady benches and few public toilets. The sun shines glaringly off the white paint and exhausts your eyes.

The sunset, which is proclaimed to be one of the best in the world, is, in my opinion, not as good as the one over Uluru. That one, I still believe, is the best one I have ever seen.