May 8: Dolemites (Kasselruth)
So after checking out of the hotel in Vienna and getting on the open road, I started to get more upbeat. The drive from Wien to Salzburg was quite nice. Then over to Germany. I had about 1000 miles on the car at this point, and the autobahn was practically deserted. And there was no speed limit.
So as you can imagine, I put the car through its paces. One particularly straight stretch brought me up to 200kph/120mph. Once you get above 90, the wind tunnel effect starts to happen. The noise of the drag of the car outweighs pretty much everything else. It was quite interesting. The gas mileage suffers greatly. I was getting around 11mpg at 115, and 28mpg at 80. I had driven the car through snow previously. It was nice to see the sports suspension come into play again.
I travelled from Innsbruck to the Brenner pass. Its beautiful country, and I was going to take a picture, but it was raining a little bit. Once I went through the pass into Italy, it was raining a lot. It was raining so much I'd have rather been in an ark. The 60km drive to the Kasselruth exit was no picnic either.
The Dolemites are a bunch of mountains that, up until WWI belonged to Austria. Since they started the war, they lost this region to Italy. The people seem to have resisted assimilation. Every sign was in both german and italian. I was greeted with the south german "Gruess Gott" instead of the "Buon giorno" I was expecting. Everyone indoors speaks german, everyone on the street spoke italian.
However none of this mattered at this point. Casselroto (the italian name) is in a very high plane that supposedly has a great view. The rain combined with the fog was so thick, I couldn't see 1m in front of my car. Combined with a person in front of me going about 10mph uphill, I was glad that my stick driving was improved enough to make it. Once I got to the town, after 45 minutes, it was dark and I got lost. I got lost in the fog in a foreign town where all the signs are in two different languages I don't understand. As you can imagine, it wasn't a picnic.
After parking in a spot so awkward it later took me 3 minutes to leave (it would have taken just 1 with automatic)... I found my hotel. They didn't have my internet reservation. No matter, they had a room. The room was quite nice. Big, with CNN on the TV. After obsessing for a few minutes if I left my car window open, I turned on CNN and fell asleep.
May 9: Venezia
I woke up and got the hell out of that area. That was a day wasted. Oh well. The autostrada's in italy are expensive. It's about $1/20km. You can pay by credit card, so i didn't care. The rest stops are fantastic.
I parked in the big Tronchetto parking lot in Venice. It's right across the bridge from the mainland. Then after a few minutes, I got a room at the third hotel I tried. I then got on a vaporetto (a water bus) for 6000L and waited the 25 minutes to get to Piazzo San Marco.
It's quite impressive. Large. Very very large. However after spending so much time at the Venitian, it seemed, somehow, dirty. I guess I'm used to the glitzy, sterilized Europe that Vegas provides. Not a matter. My hotel is about 5 minutes from the square.
I got to the hotel and after some haggling, i got the price down to just $75. I walked up the 5 flights of stairs an entered the room. It had a bathroom, and that's pretty much the only thing I can say about it. They only had room for one night, and thankfully, that's all I'm going to spend in this town.
I dropped off my stuff and touristed. I went to the basilica, saw the big gold plate. Quite cool. Stared at the medieval paintings. Also, quote cool. Walked around the square. However it really didn't live up to the hype. It was ridiculously touristy. I heard more english (read american) spoken on the street than italian. Well the canals were quite interesting, even if the town looks like what Detroit would look like if it were built in the middle of a lake.
So not pleased with the touristy things, I decided that I would come back to Venice when I was in better spirits, and better weather. With time to kill, I proceeded to get lost. Get lost with a purpose, however. I wanted to find an internet cafe. I had brochures from three of them. I started my search at 1300.
I figured the town was touristy enough to not be all siesta'd in the afternoon. I was wrong. Each place was closed. I made my way across San Marco to the 24 hour internet place. I sat down and immediately checked for flights from Milan to SFO. I found a ridiculously cheap one that leaves on wednesday (only 4.5 days away). I tried to buy it online, but it couldn't be e-ticketed.
So I went to a travel agency I had seen along my path. I found the person and started speaking. Evidently quite fast. After being told to slow down, I explained what I wanted and found the flight for 699.000L+tax. All told its $385 to be gone for 8 days, cattle class. After the last few days, I need it.
BTW, what is the obsession with having unleashed dogs in every establishment I'm in? I'm beginning to realize that I could have brought a digital camera and uploaded them at a large number of places (easy everything computers have USB ports). First thing to do when I get back to the states is to look for one.
May 10: Milano
Got up early this morning. Was out in St. Mark's Square at 8:00. Quite interesting with no one around. It was dreadfully foggy, barely could see anything. After the 30 minute water bus ride, I drove to Milan. Relatively uneventful drive. Foggy. Dreary. Couldn't see any scenery
Then I got to Milan. I kept getting lost. Ended up parking in a mall parking lot for a little bit. The overnight parking rates were horrendous, so I got lost again finding the other parking lot. After 45 minutes I got to it, parked (£12,000/day), and took the metro in. Went to the second hotel listed in the guide book and got a room. Two nights. The night after that I'm going to play by ear. Tuesday night I'm staying near the Malpensa airport (which is 45 minutes away from downtown, not counting the time it takes to get to my car)
My initial impression of Milan is great. It feels lived in, real. Cold, hard, Italy. The transportation system looks great, given that nothing could get me to drive in downtown with this many pedestrians. Everything closes on Monday, so I think I'll go for a drive... Hopefully the weather will clear, by then. Ciao, for now...
May 11: Milano
Last night I finally had a pizza in Italy. It was huge, and only $6. Good enough to last me through another hour of street walking (no, not that kind). Fell asleep around 9pm backed yet again by CNN.
Visted the Castle Sforza in the morning. Milan is dead on Sunday mornings. Nothing is open except a few museums and the touristy fast-food places near the Duomo. It has quite an interesting museum. A large collection of musical instruments, tapestrys, statues, government edicts, etc. Has Michaelangelo's last work, and a fresco by Leonardo (among his few extant painting works). And it's free. There is quite a large park in the back, I did a little stroll among the very cute Japenese tourists and the Milanese dog-walkers.
Then I went to the Breva art museum. Spend $6 to walk around a museum filled with wonderous art, none of which I can appreciate. I really should stop going to art museums without spending at least a week crash course in art history. In any case, it was filled with Renaissance art from Lombardy and Venice.
Then off to the National Museum of Science and Industry (or the Leonardo da Vinci museum). Opened in 1952, it holds no Leonardo originals, but a series of reproductions of some of his mechanical inventions. The rest of the museum consists of wings devoted to acoustics, chronography, radio, telegraph, metals, iron-working, motors, etc. There are two other museums in the same complex devoted to trains and airplanes respectively. It was in bad condition. Half the exhibits looked like they hadn't been changed since the opening. The most up-to-date thing they had was an Internet stop (which was closed for lunch), and two Crays with red cushions sitting without description. If the Deutsches Museum is a 10, this would rate about a 4.
After getting a cono piccolo con tiramisu e pistacchio (and having my pronunciation corrected), I headed toward the duomo museum. It costs £10000 to get into the museum, £9000 to ride the elevator to the top, or £12000 to do both. I chose to do both and rode to the top of the duomo first. For $1, it was well worth it. You get an unbelievable view of the city, and of what I would call the cathedral on top of the cathedral. A building of large size, topped by a gilded statue of the virgin, adorns this gigantic cathedral. After watching the crowd both on the church and below, I decided to take the stairs down. It's quite interesting listening to the multilingual dimenuendo of exhaustion as you decend the staircase.
The museum itself is built into the Ducal palace. It contains mostly original objects from the duomo, placed here to be protected from the weather, humidity, but most often bird droppings the accompany the duomo itself. The most interesting exhibits are original terra cotta design templates below the actual marble. Very much worth the wait.
Then I hung around the Duomo for a while. I got some Spizzolo fast-food pizza, and watched a band called the Jive Aces play. Yesterday as I was entering the square, I saw some sort of political candidate (I'm assuming one of the ones for PM) ending a rally in the square. I should have taken a picture, but I didn't have time. Well the Jive Aces were playing Just a Gigolo, and I thought it was another political thing. Oh, no. Scientology. There's a big banner in the back saying L. Ron Hubbard.
After 6pm on Sunday, all the museums are closed. I might give Milan another day, or I might just drive someplace into the country.
May 12: Pisa
I decided to drive to Pisa. It's fairly out of the way, but the weather on the computer looked relatively good and I'd get to drive a bit. Oh boy was I wrong. It rained cats and dogs the entire drive down. In addition to Milan traffic (leading to a 1/2 hour detour), and my inability to read a man (yet another 1/2 hour), I arrived in Pisa around 12:30.
I booked my hotel through the internet. I specifically wanted one out of the way so I would be able to park my car in peace. I'm not sure how I did. The hotel is about 10 minutes off the highway, through some beautiful country. There is a large cliff off to the north that makes the farms below seem more beautiful. After finding my hotel, and finding that it was a place designed for tour groups, I dropped off my stuff. It had both CNN internation and Sky News on the Tele (joy).
I drove to a park and ride (free parking and only £2000 for the ride), and found myself staring at the leaning tower itself. Yeah it's tilted. What I found more interesting was the methods they were using to prop it up. They placed tons of lead weights inside the tower to counter-balance it. They have about 40 tubes that run underneath the tower to drain away the water that causes the sinking. And they have cabling surrounding the third story that seems to be the last ditch effort in case it starts to tip over.
The baptistery and the cathedral adjacent on The Field of Miracles were also quite stunning. The baptistery has a ground floor, a mezzanine, and a floor facing the dome. There was a guy repaving some of the brickwork, I took a picture of him. Then I went to the Cathedral itself. It is quite ornate, with impressive frescos and a gilt black & gold ceiling that was stunning. This was the first church where I could use a camera, so I did. I'm finding that most of the churches I've seen are quite impressive, but very different.
Today, I decided to meet people. A couple of relatively stupid from Wisconsin (who couldn't figure out that while the emergency door was closed, the big ray of light to the left of it was the open door). A couple retired teachers from Ottawa. A mess of people from Australia. A group of three teenagers from Japan. I met most of these people at the Museum of the Duomo, which is littered with archelogy and statues from the cathedral.
Then I walked across town to the train station to find an internet cafe and get a bite to eat. Unlike the places in north, most of the internet cafes I've found here require you to prepay for time. It's quite annoying to find out you've overpaid. But £8000/hour is fine. I should write down my thoughts on european internet cafes in the forum...
I walked back to the tower, and got a bite to eat at one of the trattorias near the tower. The service was slow by Italian standards. So I found it excruciating. I had a great Tuscan soup, and a very mediocre calzone. It's what I get for not asking him what the best thing in the house is.
I wanted to make it to the bus stop by 20.00 when the last bus runs to the parking area. The bus stop evidently is on the outside of the city walls of Pisa (after finding many a bus stop that were non-functioning). Turns out after walking about 10 minutes and no bus coming, I found myself at the area itself. It was close enough that I decided to go back and see a bit more of Pisa nightlife. I hopped on the bus back to the tower
After stopping at an internet cafe, and chatting with people on the west coast, I found a gelateria, got myself a creme and banana cone, and walked back to the car. After a short twisty drive with many a maniac passing me doing double the speed limit, I slept.
May 13: Milan
The hotel is quite convenient to the tower. I have no idea what my guidebook was thinking with respect to parking in Pisa being a nightmare. The hotel was close to the free parking which had a cheap bus to the tower. Oh well. On the way back to Milan, I saw a two accidents. Italians are really bad drivers. Really bad drivers. I was fairly careful.
The rain was coming down fairly hard at the start of the drive, and it got quite harder. I took the turnoff to Parma, hoping to stop and get a little cheese. However the rain was relentless and after making a left turn onto the A1 I pressed on. Right after the mountains (I'll have to look up the range), the sky cleared, it was about 60 degrees, and I felt the obligation to take the top down.
From about 70km south of Milan to the hotel 45km to the north west of milan, I drove my convertible as it was meant to be driven. I stopped off at a rest station, took the top down, and took out the wind deflector. I assembled the deflector and spent about 15 minutes reading the very unclear directions carefully. I pressed a wrong button as I tried to lock the deflector in place, and I couldn't raise the top again. Turns out if you interrupt it in a bad way, it stays in whatever position (top open or closed) for 15 minutes.
So I said, "What the Hell," and drove off to the next station which was 20km away. What a rush. I didn't wear a hat for the first few minutes just to feel it. Driving 75mph down the road with the windows down. Awesome. After enough buffetting, I rolled up the windows, made it to the next stop, pressed the right buttons and locked the deflector. Then I drove quite comfortably to my hotel. I soooo made the right decision. The wind deflector, besides being very interesting in its operation, makes the ride a hell of a lot smoother.
The hotel had no parking. I could park on the street, or in the garage across the way. The lady told me the garage was £10000, however it was actually £20000. I didn't know this until I had already parked. Oh well, screw it. What's $10 for not having to think.
After walking around beautiful downtown Gallarate, I went to a big shop that said "Internet." However, it must have meant something else because they did not provide access. Oh well, they directed me to the Biblioteca. After being confused about the word "access," and me understanding enough broken italian, it turns out they were booked except for one half hour at 17.30. So I walked to the train station...
The trip to Milan is a half hour and £5.500. Non c'e problema. I bought the ticket from the multilingual kiosk, got on the train which left in two minutes, got on the upper seating area, and started writing in my journal. After a bit of walking through the city of Milan, which I can now negotiate fairly easily, I made it to an internet cafe to post an update. I'm waiting till 19.00 when a supposedly very good pizzeria opens, then off to the train station to get back to Gallarate by 22.00. Then get up at 6.30 to get ready for the plane back to the US.
After walking around a bit more, I went back to a pizzeria I had been to earlier. This time, I did the correct thing and ask for what pizza was best. Very good. I need to remember to put arugula on pizza. A couple more round around town and I decided to head back. I took the long train back to the Piazza Garabaldi station, and saw that I had just missed the 19.25 train. Oh well, the next one is at 20.02, so I tried to make some phone calls, but no one answered. Train took 40 minutes, filled with long pauses, and I found my way back to the hotel. I packed up all my things as well as I could (which was quite easy since my hiking boots remain in the car) and slept.
March 14: Milan, Malpensa
The next morning I checked-out, had the first real continental breakfast in Italy (wow, more than one kind of roll), and braved the newly found cold to drive to the airport. The Malpensa airport is quite far away from Milan, and it was a good 10 minute drive to Terminal 1 from my hotel. I parked in the open/air lot for L132,000/week. It is within 5 minutes of the terminal, so I just walked it.
Check in wasn't a problem, although I had to carry my toiletries in my courier bag because of pressure differences in the plane. As I waited for the hour and a half to pass I made some more phone calls, and started reading my Rick Steve's France book. I must have left it in the terminal because I didn't have it on the plane.
March 14: Foster City, US
Alitalia is the worst airline I've been on. I prefer Southworst and ValuJet. The plane was delayed a half hour leaving, with no explanation. They kept turning on and off the lights in the cabin waking me up. The seats are poorly designed so the seat/belt can get wedged against the wall. The food was barely edible. The movie screens were out of focus (and they showed Meet the Parents, which was quite annoying considering the howls of laughter derived by cheap sight gags kepts me awake). But the biggest thing is that they banned digital sound reproduction devices. This includes CD players. This is pure nonsense, and I was warned a couple of times by the crew for using my CD player. They tried to convince me it was dangerous. OK, if using a CD player in row 20 causes interference with a Boeing 767 built in 1986, then I'm very concerned about my safety on this airline. It sucked.
Well when I arrived 12 and a half hours later, the line through customs went quick. Thre were about 50 people waiting in 7 lines for US nationals, and about 400 people waiting in 7 lines for non-US nationals. Membership has its priviledges. I got my bags and Stacey met me at the terminal. I was finally on American soil. We went to Costco to develop my film (so it'll be posted sooner rather than later), then got some food (invloving untainted American beef), then I pretty much crashed.
On to Week 3
