Bills Posts

From the port of Livorno, we could have headed for Florence & Pisa, but we have done both of these before, a few years ago, I had the typical picture of me trying to hold up the leaning tower. I must admit I fancied the idea of try to get one pushing it over. Instead, we went off in an entirely different direction, starting with an almost two hour drive to Sienna.

Tuscany, how many of us who haven’t visited the area have seen pictures of its beauty? Well I have to tell you that when the scenery is right, those pictures are very accurate. I expect that the effect is even more dramatic in the early morning or evening light.

We drove through the gently rolling landscape with those narrow, sharp Cyprus trees coming to a point that’s slightly blown over to reflect the prevailing wind. A delightful looking house on a low hilltop, with half a dozen trees around it surrounded by a gently rolling landscape. The towns are no worse, dominated by a church tower it inspired a feeling of intense community and family spirit.

I have never read the Canterbury tales, but I believe they involve at least part of a pilgrimage. Sienna lays on the path to Rome, eleven days walk we were told. Churches abound, centred upon a really quite spectacular cathedral. The religious paintings are protected in an area that is naturally temperature controlled. Pictures that are as rich and colourful as the day they were painted, easily compare with pictures not as well protected which as a result are dark and faded.

The centre of Sienna is a huge square, almost angled and shaped like an amphitheater where every year they hold a horse race. The square specially prepared; a sand track is laid, padding located at strategic points to protect horses and riders (mostly the horses I suspect, I dare say they don’t understand the risks) falls happen, injuries, sometimes fatal to both rider and horse occur.

The square at this time of year and even more so for the summer event (the race happens twice a year) Is baking hot. But ten thousand people can be crammed into the centre, from which there is no escape, and for which they pay hundreds of euros. Even our Italian tour guide thought those who did it were made, but she is as devoted to the race as any Italian.

We departed Sienna, hot, tired and informed.

Lunch was at a winery, a wine tasting with a meal. Three samples of wine(only a small amount of each, with an opportunity (of course) to buy the wine if we so wished. The first course, antipasto followed by Pasta in a tomato & mushroom sauce, and three more samples of wine. The third course was an almond based biscuit that I knew I didn’t like, so gave it a miss. That was also served with a special desert wine.

We set off for St Gimmignano. The italians have a particular way of saying it, particularly a rolling around the “Migna’ part, with which I am having great difficulty pronouncing.

Up a little bit of a hill, a few steps (seriously, not being sarcastic here) a slightly less than gentle sweep of the narrow Main Street of the village,populated with cafes. All of which sell gelato in some form or another but we are waiting for the shop on the square, which we are reliably informed by our guide is some of the best in the area if not Italy. This anecdotal assertion of fact would appear to be borne out by the fact that the queue for this one shop is huge, I mean really big. But our guide continues to tell us that it will move quickly as they have eight people serving in the shop.

Elayne is determined to partake and so joins the queue with the guide. Seeing my sceptical face especially at the prospect of queuing in bright sunshine, she sends me off to have a look around. I head off up around the back of the church, from where there is a view out over the fairly typical rooftops of a Tuscan village. I loiter a bit, and slowly start to head off back at the square, arriving, much to Elaynes disgust just as she is about to step in to the shop to be served. I have to say that the three scoops of Lemon, Banana and Coconut tasted superb!

I think we were all pleased to head back to our air conditioned coach.

On yesterdays post, I should have said that the first sea day ended with a formal night. Elayne had made sure that my dinner suite was packed. I of made sure that I wasn’t paying attention to the packing and therefore forgot my bow-tie and braces. Luckily the ship-board shop had them, so that was at £35 a very expensive lax moment of attention to detail.

This next piece was written on Sunday 3rd Sep 23. I’ve kind of lost track off things. Did I write about Ajaccio yesterday? In which case why am I doing so today, or haven’t I yet written about the visit to Corsica’s capital? I’m inclined to think I may not have done. I’m going to do so, and if it’s repetition then so be it.

Publishing the post (that is in wordpress speak sending to the Internet) is intermittent. I am trying to be careful with mobile data as although we are covered in Europe, I am not confident that is strictly the case. So who knows when this will land on your screens.

We had no trips booked for Ajaccio, you can just get off the boat and a two minute walk puts you on the main square, hosting as it does a rather nice statue of Napoleon Bonaparte dressed as a Roman empower, which kind of sets the tone for the island.

In the town square we saw a small road train offering a town tour for €12, which by the end of the tour, we thought quite reasonable. We drove past another square hosting another rather grand statue of Napoleon, along with his four brothers. On then to the main feature of the day, a proper monument to Napoleon, with steps leading up to another magnificent statue. This time with Napoleon garbed in the uniform with which we are familiar and him with his left hand hidden in his waist coat (what was wrong with his hand that he did that? Or was it just for effect)?

We drove out to a headland passing villas belonging to famous peoples, coming back in to town we drove down the narrow street where the house in which Napoleon was borne. It is now a museum. The train then returned to its startling point.

Disembarking from the train, we walked back up to the square of Napoleon and his brothers, walked along a street of shops and then back to the ship where we were lazy beyond belief.

We were due to be taken from the hotel to Azura at 1300. We were packed and had eaten breakfast by around 0930, so thought we would take a stroll down to see the illuminated church as it is in daylight. We took what might be a less obvious route by going up hill a bit, and then walking along. We were delighted to have a lovely view across the bay as a result.

The square in front of the church had hosted a festival on the night of our arrival, we had seen some of the fireworks from the taxi. Workmen were now clearing the aftermath & dismantling stages. The church looked lovely but u fortunately we couldn’t get in. We lingered for a bit at another viewing point and then made our way back to the hotel via a souvenir shop to pick up some postcards.

I reckon there were twenty to thirty people waiting to go on to the cruise, nearly all sat in the hotel foyer. The weather has been grey all morning, and the threatened rain arrived at the same time as the travel agent. A coach was coming for us and so the was the rain. Apparently, rain in Malta is relatively rare. It was making up for it today.

Before we departed the UK I had said to Elayne, don’t bother with a rain coat – you won’t need it. Silly girl, she listened to me! In fairness, it was only a twenty yard dash the driver took our bags and hurled them into the luggage area. And we were off.

The thunder and lightening certainly weren’t off though; streaks of white hot current arcing to the ground, followed almost immediately by huge claps of churning noise, and the windscreen wipers swooshing desperately trying to give the driver a clear view. A journey that should have taken 45 minutes ended up being an hour and a half. Not a problem, the ship wasn’t due to sail until 2100, and it didn’t even then as a plain load of passengers late departing from the Uk were only then being bussed from the airport.

So far, our only view of Valletta had been through misted up coach windows, from inside the limestone was of the city, where we were processed through boarding and from the ship. But as usual, her gentle push off from the harbour and smooth glide out past the city and through the harbour wall was as gentle an experience as we have ever had. We went to bed about an hour later. I’d had the pork for dinner. Delicious.

Our first day at sea,was exactly that – sea day. Relaxed dress, no rush, do what you want. Once we had breakfast out the way, Elayne went off to find a sun bed as close to the pool as she could get, and sought out the most shaded spot I could find to settle down with my kindle.

A bit of a snooze in the afternoon, we have free dining (eat when and where we want, pretty much, almost) and spent the evening with a delightful group of people, we had a real laugh. I also had the Beef Wellington – it was even better than the pork. The show was very good as you might expect. All in, a delightful first day.

The Hotel Solana in Mellieha is quite pleasant, it’s a surprisingly big place given its location in the centre (pretty much) of town. Where we had booked with a holiday company and were only staging through, we had been allocated a basic room. We were offered an upgrade that would give us a balcony and a sea view – the price seemed quite reasonable and as we were there for two nights we decided to take it. I’m glad we did. The view wasn’t spectacular, but certainly better than four plain walls.

We had been disappointed to find that the Solana wasn’t as we thought in Valletta. Mellieha is probably the biggest town that far north on Malta. The next stop is the island of Gozo.

That kind of dictated what we were going to to do on our first free day. As you might expect the hotel staff were very helpful. Busses are very reasonable, €2 buys you two hours, which would normally be enough to get almost anywhere on the island and there was a bus stop outside the hotel with the busses going in the direction we wanted. A 20 minute bus ride saw us at the Gozo Ferry terminal.

Riding from Malta to Gozo is free, you just get on (I might as well tell you a ticket back costs €4.80, but they don’t tell you that going. I said to Elayne tickets coming back are probably a thousand euros. The Maltese are happy for you to go, just not to come back!). The ferries are very good, frequent, roll-o roll-off with double ended bows. They don’t turn round.

We decided that we would take the hop-on, hop-off bus and do a circuit of the island. Just a by-note to say that we hoped on. And only hoped off once roughly in the middle of the island at the Capital, Victoria (there is still a huge amount of British influence here)

The geology of the Maltese islands is pretty much just limestone. A lot, most, nearly all the buildings are constructed out of a wonderfully golden yellow rock that is mined locally. that gives a common timbre to the way villages and towns look, but each has its own characteristics. Most villages are dominated by a magnificent church, 85% of the population of the islands is Roman Catholic, and quite devout.

On the bus, it soon became very apparent that the villages and the roads through them were not built with modern transport in mind. The bus had no difficulty in making any of the turns even those that appeared to be right-angled or thereabouts. It’s that the roads and the level of traffic have significantly influenced the attitude towards driving, especially the concept of give-way.

What appears to be the case is that of when you are approaching a place where to give-way might be expected, under no circumstances must you do so. Instead accelerate to the highest possible speed to reach that point in the road where it is physically impossible for two of even the smallest vehicles to pass, and sit there. And wait for the other vehicle to inch past. Thus it becomes a battle of wills between drivers to see who is likely to dink your car first. Having said that, I saw very few “dinked” cars.

There really was only one place where I would quite liked to have hopped off, at the site of one of the oldest megalithic structures in Europe. We didn’t as by the then we just wanted to get back to the ferry.

Gozo is a fascinating place, and there is clearly much more to see than we saw. I would be quite happy to stay there for a couple of days and explore. I don’t think I would hire a car though.

After we heard about the issues with the uk air traffic system (the cause of which rather tests my credulity especially after speaking to a former RAF Navigator whom we’ve just met) we were someŵhat nervous about what would be waiting for us upon our arrival at Gatwick.

We had even discussed the possibility of the flight being delayed by anything up to twenty four hours and were grateful that the next part of the holiday wasn’t due to start until 24 hours after that (giving us a roughly 48 hour window in Malta) so we felt well prepared for whatever confronted us at the airport. Especially as the press were presenting a picture of utter chaos.

First indications were that the railway station didn’t appear to be any busier than you might expect it to be, particularly after the weekend rail strike that had only recently ended.

The railway station is at Gatwick’s south terminal and we needed to be at the north terminal for the easyJet departure. We had arrived a good hour earlier than we needed to in readiness for any crush. We didn’t experience anything like that on the monorail transfer service which was fast, efficient, relaxed and uncrowded.

Disembarking from the monorail, we braced ourselves for the heaving crush of frustrated angry people. Only snag was, they weren’t there. Of course there were people waiting to board. We had to wait an hour before we were allowed to check our bags in and there are never enough seats for people waiting to go air-side, but that’s probably to discourage loitering than anything else. The numbers actually seemed a lot fewer than we had expected there were no long queues to check bags in, in fact there were no queues at all (in the context of an airport, half a dozen people waiting to check in bags does not constitute a queue – in my eyes at least).

As we were waiting for our check in window to open, we were watching other people. It was self checkin, looked fairly straightforward; put bag on belt, scan boarding pass, weigh. If under large green light, if over 23kg, large red light. When it came to our turn, luckily our home scales had been reasonably accurate, so two green lights.

Air side was fine, we had enough time to get something to eat and then make our way to the gate. I’m not going to anything about the flight it went ok. Even our transfer from airport to hotel was straightforward, so that was good. Too late to get anything to eat but that’s ok, weren’t really hungry.

Sorry, the picture is a little bit fuzzy if you embiggen it. It’s the view from our hotel room on the night we arrived in Malta. I have to confess, I was a bit surprised to get here.

It all started at around 3:15PM on Monday, I was flicking the the news on the iPad and an item about “problems at British airports” flicked up. Of course given that we were due to fly to Malta the next day, my ears and eyes pricked up. What’s going on here then?

It appears that a badly formatted flight plan submitted to the National Air Traffic System to not just crash, but to have a complete meltdown. Of course I am completely confident that the NATS software is iii&5i57<k absolutely stuffed with well programmed, hygienically secure validity and integrity checking measures so this have been an incredibly badly formatted plan to cause disruption in the that it did, as the papers reported it.

The papers also reported on the chaos at airports as flights were cancelled or delayed and that it would take days to recover. So you can imagine our trepidation as the time got closer to our departure.

The taxi picked us up on time. Only a short run to the ferry. The ferry was running normally, so we only had to wait a couple of minutes. We were a little bit early for the train, but that was fine. I’d rather be early than late. The train was on time, and although our having to change at Cosham was a mild frustration, even that went smoothly.

Well, I say smoothly, the only issue was that the train was rammed. Luckily not standing room only for us, but because everyone appeared to be heading for the same destination as ourselves. So the aisles were stacked with suitcases. But that’s ok everyone was friendly and helpful.

The rammed state of the train became a frustration when we passed Arundel. The first stirrings of the magnificent castle that it has become were made in the 11th century. Today, it’s majestic lines tower above the town. I don’t have a picture for you as I was at the completely the Wrong angle to get one.

I can tell you though, that Arundel castle does look as grand from the train as I hoped it would.

We arrive at Gatwick on time. Everyone piles off the train, leaving the remains passengers to luxuriate in the comfort of the now vacated sears. Or perhaps not. There was a crowd people waiting to board.

I think the count will be reset. I wrote last nights post, but fell asleep before I published it, so it went early this morning. That’s frustrating, but that’s how it goes.

The lunchtime walk in to town was a bit rushed. But it was pleasant nonetheless. The high street ŵas surprisingly full of people. The bars were busy and cheerful. Helped by a bright sun, that just made everything bright and fresh.

I’ve left it too late in the evening again for it to be anything other than a rushed post. Sorry about that. I did my usual Thursday night radio net, which was interesting, not really much about radio more about flying light aircraft.

I must take a look at Alaskan bush pilots, apparently they are a bit daredevil-ish. And, who would have thought that STOL (Short Takeoff & Landing as a competition.

one of the flaws of this blog is a lack of planning. Many (most) of my posts are spontaneous and I have nothing in reserve. What I should be doing is writing two posts a day, but only posting one. By the end of a month of doing that I would have thirty spare posts that I could draw upon whenever I needed.

The other problem is that the focus of the blog is just me. There isn’t one. If I had a single or just two or three subjects, would it be easier? But what would I concentrate on? Who knows?

I managed to get up at 6:30AM I walked to the waterfront as I passed one particular shop I saw a person whom I really want to stay away from. He said something but I assumed he wasn’t talking to me. I ignored him.

I stopped and talked to friend for a couple of minutes and then moved on. As I did so I heard an exchange coming from the bus station it was loud and it was angry. I’m pretty sure one of the voices I heard was the person I wanted to stay away from. I carried on walking.

I think it’s sad that this kind of thing happens.