Living here in Italia has shown us that Italians are amazingly generous and friendly… once they know you. Like in any other country, when you wear the camera, bum bag and hat that screams TOURIST you are fair game.
Even given our best efforts when we go touristy we travel expecting to be ripped off and are suprised when we aren’t. As such we have complied a rough guide for people comming to see the beautiful people and sites of italia. (more…)
Two weekends ago now, James and I went to Florence, the second time for me, but first for him. We again stayed at Hotel Cestelli and had a great time there (Say hi to Asumi and Alessio for us!). By the end of the wedding I think they’ll have met most of our family and friends!!!
We came to Florence for a few reasons, the main being that James hadn’t been, the other… to continue the never-ending hunt for wedding shoes. To cut a long story short I found the shoes 
That left us with plenty of time to visit a number of museums, and to take some nice long walks. (more…)
Life has been busy recently so it has been a while since we have updated the blog with what we have been up to.
Starting with the weekend before last we had a dinner with about 8 of us in the name of learning to cook “Italino”. A few weeks before this we had been talking with Chiara and Ottavio about a Risotto that we had made. The recipe we followed was a little strange, for example you added the cheese at the beginning. It turned out the Chiara had seen the same recipe and agreed that it was unusual. As such she kindly offered to teach us how to make a “TRUE” Italian risotto and hence the purpose of the evening. (more…)
For a while James and I have had a small list of things we wanted to see whilst we are here in Italia. This list included Venezia, Roma, etc… and Pompei. Pompei is one of the most memorable things we studied in Roman history back in primary/secondary school.
Given that we were in Roma, it seemed silly to us to ignore Pompei given that it was within easy reach of a day trip and we couldn’t confidently say that we would be back in that area any time soon, if at all. So on Sunday (New Years Eve) we dragged our tired behinds out of bed early and off to Termini train station. (more…)
Some handy hints for those of you planning a trip to Rome: (more…)
After a fantastic Christmas with the OC and family, and the relaxing days that followed, on the 27th a 7.30am train from Genova saw us arrive in Rome around lunchtime. After a few disorientating minutes at Termini train station, we got our orientation, weekly metro tickets (how organised were we!?) and jumped on the B-line that saw us exit right out the front of the Colosseum! I was immediately in awe, I wasn’t expecting it to be looming upon us as soon as we exited our stop. James was a little less impressed, disappointed by the black marks and cracks in this Roman icon caused by years of pollution and the metro system that runs a little too close below. We circled the Colosseum in search for the street where we were staying and were impressed to find that we were staying about a 100m down the road from it, with it sitting at the end of our street. (more…)
QF029
MEL-HKG-LHR
ETD - 8/9/2006, 23:00
Having returned to Australia unexpectedly, our flying trip was over when we headed to Melbourne Airport to fly back home. We originally thought that our flight went through Singapore we quickly found out that it was actually through Hong Kong. Oh well, no duty free shopping for us we thought and what another great opportunity to appreciate Renzo Piano’s architecture again.
Everything went well, we had secured emergency aisle seats and quickly boarded. Sitting there we introduced ourselves to our row mate and chatted as you do when waiting for the flight to leave. We were advised by the captain that we were slightly delayed because of a slight “engineering problem”. This was soon sorted out and we continued to wait for the final bags to be loaded. (more…)