More days in Italy.

After leaving Bologna, we headed up many winding roads to Fanano where Gianmarco and Cristina live. Yet again we got to taste great homemade local food. It was great to catch up with them. The next morning we went for a walk and also to a great local cheese factory/shop where we got to buy great parmesan.

We then headed to Lucca, a lovely old city that is surrounded by 12m high city walls built in the 16th and 17th centuries. The next morning we cycled around the top of these walls. Lucca was a delightful town to wander around. Malcolm climbed the two towers in the town, one of which had a group of holm oak tres for shade.

The next day we went to Parma which is well known for its food industry. We spent a long time trying to manoeuvre through the one way streets of the old town to our hotel so after half an hour we finally made it to the hotel which was about 100 metres from where we began. We discovered that it was also had a lovely old centre to walk around, window shop and sightsee. Parma's Duomo, which was built in the 11th and 12th centuries, was amazing inside.

On the way back to Munich we stopped at a supermarket then in the town of Mantova which we walked around, had lunch and visited the Basilica which has two golden vessels that are said to hold earth soaked by the blood of Christ.

When leaving Italy we stopped at the last possible place to have Italian pizza late at night before crossing through Austria then home.

Click here for more photos of our Italy trip.

Happy Birthday Aldo!

Whilst trying to decide on where to go for ski week we were invited to Aldo's (60th!) birthday party on the Sunday afternoon/evening of the first weekend. A great reason to visit Italy again (do we really need a reason ?!?).

Malcolm studied naval architecture in Southampton with Aldo many (30!) years ago and then worked with Aldo and his family in Bologna. They became close friends and it was great to catch up with him and his wife, Pucci. We soon realised that we are not that far away and must catch up more often.

Ravenna

 After arriving in Bologna late Friday night, we drove to Ravenna on Saturday morning for a visit. Even though Malcolm had lived here for many years and had been to the marina a number of times, he had not visited the town.
Ravenna is famous for its mosaics and the buildings that house them are Unesco-listed. We first went to Basilica Di Sant'Appolinare Nuovo which was built in the 5th and 6th centuries. The mosaics are from this time and are amazingly preserved and very beautiful. The are very detailed and large and take up the whole lengths of the south and north walls.

We then had lunch in a delightful enoteca where I got to taste piadina for the first time, which is a local type of flat bread. Delicious, I had mine with prosciutto and squacquerone cheese (an Italian fresh cream cheese).
After lunch we visited the Basilica Di San Vitale and a Mausoleum that was in  the same complex. They were also from the 6th century and although plain on the outside where both richly decorated with mosaics inside. 

 

The mosaics from the Mausoleum are the oldest in Ravenna:

Weekend in Cortina d'Ampezzo

 Last weekend we left straight after school to meet up with our friends, Krantz and Silvia, at their place in Cortina. It was great to go back to Italy where the people are very friendly and the food fresh and rich in flavour.  On Friday night we went to a bar for an aperitif then a pizzeria for dinner.

Saturday was a beautiful sunny day. Malcolm, Krantz and Silvia went skiing and I stayed behind in the house. Having been sick it was great to rest and then go for a nice walk into town in the sunshine and the nice dry air of Cortina. I sat at a cafe and had a simple but tasty lunch whilst reading the paper and soaking up the atmosphere.

Where we stayed

Sunday we went for a drive to see a polo game and instead there was an Audi demonstration on an iced lake. After a leisurely lunch prepared by Silvia we slowly drove back to Unterschleissheim in the comforting knowledge that next weekend we will be back in Italy.

Alte Pinakothek

Today was a cold damp day thus an ideal day to visit an Art Gallery. Sunday is 1 Euro day and we definitely got our moneys worth.  The building alone did that. The rooms were large and well designed with a customised hall to display Rubens 6 metre high "Last Judgement". This room and many others had plenty of Rubens as well as van Dycks, Rembrandt, Rafael, Botticelli, Canaletto, Durer and many more.
Here are some pictures of the interior and of some of the paintings.

Canaletto

Rubens 6 metre high "Last Judgement"

Rembrandt's self potrait

After a couple of hours we found somewhere for lunch before driving home along the canals from Schloss Nymphenburg where we stopped to look inside church that despite its facade has a modern and simple interior.

Hamburg

I had been invited to be a guest speaker at the annual Hamburg International Yacht Forum this weekend. There was an audience of about 300 from Germany, Holland and all of the Scandinavian countries. It was held in the magnificent Rathaus (great name, meaning town hall) and began on Friday evening with a presentation and reception and then a dinner in the restaurant in the enormous vaulted cellars. Inevitably, it ended up in an Irish pub over the road. Normally when travelling to these sorts of events I am sponsored by the organisers. However, this was not the case, hence I was staying in a cupboard opposite the main train station. It was so small that the most convenient surface on which to iron a shirt was the toilet lid (leading to an obvious description of my ironing efforts). The main event took all of Saturday. The lunch was supplied by a company specialising in freeze-dried meals for mountaineers and around-the-world sailors. A few of us snuck out to a nearby sandwich shop to have something edible instead. It was gratifying to realise that my professional name is better known than I had suspected and that a number of the other designers were particularly complimentary of my work. Below is the backdrop to my presentation.

The day ended with another reception, meet and greet and spectacular buffet dinner followed by the inevitable descent into the Irish pub. The walk back to my cupboard was under a very pretty, heavy flurry of snow. The highlight of the trip home was being stuck as the only passenger on a train stopped in a siding. I had not understood that because of line works, I should have changed over to a temporary bus service for part of the normally half hour trip to the airport. After a (confused) exchange over the emergency telephone, the train was driven back into a station where I descended in ignominy.

Rome

 For Ingrid’s birthday treat this year, we spent a romantic weekend in her favourite city. We left straight after school on Friday and were in Rome in the early evening. We had booked into a lovely hotel just off the Piazza della Repubblica, on the 4^th floor serviced by an impressive historic lift. After dropping off our bag we went walking, looking for dinner. We came across a restaurant with people queuing outside and thinking that was a good sign, booked a table and went off for an aperitivo. The waiter seemed particularly amused by my first name, probably just relieved that I was not German. After dinner we wandered down to the rococo masterpiece that is the Trevi Fountain, threw in the required 3 coins and took photos like the other 500 tourists there at the time. After, walking through the deserted streets around the Quirinale was quite atmospheric with a lot of history in the air.

Breakfast in our room featured coffee which smelled like coffee, unlike in London a couple of weeks before. For our first venture, we took the Metro to get to the Church of St Pietro in Vincoli, realising after that it would have been quicker to walk. Despite its unprepossessing exterior, this church features a reliquary containing the chains that bound St Peter in Jerusalem as well as Michelangelo’s statue of (a pissed-off looking) Moses on the unfinished tomb for Pope Julius II. Here Ingrid received a phone call featuring a very tuneful rendition of Happy Birthday from Louise and Ian.

We then wandered down along the edge of the Roman forum (curiously, there was a number of statues of Caesar trying to catch a taxi) to the Piazza del Campidoglio, a very popular place for Saturday morning weddings. We climbed up the architectural monstrosity that is the Vittorio Emanuele II monument, known to locals as “the typewriter” or “the wedding cake”. Its main attraction is the panoramic view of Rome from the top. Of the numerous church domes to be seen, the one with the most presence was, of course, St Peter’s.

We enjoyed a traditional lunch in the sunshine on the Largo di Torre Argentina. Our post prandial perambulations took us through the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, a gelato stop and a riverside walk to the Castel Sant’Angelo (of Angels and Demons fame). The view from the top in the late afternoon light was exquisite.

We had the birthday dinner at a quaint restaurant on the Largo del Pallaro in the (really) old part of town, renowned for its complete lack of menu or choice – you eat and drink what is placed in front of you. After, we walked through the backstreets to Campo de’Fiori, which has an impressive statue of the pantheist and free thinker, Giordano Bruno, who was burned at the stake as a heretic, which is perhaps why this area is clearly the place for young Italian smokers. A rough and wild bus ride across town then delivered us back to our hotel.

 Our first task on Sunday morning was to find the perfect cappuccino, which we did with extreme ease at a bar/kiosk in front of the Baths of Diocletian. A part of these extensive Roman baths was converted by Michelangelo to the immense church of Santa Maria degli Angeli which features a unique meridian sundial set into the floor used to set the exact time of midday. We happened upon a mass accompanied by a booming organ extravaganza, enough to turn one to religion.

The combination of perfect weather and lack of weekday traffic made the walk towards the Spanish Steps quite delightful. The highpoint of the day was finding the elusive red shoulder bag in a shop the size of a (small) wardrobe on the Piazza Barberini. At the top of the Spanish Steps sits the Church of the Trinita dei Monti which belongs to the French state.  A sung mass in French was in progress with a choir of very nun-looking nuns. I happened to sit near a big African gentleman with an amazing baritone delivery. The whole effect was very moving.

We continued down the uber-trendy Via dei Condotti gawking at the very expensive shops and very expensive people. There were any number of caricatures. The controversial Richard Meier building housing the Ara Pacis sits starkly on the banks of the Tiber – an immaculate piece of architecture, but perhaps out of place and context with its surroundings. As there was an horrendously expensive exhibition on at the time, we did the peasant thing and stared in through the enormous windows at the Roman Ara Pacis (peace altar) itself, as well as an officious custodian and some poseur explaining the ancient panels to his companion – it reminded me of me.

Almost the highlight of the whole weekend was the lunch we had sitting outside in the Piazza della Maddalena – Parma prosciutto, fresh pizza bread, (real) mozzarella followed by gnocchi almost as good as Mamma Fedele makes, all washed down with something red. Replete, we wandered through the Galleria Alberto Sordi, past the Trevi Fountain, picked up our supply of coffee and parmigiano cheese and then to the airport via the long trek through the Roma Termini station.

As a magical postscript, after take off we were treated to an immaculate view out over Monte Argentario across the Tyrrhenian to Corsica, where I first sailed when I came to Europe.

More photos.