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The city of Rome has held a fascination for students of just about everything for literally thousands of years. Literature and common folklore have thrown up all sorts of expressions and traditions centered around this ancient city. What many scholars have failed to realise until now is that many of these cliches relate specifically to aspects of the four days I spent there.
All Roads Lead to Rome
Patently untrue as my previous post will testify. However, it must be said that I did eventually get there, and checked into the dankest, most overpriced excuse for a cheap hotel known to man. It was, at least, close to the train station, lending it its chief virtue; it was easy to get out of.
When in Rome, do as the Romans do
I wasn't really sure what to make of this one. What do Romans do, apart from walk around in the sun, drink lots of coffee and speak Italian? I wasn't really keen on any of these, but thankfully I stumbled upon the answer while sightseeing on the Spanish Steps.
To compensate for the fact that all the clubs in Rome close down for the summer, the local government sponsors concerts and public cultural displays in the evening. I could see they were setting up for something on the steps, but I wasn't sure what. I decided to go back later and find out.
When I stepped out of the metro later that night I found myself in the middle of an opera recital, which was just perfect. What could be more Roman than sitting on an ancient monument and listening to opera? Sitting on an ancient monument and listening to opera while drinking lots of coffee and speaking Italian, I suppose.
The opera, by the way, was fantastic. I'm no opera buff, but I can tell when something is being done well. When the tenor sang Nessan Dorma (the only opera number I can recognise by ear) and nailed the last few notes he just about lifted the roof, which, considering we were outside, was no mean feat.
A Roman Stone Gathers No Moss
No... wait. Hang on...
Rome Wasn't Built in a Day.
Well, no, probably not. Just to make sure, I went on a walking tour of the city's ruins and monuments. The forum, the Spanish steps, the Flavian Amphitheatre (known colloquially as the Colosseum), the Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon (not to be confused with the Parthenon which is a different shape, a different colour and in Greece), the Capitoline Hill; I did it all and can confidently assert that they were probably not all built on the same day. I also saw the church built on what is believed to be the site of the prison where Peter was held. You could still see the foundations under the building. That was quite cool.
All things considered, I would have to say that Rome definitely lived up to expectations, which was nice since so many things don't these days. Like iPod batteries. Or the Australian batting order.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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After all the action and excitement of Santiago, I skipped over to the east coast for two nights in Valencia and two in Barcelona. This was more about me hanging out on the beach and getting some sun than about historical buildings and culture, although I did do a walking tour of Valencia. I didn't see a single orange while I was there, but I did try the local beverage known as 'horxata' (pronounced 'whore charter,' but don't let that put you off) which is made from milk, sugar and tiger nuts, which turn out to be a locally grown legume rather than the testicles of a big cat, served cold. It tasted like a vanilla milkshake with... basil in it or something, but it went down alright on a hot afternoon.
I had already been to Barcelona, so I spent most of my time there wandering through the Ramblas and sorting details for my next great European experiment; travelling to southern Italy. I had hoped it might be a simple as flashing my Eurail pass and saying 'One ticket to Rome, please'. It wasn't.
First leg was from Barcelona to the Spain/France border in a town called Cerebre. As I changed trains here, disaster struck as I managed to leave my trademark black fedora on the first train and only realised as it pulled out bound back to Barceona. Curses!
Meanwhile, in the blink of an eye, everything changed from being in Spanish to being in French, which added an extra dimension to the whole experience.Second leg was from Cerebre to Beziers, from whence I was told I would be able to buy tickets to Rome. Wrong again. I managed to get a ticket to Nice via Montpellier and Marseille. I didn't arrive in Nice until twelve-thirty that night on the last train to arrive at the station, at which point the not-so-friendly station staff turfed us out of the station and locked the doors for the night. The first trains out weren't until six or so the next morning, so a group of about 40 of us camped out on the steps of Nice train station until morning.
Third leg was to Ventimiglia on the Italian border where I was finally able to get a ticket through to Rome, with a two hour stopover in Genova. So the fourth leg was to Genova, where I went exploring for an hour or so, though by this point I was running seriously low on energy. Fortunately I just had the fifth and final leg to complete; a seven hour marathon from Genova to Rome.
The trip, while long, was quite nice as it followed the Mediterranean along the west coast of Italy. There were beautiful beaches and rocky coves to look at all the way, which was handy as I wasn't awake enough to do anything except stare out the window. I couldn't sleep because I was stuck on some rubbish seat up the back with no back rest, but that was fine since it would have been a shame to travel all that way and miss the scenery.
And so it was that, 27 hours after leaving Barcelona, I collapsed hatless into my hotel bed in Rome and slept for somewhere in the region of twelve hours.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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After Granada, I stopped over in Seville for a night to get my hands on a rail pass. There was really nothing else to say about that stop, I was only passing through. So...
To shut Kim up and because I was in Westernish Spain anyway, I decided to keep going and check out Portugal. I hopped on a train bound for Lisbon, which strangely took me all the way back to Madrid before turning towards Portugal, but I was't too fussed. I figured Lisbon would be worth the extra effort.
I was wrong. Lisbon was a dirty smelly excuse for a capital city; the place could make Canberra look positively... habitable. There was plenty of colour, but there just was't a single smiling welcoming person in the whole city. Or, at least not in the five or so blocks of it that I saw. The Portuguese have an unnerving habit of staring at newcomers with what I could only describe as suspicion. At first this was quite off-putting, until I hit on the idea of staring right back at them until they gave up.
Wandering the streets, I found myself in the main city square in the middle of the kick off of the tour-de-Portugal bicycle race. I think I may have accidently got myself onto Portuguese TV. It was all being hosted by a man who, judging by the number of middle aged Portuguese women clambering to meet him, must have been Portugal's answer to Karl Stefanovich.
The one highlight was the castle of St. John, which was just exactly that; A big stone medieval castle plonked in the middle of the city that you could get inside and climb all over. That was great fun.
Having been so underwhelmed by the national capital, I did not hold high hopes for the rest of the country as I made my way north to Porto.
I was wrong again. Porto (often called Oporto in English) was awesome. It´s a traditional style European town built into the banks of the River Douro. As its name might suggest, it´s famous for its portwine production, especially its dry white ports, which you can´t really get anywhere else. And with good reason; they tasted horrible. I did, however, enjoy sampling numerous sweet white and tawny red ports, and was amazed to discover how well I could speak Portuguese all of a sudden. Tragically the effect had worn off the following morning. Hmmm...
I tried a local delicacy known as the francesinha. It basically translates as "little Frenchie," which I imagine must horrify the French, who would almost certainly never consider producing let alone eating this thing. It's kind of like a ham and cheese toastie. Coated in molten in cheese. And then battered. And then served drenched in gravy. It was magnificent, and if my arteries were protesting, they were doing it in Portuguese, which by now I had thoroughly forgotten how to speak. It's probably a good thing it was such a long walk back to my motel.
So after four nights in Portugal, I boarded a train bound back to Spain. Next stop: Santiago de Compostela.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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A few posts ago I mentioned (amidst a bunch of otherwise irrelevant observations) an interest in Santiago, which is a city in North West Spain, and also the Spanish name for the apostle we call St. James in English. The city is named after him because the cathedral of Santiago is believed by some to contain the apostle´s remains. The story of how they got to be there is a pretty good one, but that doesn´t seem to diminish the appeal of the city. As a result, the city is visited by thousands of pilgrims every year, and the route through North Spain you walk on to get there is known as the Camino de Santiago, or Way of St. James.
Some people do the walk for genuine reasons of faith. Others, like me, just think going hiking for a week through Spain sounds like great fun. Unfortunately, when I picked my rucksack up when I left Madrid all those weeks ago, it became obvious fairly quickly that I wasn´t going to be carrying it 400km across the north coast, so I abandoned that idea. But I´ve also never let the fact that I haven´t actually done something stop me writing about it like I know what I´m talking about. So I hereby present my impressions of the Camino de Santiago.
What would have happened
As I lay in my hacienda in Barcelona, looking up at the stars and wondering what had happened to the roof, I had a sacred vision. I saw St. James walking over a field of sunflowers. I could tell it was St. James because of his pilgrim´s staff and his sea-shell emblem. He was also wearing a pirate hat and a kilt, but I suspect that had more to do with the extra chorizo I had with dinner than with liturgical iconicry. In any event, they were almost certainly non-canonical.
St James was beckoning me westward and offered me a stone tablet, upon which was inscribed "You won´t walk 750km to Santiago and visit my crypt".
"I will" I replied. And with that, I set off, armed with only the clothes on my back, a big stick with a sea-shell on it, my bible and my iPod. With only the stars to guide me, I set my face to the west. When I reached the coast of the Mediterranean Sea, I decided to buy a compass. Navigating by the Southern Cross gets a bit tricky in the Northern Hemisphere.
The first couple of hundred kilometres were lonely and perilous. I was plagued by visions of inner demons and of sirens, telling me they´d saved me a spot on the beach and asking me where the bloody hell I was. Fortunately as I made my bed for the night in an out of the way albergue in Frómista I happened upon a small group (although I believe the fashionable term these days is 'connect group') of pilgrims also bound for Santiago.
There was Nikolai and his charming wife Svetlana who had both walked all the way from St. Petersburg and were quite obviously completely nuts. There was a Kiwi girl named Ella and a big Frenchman named Claude who had come on the pilgrimage hoping to be blessed with the recipe for the perfect dim sim. I think he may have been slightly misinformed.
But the pilgrim who immediately caught my attention was a young woman, sitting slightly apart from the group, her face covered by a long forest green hood. She said nothing, but her very countenance exuded a feeling of peace, well being and fair trade. I now had two reasons to make the journey to Santiago; one, to find the identity of this mystery woman, and two, ... hmmm, nope, I guess I just had the one reason then.
Over the next few days, as we drew closer and closer to the city, the pilgrimage began to take its toll on the group. The summer heat was becomming a problem for the Russians, who as it turned out were made of parmesan cheese. As we approached Ponferrada they began to melt and had to turn back to Russia. Ella was picked up in Cebreira for over staying her visa and deported back to Wellington. Somewhere between Sarría and Lavacolla Claude was accosted by a band of gypsies who demanded that he surrender immediately. Being French, he agreed and ran screaming into the hills.
That just left me and the mysterious stranger. Given that she didn´t talk, that didn´t leave us with many options in terms of stimulating conversation. Eventually I decided to make her a deal.
"I´ll make you a deal," I said, redundantly. "If we make it as far as the cathedral, will you at least tell me who you are?" The woman still said nothing, but nodded her assent.
As more days passed and we got closer and closer to Santiago, I grew more and more curious, but less and less enchanted, as her thick velvet hood was covered in mud and sweat and was starting to stink a bit. Finally, when it seemed I could no longer stand the suspense and she could no longer stand the smell, we arrived at the gates of la Catedral de Santiago de Compostela.
"Now, sir, I believe I have a promise to keep," said an enthralling, but oddly familiar voice from beneath the veil. "It´s time you learned my true identity". With an anti-climactic flick she flipped her hood back to reveal...
"Oxfam Girl? Oh you´ve got to be kidding me.
"What? I thought you´d be pleased to see me."
"Yeah, I am. It´s just... don´t you think this gag is getting a bit old?"
"Oh gee. You really know how to make a girl feel special, don´t you?"
"Oh shut up and help me find this damn shrine so we can get the hell out of here."
We climbed inside the main sanctuary and I was immediately struck by what a firm grasp of the basic tennets of Christianity the folk who commissioned the cathedral must have had. Everything was so huge and overstated and covered in gold. It would have been enough to make St. James roll over in his grave, if it wasn´t for the fact that, actually, it was his grave.
We passed through the sanctuary and now I have a certificate I can show St. Peter, redeemable for a 50% reduction of my time in Purgatory, assuming I get as far as St. Pete in the first place, that is. Quite how I´m going to transport the certificate into the hereafter with me is anyone´s guess, but I´ve decided to take the Pope at his word. Oxfam Girl was unfortunately deemed unworthy and was instantly transformed into a sea-shell.
She got better
Far from h... Oh no, wait...
What actually happened
I caught the train in from Porto and found myself a bed for the night, then set out to view the cathedral. I walked under the sanctuary to see the big silver coffin that supposedly contains the apostle´s remains. Not being Catholic or remotely superstitious, it would probably have been an utterly underwhelming end if I had walked all the way from Bilbao to get there. The pipes for the organ looked like they could blow the roof off the place (maybe even wake up St. James) if you pulled all the stops, but I couldn´t see the keyboards anywhere. They must have been tucked away in a loft up the top.
While all this was taking place, the flu (non-porcine, thankfully) that I had been attempting to out-run finally caught up with me, which was ironic since I was supposed to be a in a city of purity and healing. I decided to stay an extra night and rest up, leaving me with just a little too much spare time on my hands, since apart from the cathedral, there´s not much to see in Santiago as it turns out. This may or may not have resulted in the quantity of inane drivel you had to get through to make it this far.
Enough already!
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs
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Every guidebook, website and tourist information brochure I´ve read has said that if you only visit one city in Spain it should be Granada. As it happens, I´m in the process of visiting much more than one city, so the above paradigm doesn´t really apply to me. But since I happened to be passing through the area, I decided to stop in for a quick squiz.
The reason you´re supposed to visit Granada is that it is home to the Moorish stone fortress known in Spanish as 'La Alhambra'. It´s a curious name, because 'Alhambra' is derived from the Arabic name, which means 'The Red (One)'. so, presumably the Spanish would translate as something like 'the the red one'.
Well, however superfluous the extra articles may or may not be, the monument they specify was certainly spectacular. Built by successive generations over a period of several hundred years, beginning in the Xth century (research this number first, don´t write Xth in the actual blog, obviously) it ended up abandoned and neglected when the catholics reconquered Granada. Sometime in the 1900s, an American travelling historian named Washington Irving 'rediscovered' it and the process of restoring the Alhambra to its former glory began. Quite how he managed to claim credit for discovering a giant stone fortress built on the side of a hill in the middle of a major city is beyond me, but that´s American travelling historians for you.
The other cool thing about Granada was the generous helpings of tapas. I stopped in at a bar around the corner from where I was staying and ordered a glass of red. Taking a leaf out of old Washy´s book, I 'discovered' an entire dinner plate of free food in front of me. So I ate it.
Far from home
Garry with 2 Rs