Johnny Goes Caving

After more than a year of pressure from Bec, Johnny has finally capitulated and is now on Facebook. Although his alter ego (a French-Canadian professional cyclist) has been on the 'book for ages to do research for work - seriously! - Johnny has until now resisted the urge to record the urban minutiae of his life for all to see. Hell, that's what this blog is for! But Bec introduced him to a "killer Facebook app", an anagram game called Word Challenge; and now the word-nerd in him is hooked.

He is interested to see whether working 8 hours a day on a social network platform will affect his interest in them after-hours!

Molto Bene (Part Due: The Search for the perfect Spiaggia)

After such an idyllic first day, we could probably be excused for thinking we would enjoy similar splendor on each subsequent day in "The Cinq". Unfortunately, though, our luck was about to run out. We woke the next day to a grey sky, a light, constant drizzle, and the discovery that there really isn't all that much to do in the Cinque Terre when it rains. There's eating, of course, but believe it or not, there is actually a limit to how many trattorias, ristorantes and pizzerias you can handle in one day!

We decided to take the train to Monterosso, the northern-most of the five lands and the one we had yet to explore. While it wasn't looking its best in the dreary conditions, we managed to amuse ourselves in the many "crapola" shops until the weather cleared enough for us to tackle the walk back to Vernazza. This turned out to be the most challenging section of the CT trail, with a seemingly endless series of steps, especially tricky to negotiate in the slippery conditions. We were rewarded with some pretty special views though.

Faced with more rain the following day, we bid a fond farewell to Vernazza and made our way to Genova. An important port town with not much else to recommend it, this was fine by us as we were just passing through on our way south to Sardinia. We did manage to see quite a lot of the place, however, courtesy of the boys' poor navigational abilities. "How about we head up here?" soon led to "I'm not sure how we get back down...", which in turn led to a manic taxi ride back to the station for our bags. (Mis)adventures out of the way, we were soon tucked safely away in a surprisingly comfortable 4 person sleeper cabin on a southbound ferry.

We had sensibly stocked up on plenty of Italian wine, bread, salami, cheese and biscotti for the voyage. This feast, combined with a marathon Uno session which saw Mandy the unlucky loser (punishable by being made to eat "floormaggio", i.e. cheese that fell on the floor), made for a very enjoyable night.

On arrival in Sardinia, at a tiny backwater of a port town that made Genova seem like the centre of the universe, we quickly realised that this leg of the holiday had been somewhat overlooked in our trip planning (i.e. it had been left to the boys). We had no idea where we were exactly, or even where we wanted to go on this deceptively large island. It also quickly became clear that this place wasn't exactly set up for tourists, at least not to the extent we've become accustomed to. Hence we spent a good half a day getting our bearings and tracking down a car hire place that was actually open within its stated opening hours.

Equipped with wheels, we were off and running. From the tiny paragraph our guide book had to say on Sardinia, it seemed that the best thing to do was find a lovely, white, sandy beach and just relax. Easy, right? After all, this is an island surrounded by beaches! In reality, this proved somewhat difficult due to the size of the island, the quality of the roads, the questionable weather conditions and our general lack of specific direction. Nevertheless, we dedicated our entire three days in Sardinia to "The Search for the perfect Spiaggia" (taking only a little time out to taste yet more delicious pasta and seafood combinations).

The boys got a little side-tracked at times...

...but we eventually achieved our goal, with a roaring success!

A huge thanks to Mandy and Stu for a bellissima Italian adventure we'll never forget. See you again next year?

Molto Bene (Part Uno)

It occurred to us early this year that despite having lived in Europe for ages, we hadn't been to Italy since 2003, when we whipped through as part of a breakneck European tour. We loved Italy then, and wanted to make sure they hadn't broken it since. When Stu confirmed that he'd be visiting again for another Euro-summer (you may remember him from such blogs as Glastonbury last year), with his new lady-friend Mandy, it was a perfect opportunity.

Over many emails we concocted a plan (by "we", I obviously mean "the girls") to revisit the classic Cinque Terre area, on the Northern Italian coastline between Pisa and Genova. Google Map here. We'd spent a few hours there previously, but wanted to really explore the "five lands" while gorging ourselves on pasta and fabulous fresh seafood. Well, Mission Accomplished.

We were arriving from different places - us flying in from the UK and Stu and Mandy rolling in from France, freshly-engaged(!) - so our first Italian evening was spent apart, with us in Florence and ze 'appy couple doing the Pisa thing. Tragically, our one night in Firenze coincided with the Florence Wine-Festival and we were forced to drink copious samples of the delightful local vino until late...

The next day we met up at Pisa station and made our way to Vernazza, which was sparklingly lovely - as was Mandy, to our great delight! After chillaxing down by the harbour for a while, we chillaxed some more after a strenuous climb to a bar overlooking this beautiful fishing town. I like saying "chillax".

The following day had been earmarked as "The Big Walking Day" - our plan was to walk south down the coast and see as many of yonder 3 Cinque Terre towns as we could. The weather was superb and in the end we saw all of them (Corniglia, Manarola and Riomaggiore), dined superbly, had some quality pebble-beach time and walked back most of the way as well. Words cannot describe just how perfect this day was - we need a montage:

A Look At London: Through The Eye

One fine day some months ago, we decided it was time to be tourists in our city again and hit The London Eye together with Bron and Andy - collectively and affectionately known as Brandy. We had already seen the Eye from many angles (it's somewhat hard to miss) but had never actually ridden a "pod" to see for ourselves why the queues for this thing are still monstrous, 8 years after it opened.

We joined said monstrous queue and waited for about an hour to take the 30-minute "flight". As we rose, we had good views off to the East - The City/Square Mile (financial district) and St Paul's Cathedral, just visible over Andy's right shoulder.


As we rose to our maximum altitude of 135m, we looked North to central London and Soho, dominated by the BT Tower. In the foreground is the Hungerford Bridge leading into Charing Cross station. The Thames is doing its best "I'm muddy like the Yarra" impression.


Finally, we began our descent, with very hazy views out over the Houses of Parliament and in the distance (you might have to squint), the iconic Battersea Power Station, looking like an upside-down table:


After we "landed", we were all in need of some refreshment. So we finished our day out with a (horrendously expensive) jug of Pimms in St James's Park. Note the obligatory and very well-coordinated raised pinkies.

10 Things You (Probably) Didn't Know About London

November already! Scary! We've now officially been living in the UK for two years, and London for one. So to celebrate, here's a list of 10 "insider" facts about London you may not have known before. Oh, and to keep you on your toes, we've made up one more. Which one? Leave us a comment if you think you've picked it - answer in the next post.

1. Riding the Tube for long enough will result in a syndrome known locally as "Black Bogies" in one's nostrils, commonly explained away as congealed dust from the train's brake pads. But this is only partly true. Yes, it's 30% brake dust (giving the black colour) but the rest is human skin particles. Ewwww.
2. One-in-three London households do not own a car. (Melbourne: one-in-ten).
3. Both of us work in the area of Soho, which used to be Henry VIII's hunting grounds. When a hunter spied a deer, he would shout "Tally-Ho!", but with a smaller prey, the cry became "So-Ho!". New York also has a SoHo, but this is an abbreviation for the area South of Houston [Street].
4. Currently playing in London: 34 musicals, 12 comedies and 53 dramas.
5. The big coffee chains in London are Starbucks (bleh), Costa Coffee (awful), Coffee Republic (never tried 'em) and Caffe Nero (passable), with an astonishing 962 stores between them in London in December 2006, and presumably many more by now. Our hot tip for a good coffee when in Central London: try AMT (often found at mainline stations), Monmouth Coffee, Flat White in Soho or Sacred in Carnaby.
6. The Tube carried over one billion passengers last year. That's more than the entire population of Australia each day.
7. One of the options at Gordon Ramsay's 3-Michelin-starred restaurant is an entrée of oven-roasted squirrel in a hazelnut and truffle oil velouté.
8. If you see someone riding around London with a clipboard attached to their scooter's handlebars, they are almost certainly an aspiring taxi driver "Doing The Knowledge". A London cabbie has to know all the streets within a six-mile radius of Charing Cross. That's 25,000 streets. In addition, they have to know all the places of interest (schools, restaurants, churches etc) on those streets, including such details as the order of theatres on Shaftesbury Avenue. In the test, the examiner gives two points. The cabbie-to-be must recite the quickest and most efficient route, naming each street and turn on the way there. At any point, the examiner can ask for a description of what is "alongside". Hence the "knowledge boys" on their scooters have to drive every street to learn these features that can't be absorbed from a map.
9. In a single week, the average male Londoner drinks 13.9 units (almost 7 pints of beer) and a woman 4.9 units (2-3 glasses of wine). This is actually the lowest average intake of all UK regions.
10. The average speed of a car driving through Central London: 10.2 mph (16.3 km/h). The average speed of Johnny on his bike in the morning: 11.1 mph (17.7 km/h).
11. There are an estimated 200,000 French people living in London - making it (theoretically at least) the fourth-largest French city.