Italy Part 2 - Southern Italy

Whilst I was disappointed with the city of Rome Italy has it's redeeming features. My next furor was a three day bus trip around southern Italy. I was a magnificent trip through beautiful surrounds with great company.

As when in Rome I made many new friends (see photos of Rome) and this trip was no exception. The entire tour was full of Kiwis and Aussies with one or two others as it's associated with budget bus travel all around Europe and is a part of many an OE (Overseas Experience) from down under.

The first stop was Pompeii. I'm sure you all know about Pompeii but if you needed to be refreshed look here. Unlike Rome this place was set up properly. We had an excellent guided tour, although two hours was not enough to see it all, and every house has been beautifully preserved and descibed in the accompanying guide brochure. The entire site is a lot bigger than I expected and you could easily spend an entire day wandering the dusty streets daydreaming about gladiators, merchants and other ancient...ahem.... "professions".

The Gladiator SchoolThe streets of Pompeii

We spent the evening in Sorrento which is lovely little town where the boats leave for the famous Isle of Capri. The weather, I should mention, was truely perfect the entire time I was in Italy and that evening we were treated to the first of many wonderous mediterranean sunsets. This photo is curtosy of Dean.

Sunset in Sorrento

From then onwards I didn't want to leave as I think that the scenary is the best I've ever seen outside New Zealand. As they say, a picture speaks a thousand words, but even a thousand words would not do justice to Amalfi and Capri.

SorrentoCapriCapriCapriCapriSusan, Louise, Gwen and DeanRock in the shape of The Virgin MaryThe Green Grotto

Italy Part 1 - Rome

Whilst I had expected Rome to be the highlight of my touristic ventures it actually fell second fiddle to southern Italy which I visited after Rome. The City of Rome has magnificence in quantities unimaginable. But it doesn't seem to care. As around every corner there is another Roman or baroque piece of brilliance that, it seems, Italians are apathetic to the true scale of their historic treasures.

industry seems to be founded on idividual operators who flog their wares at street side stalls or in the multitude of overpriced gift shops. The budget, I am told, for restoration/preservation of their heritage is 2 million Euro. That's about the amount spent on one manor house in the UK. It made me rather angry to see these marvels of engineering that I'd been looking forward to Rome itself is a dirty, litter filled city. The inhabiting italians are often rude and the tourism seeing for so long neglected so. Most of the ruins were surrounded in rubbish and some even had graffetti on them.

Anyway, now that I've vented my annoyance, here're pictures of the more attractive parts.The ForumThe Arch of ConstantineThe Coloseum with The Arch of Titus in the foreground.The Colloseum

The Colloseum

Peter, Jordan, Chrissy and Danielle whom I met at the hostel.The Trevi FountainThe Palatine with the remains of Circus Maximus in the foregroundThe Pantheon

Oktoberfest 2006

My trip to München (Munich) was a combination of beer and tourism....mostly beer. The main purpose of my trip was, of course Oktoberfest. The first difficulty to overcome was the realisation that Oktoberfest is, in fact, held mostly in September. So in order to get there in time for the opening on 16th September I actually flew in on the 13th as flights into Munich increased by £40 each day closer to Oktoberfest and it was cheaper to arrive early and stay in a hostel for a night. On the 14th I met up with my sisters friend, Aaron (also a Kiwi) and his friends at a camping ground. Dirt cheap and packed full of Kiwis and Aussies. In fact Oktoberfest in general seems to be populated more by Kiwis and Aussies than Germans - odd.On the first day of Octoberfest there's a huge parade of Umpa bands and horsedrawn carts of beer with all the germans and many of the revellers dressed in ye olde costumes (lederhosen etc.) through the town into the beer tents and no-one is allowed to start serving beer until the official taping of the first keg. After that the beer comes smooth and fast!Oktoberfest is basically a HUGE fairground type experience with the added bonus of massive beer halls! There are 12 halls, two each for the six main breweries in München and everything is centred around them. That's the miriad of food vendors (pretzels and wurst are the mainstays) and rollercoaster type rides.I had a fantastic time and have a souvenier stein acquired in the normal way. Great fun! I must go again next year =)

I also managed a trip to Dachau concentration camp which was very sobering. For those of you who aren't aware, Dachau was the first and most infamous concentration camp in Germany. The memorials are moving and, like Hiroshima, I think should be visited by everyone at some point in their lives.On a more positive note, my other non-beer related venture was to the Deutsches Museum which is amassive science and technology museum. I loved it (as any engineer would!) although non of its exibits were newer than the 1980s and the Emerging Science and Technology Museum in Tokyo was better.So other than a planned trip to Köln (Cologne) in the new year to attend Carnival I think that I've now well and truly done Germany justice!