Croatia – First Impressions

Catching the overnight ferry from Bari to Dubrovnik was no fun.  I won't go into detail here, but suffice to say the Bari Port Authorities don't appear to have ever run a port before, and the reclining seats on the ship are about as comfortable to sleep on as bicycle seats.  If we'd been travelling without a dog we'd have been able to take a cabin, which presumably would have been much better, but also more expensive.  We ended up spending the night dozing fitfully on the quivering carpet tiles of the passenger lounge; another passenger lay on a metal shelf and tried to sleep there.



After that, arriving in Croatia was like returning to civilisation.  The customs and immigration people gave us a quick check over and a warm welcome.  Scooby  (“Stari pas”) got his ears rubbed by a burly border guard and we were on our way.  We stopped near the ferry port to get cash and catch our breath, and found the sleepy early Sunday morning town to be so inviting we spent a couple of hours walking around the coastal path.  After that, we drove about ten kilometres down the coast to a tiny welcoming campsite at Srebreno (Autocamp Matkovika) and settled in for a lazy first day.  The following day we visited Dubrovnik's old town, then Cavtat, and today we had another look around Dubrovnik and then drove a little way north to the Pelješac peninsular.

It was startling after southern Italy to suddenly find ourselves in this orderly, clean, prosperous, spick and span place.  No litter, no graffiti, people obey the traffic laws, park in the designated bays, stop to let you cross on pedestrian crossings and don't ride their scooters on the pedestrianised streets.  Even the port area is clean, tidy and well maintained – how many towns can say that?

The area is as incredibly beautiful as everyone told us.  Grey limestone crags, speckled with sparse herbs and trees, tower over the coast.  The sea is impossibly blue and clear, and strewn with wooded islands.  The buildings of Dubrovnik and nearby towns are quite unlike those of Italy just across the Adriatic.  They have a homely central European air, a whif of gingerbread and fairy tales.  Parts reminded us of old Prague, but like a cleaned up Prague with blue sky, turquoise sea, fresh fish, lemon trees and warm sunshine.



Our guide book's summary of the area's history started off with a warning that it's complicated, and so it is.  Dubrovnik was a trading town that made its fortune by managing to remain on good terms with both the Ottoman empire and the Europeans, so had a virtual monopoly on trade between the two.  It was effectively independent until the nineteenth century, and developed a complex cultural mix of Italian and Slav, with Latin speaking Roman Catholicism and strong links to Austria and Hungary.  Today's Dubrovnik is cheerfully Slav (to a foreigner the language sounds very like Czech  and there is plenty of pickled cabbage in the supermarket), but it's Slav with sunglasses, speedboats and a good selection of Italian recipes.

But of course there's been a serpent in paradise. It was a shock for us when we walked from our campsite down to the bay and found, behind the cool coffee bars, a series of gutted and shell pocked concrete hotels.  A pretty nineteenth century house on the waterfront was peppered with bullet holes, roofless and abandoned.  In the next bay a huge complex of what had clearly been smart hotels with landscaped gardens stood wrecked, desolate and overgrown.



We expected to see evidence of the war at some point during our visit, but not to see prime beachfront property in such a beautiful location still untouched after two decades.  We found out that this part of the coast had been occupied in 1991 by a Serb, Montenegrin and Bosnian army, who used it to shell Dubrovnik.  They smashed everything they could before being driven out by a Croatian counter attack the following year.  The density of the bullet holes bears witness to the intensity of the fighting.  The repair work has just been too big a job, and the old hotels have naturally been in the back of the queue behind homes, bridges and roads.

That's the sad explanation for why so much of this area looks so spick and span.  Much of it has had to be rebuilt and repaired over the last two decades, and there's still work to do.



From Dubrovnik's ancient city walls the city looks perfect at first glance.  It's only when you notice a mossy old terracotta tiled roof you realise that around nine tenths of the roofs of this mediaeval city are brand new.  You notice other things; a carved monument that looks far too fresh to be mediaeval, a wall dotted with patches of not quite perfectly matched mortar, an old shop above which the upstairs rooms are lined with bare plasterboard, and everywhere the star shaped indentations of shrapnel in stone.



Neither of us saw the area before the breakup of Yugoslavia, so we've had to get a sense of it from indirect sources.  In the late nineteenth century Dubrovnik and the coast around it was a popular holiday destination for wealthy people from the Austro Hungarian empire.  It had smart hotels and spas.  Rebecca West described it as “Too perfect and self satisfied”.  This has clearly been an orderly, prosperous, comfortable place for many years. 

Apparently it didn't have ethnic conflict, and wasn't militarily significant, so it didn't expect to be drawn into the conflict.  The shock seems to have been something like the shock people would feel if arguments over Scottish devolution led to a series of events that somehow led to the city of Bath being shelled by Welsh artillery.

We remember being shocked when we saw it on the news at the time, and it shocked us again now to be reminded how close we can be to chaos as we go about the familiar routines of our lives.

That's a misleadingly gloomy note to end on.  It's certainly no reason not to visit.  This is a beautiful, comfortable and welcoming place.  Maybe all the more reason to visit, as it's quite inspiring to see what the Croatians have built for themselves in twenty years.  Not just repairing so much of the war damage, but building all the services and facilities of a modern independent state.

Also, everyone we have met here so far has been unfailingly polite and helpful (and has spoken good English, which is a relief as we haven't got very far with learning Croatian) In fact the owner of our first campsite was so kind that she drove us the 10 km into Dubrovnik, then returned later to pick us up because Scooby wasn't allowed on the bus.

All in all, it's early days but we're loving it so far!

Home thoughts from abroad

Today we visited Punta Ristola, the most southerly point in Puglia.

We've still got a long way to go, a lot of time and a lot of miles, but from now on it's all more or less north.  We need to be back in the UK by the end of May, and we think it might be a bit of a shock.

As an exercise in optimism, we've set ourselves the task of listing ten things we miss about Britain.  It's odd that a lot of them turn out to be things that we grumble about in Britain, but during our travels we've found that compared to other places Britain isn't really that bad.

1. Friends and family.  We often used to neglect them when we were living in the UK, but it was good to know they were there.  We must remember to spend more time with friends in the future, if they still remember us when we get back.
2. Being able to speak to people using the past and future tenses, and understanding roughly how things work, or roughly how to find out how things work.  In Italy for example we don't even know how many police forces they have (we've seen Carabineri, Polizia Municipale, Polizia  Locale, Polizia Nazionale, Guardia di Finanzia, Polizia Penitenciaria, Polizia Forestale...), let alone which one we'd go to for help with a particular problem.
3. Road infrastucture.  Before we left Cardiff we used to grumble about the roadsigns in the Vale of Glamorgan, but places like Spain and Italy make even Vale of Glam look good.  Sometimes its caused by a lack of resources, but often doing it the UK way wouldn't have cost any more, it's just mystifying.  They must be working to other rules we don't understand.    Just three examples;
• two signs at a junction saying the same thing, pointing the same way.  That extra moment it takes to read them both, double take and re-read to check they really are identical, means missing the junction
• Numerous signs saying things like 'Motorhome parking this way' that lead you off into the Genoa one way system and then run out.  "Ha ha! Over to you now sucker!"
• Arrows painted on the lanes of dual carriageways that seem to mean nothing or to mean 'If you're in this lane, you might want to continue straight ahead or you might want to change lanes, it's up to you'.  One favourite, seen several times in Spain but never photographed (for obvious reasons), had the left hand lane marked as being for going straight on or turning right, and the right hand lane marked as being for going straight on or turning left.
4. Access to the countryside.  A source of much grumbling and campaigning in Britain, but compared to Italy the UK system of rights of way is brilliant.  At least in the UK you can spot a roadside footpath or bridleway sign and be pretty sure it's a place you can stroll with your dog for half an hour.  The bits of Italy we've visited have been nothing like as well supplied with country parks and marked walking paths.  In Italy (and parts of Spain and France) it's common for stretches of beach to be private.  That's not something we expect in the UK.  Bless the Crown Estate (which owns almost all the beaches and leaves them open to strollers).
5. Food.  Britain has a deservedly terrible reputation for food, but there are a few genuinely distinctive indigenous traditions we can be proud of and miss.  Specifically; pies (Spain has its empanadas, Italy its Calzone, but it's not the same as a hot meat pie, or even fruit pie), sausages (maybe we're missing our own sausage machine as much as anything), good mature cheddar, sweet pickles, rice pudding, salty Welsh butter and the variety of food from all over the world (particularly Asia) that you can get in Britain
6. Hikers' pubs.  Hard to find even in much of Britain, but the sort of place in the Peak District or Devon that serves bitter and pies (see above) to a crowd of walkers steaming infront of an open fire, firelight shining in those three bottles of single malt behind the bar that no-one ever seems to drink.
7. The BBC.  Before we left the UK the most value we got from our license fee was from their web site and 6 Music, but the output overall contains some really high quality material and it's all at least competently produced.  Italian telly makes you realise how high standards are in Britain.  In one place we had over 50 digital TV channels, but the only ones that weren't encrypted for subscriber-only access were poorly dubbed American B-movies, gameshows and poorly produced news programmes.  They often get their foreign news from American cable channels, broadcast unaltered with an Italian voice over.  Their news announcers struggle to read their autocue while gazing at the wrong camera.
8. Pavements.  In most of the places we've visited pedestrians, scooters, prams, street vendors, cars and trucks all have to share the road.  When there is a pavement, nobody knows what it's for, so scooters scoot on it, cars park on it and pedestrians amble about in the traffic.
9. The familiar people we've come to rely on and trust to help us out in a crisis; St Davids Veterinary Centre, our dentists, Rumney Hill Surgery, the physiotherapists at the DTR Clinic. Fortunately we haven't had any significant emergencies, but it just compounds the stress when you're having to look for help from strangers.
10. Scooby says he misses squirrels, cats that follow the rules and run away, and mud.

Arrivederci Bella Sicilia

It's very odd that Sicily has such a bad image in Britain.  If you mention that you're going there, the first things most people seem to think of are gangsters, then poverty and vendettas.  They'd have to think hard before they think of great wine, acres of fragrant citrus orchards, huddled clifftop towns, smartly dressed courteous people going out of their way to help visitors, blue and white wooden fishing boats pulled up on a sandy beach, Norman cathedrals decorated by Saracens,  gorgeous Greek and Roman remains, almond cakes and all things nice.

We'd heard enough good about Sicily to be really keen to get there, but were ready for it to be a bit of an intense and maybe scary experience.  The reality was warm and welcoming.  If we hadn't had other places to go to I think the only thing that would have made us leave would have been the summer heat.

There's something ridiculously thrilling about looking across the Straits of Messina from Reggio Di Calabria; such a famous stretch of water, so beautiful, and with so many other famous names on the other side.  When we saw it it was calm (no sign of the notorious whirlpool that nearly ended the Odyssey, although it's still there), blue, busy with ships (full of life and bustle and glittering wakes) with Messina glinting in the background and a clear view of Mount Etna off to the left (a perfect cone like a text book volcano, topped with snow).

We travelled clockwise around the whole island, sticking mainly to the coast but with a detour inland to Piazza Armerina and Enna.  We regretfully missed out the mountains as Stella's knee was objecting and the roads inland were hard work for a 3.5 tonne van.

A few highlights:

• Doric temples of astounding antiquity in astonishingly good condition.  It's an architectural style that is so well known and so often imitated that when first catching sight of one my first fleeting thought tended to be that a Victorian municipal library had been teleported to an uncharacteristically dramatic location.  Sicily has so many it's easy to get overwhelmed, but the group at Agrigento are as good as they get.  These date back to when Sicily was inhabited by Greek colonists, around 600 BC, and they're in better condition than the Messina to Syracuse motorway.

• Everywhere we went we came across frothy Baroque architecture.  The most famous sites (UNESCO World Heritage Sites) are the towns in the Noto valley which had to be rebuilt in the 17th century after an earthquake.  However, it's obvious that during the 17th and 18th century a lot of money was being spent all over Sicily building and refurbishing in the latest fashion.  I thought Baroque architecture was one of my least favourite styles, but it's grown on me.

• A group of eleventh century Norman mercenaries had the good fortune to find themselves in charge of Sicily. They built cathedrals and employed artists to decorate them with mosaics, most notably Capella Paletina and Monreale in Palermo.  The whole interior is full of saints, biblical scenes and geometric decorations.  Viewed close up, an astonishing variety of mosaic tiles have been used including many colours of glazed ceramic, glass and gilt.  With this, the artists have achieved amazingly subtle detail and tones, as well as a mass of shining gold around Jesus above the altar.  Some of the artists were local, some travelled in from Byzantium and some had a distinctly Arab style.  They were drawing on an ancient tradition – a Roman villa uncovered in Piazza Armerina has top quality mosaic floors from a thousand years earlier.

• Downtown Palermo.  A maze of romantically crumbling streets with mediaeval and baroque details peeking out everywhere.  A riot of life, trade and fun but with none of the feeling of danger we had in Naples, Marseille, or even Newbridge.
• And its natural heritage, a wonderful coastline.  All around the south and west coast there are sea cliffs and beautiful sandy beaches (no dog bans!)  In the northwest corner massive rock outcrops (actually marble mountains) loom over deserted grassy plains, rich in wild flowers – lovely poppies at this time of year - which merge into dunes and more sandy beaches. I'm sure their mountains are also wonderful, but not for this visit or this vehicle.

General impressions:

• Contrary to our preconceptions it seemed prosperous.  Apparently the Norman kingdom was the richest in Europe, and there was certainly plenty of money available in the 17th century to rebuild the towns of the Noto Valley (it clearly wasn't done on the cheap).  After Calabria the towns seemed well built and well maintained,  the people comfortable and the shops well stocked.
• It seemed friendly.  Everyone was polite and helpful.  People would go out of their way to help us with directions, advice, directing the van, even when we didn't need help. 
• With a few exceptions (driving, rubbish collection) it seemed well organised and orderly. Streets were swept, there was little graffitti, no beggars, no visible junkies or drunks, no jostling.  It wasn't obvious that anyone was enforcing any rules (but see below), people just seemed to be behaving themselves.
• Its culture is a wonderful cheerful mixture of influences from all over the Mediterranean and Europe.  A typical Sicilian town will have been a Greek colony with some Phonecian settlers, conquered by Rome, adopted by Byzantium, conquered by the Saracens who were ultimately expelled by the Normans, who ruled it until the Swabians took over, followed by the French, Spanish, British, French again, the Italians under Garibaldi, Germans for a short time, Americans for a while, then back to Italy.
• While Britons are a bit scared of Sicily, for some reason Germans have no such fear.  German is certainly the second language in the tourist trade.  We saw many many German registered vehicles during our visit, plus a fair few Scandinavians and Dutch, but only two from the UK in the whole trip.

But what about the gangsters? 

They're real, and they're still there, but they are serious professional criminals, busy people who have much more serious things to do than bother tourists. If anything the 'Mafia Peace' makes it a safer place to visit. Organised crime doesn't tolerate disorganised crime if it disrupts their own profitable activities.

The campsite we stayed at near Palermo was a few hundred metres from the memorial marking the place where Giovane Falcone, his wife and bodyguards were blown up by the Mafia in the 1990s.  According to some, the Italian state has made good progress disrupting the Mafia and weakening it (the bombers are in prison, businesses in Catania openly refuse to pay protection money).  It is also possible that the Mafia has changed its strategy, decided a war with the state is too much trouble and decided to take a lower profile.

"Don't pay preotection money" - poster campaign in Catania

Sicily knows it's known overseas for the Mafia, and the tourist shops are full of Mafia themed figurines and t-shirts.  Most of it seemed rather affectionate and romanticised, and in rather poor taste given the bloodshed.  I wondered if it really does come from affection, if it's just tourist shops giving tourists what they want or if someone's working a subtle public relations exercise behind the scenes.

These days the Calabrian gangs have an even more vicious reputation than their Sicilian counterparts, but it turns out that even they are not as bad as we thought.  When we crossed the Straits of Messina back to Reggio we called again at the post office and were delighted to find all our parcels were waiting.  The mafia gave us back our trousers!

Sicily is a wonderful island, we were sorry to leave and hope we'll be able to return one day.

The Mafia have stolen our trousers!

As mentioned in the last blog, Calabria doesn't have a very good reputation. Several people have jokingly said to us "Watch out for the Mafia down there", and the Rough Guide frequently refers to the poverty and the power of the infamous 'Ndranghetta gangs. However our experiences have been very positive (except of course for the maniac drivers, but we don't think we can blame the poverty or Mafia for that!)

When we were looking for a campsite near Tropea we found one that the guide described as being "Situated on a peninsular renowned for its hospitality". This certainly was our experience there. In addition to the usual shopkeepers who spoke no English and therefore struggled bravely to understand our smattering of Italian and attempts to explain what we wanted by gestures, we also found lots of Italians who simply wanted to talk to us. At first, being typical suspicious Brits (and remembering our experiences in Havana), we wondered where their chat was leading – and what they wanted to sell us. Gradually we realised that they were just being friendly, and wanted to practise their English. When you're struggling with the language in shops, a fellow customer will often emerge from the queue to help out. Also we found that often shopkeepers would give us a discount so as to round the price down – we're not sure if this is because they don't like giving change, or because they feel sorry for us struggling to work out which coins to use.

One particularly lovely incident happened to us while we were visiting a town called Pizzo.
When we arrived we got over-excited to find a good free roadside parking place and walked off into town without really knowing where we were. As we climbed a steep cobbled street, an old man carrying a saucepan stopped us. He spoke in fairly careful Italian, so we were able to understand that he was asking us if we were foreigners, then he told us that the nearby church was giving away free chickpea pasta to celebrate San Giuseppe's day, and we'd be welcome to have some.  He lifted the lid of his pot to show us the steaming food.  It's amazing how much you can understand if someone speaks slowly, especially if free food is involved.

We felt a bit self conscious and at first just walked past the church where a group of young men were eating pasta from paper plates, people were pulling up in cars to have their pots filled up, and bread rolls were being dropped from the church terrace to waiting hands in the street.

After a walk up and down the street, we were spotted by one of the men serving food and he called and waved at us to come over and join in. We found a very tired team of chefs operating out of a small room below the church.  A couple of them spoke English and explained that it's a centuries old tradition which they remember from their childhoods and are happy to be able to continue.  It is unique to Pizzo and people come from miles around - they think they served three thousand helpings.  They were lovely men – delighted to pose for a photo, and very cheery and welcoming. One of them even came out to fuss Scooby.



The room behind them was crowded with empty pans the size of dustbins.  One of the men told us he works in a restaurant, left work yesterday at 11pm, cooked all night and served all morning.  He looked shattered.  Fortunately they had a new reinforcement for washing up.



We enjoyed a plate of simple but delicious pasta – pasta shells, chick peas in a tomato, onion and thyme sauce.  We were also given a glass of red wine each (we don't think everyone got that – we were on our own now with chefs) and a little card in honour of San Giuseppe (Joseph, husband of Mary.) 

At this point we had even started to disbelieve the stories we'd heard about how awful the Italian postal system is. Dad had received both his birthday present and card early, postcards were being delivered in reasonable time – all was rosy!

However ..... a few days later in Reggio di Calabria we got a nasty surprise. We had ordered several things to be delivered 'Ferma Posta' (Poste Restante) to the main post office; a Green Card which we need to drive in Croatia, a couple of guide / phrase books for Croatia, a new copy of Fattore Amico (like the French Passion scheme, this Italian version allows you to stay on farms, vineyards etc for the night – free) and two pairs of trousers from Craghoppers. Before leaving Britain we'd both discovered that Craghoppers' walking trousers (apparently "Britains favourite walking trousers" according to their publicity) suited us very well. However, Richard's have lost the elastic in the waist and now have to be held up by a belt to stop him looking like a hip-hop inspired teenager, and Stella's have ripped and are being held together by her very poor attempts at patching. We don't exactly look elegant and have not been able to find suitable replacements anywhere.

We were quite excited by the prospect of picking up our parcels, and heading off to Sicily with new trousers.  Richard went in to fetch them, leaving Stella and Scooby to wait outside, but after spending about ½ hour in the post office, he came out empty handed. The woman who he dealt with spoke no English & in rapid, complicated Italian asked him many questions about the packages, then looked through a small pile of letters but there was nothing for us at all. We were prepared for  there to be something that hadn't arrived, but it was a shock that nothing was there – the Green Card was posted from Britain over 2 weeks ago, the books and trousers posted at least 10 days ago and the Fattore Amico (which we intended to use in Sicily) was dispatched a week ago. All we can think was that either the post office had refused to accept them and they've been sent back or ........ the Mafia have stolen our trousers (and other stuff!).

We decided to go to Sicily anyway, and are now on a very nice camperpark at  Giardini Naxos, near to Taormina (a lovely hill top village between Mount Etna and the coast).



So far we can't really comment on Sicilian hospitality as we've only been here one night and we are once again surrounded by Germans. German holidaymakers tend to have a bad reputation in Britain (towels on the sunbeds etc).  Maybe this is undeserved, or maybe motorhomers are just a nicer bunch, but we have always found them to be cheerful, polite and friendly neighbours. The only problem being that it's hard to know what language you're supposed to be trying to speak.

Postscript:
Last night, unusually, we got reasonable TV reception and watched some of the Italian news.  We got a vague impression that someone was bombarding someone in Libia, and that bases in the UK and Germany were involved.  Interesting.  I remembered during the last bombardment of Libia, Italy didn't allow the USA to use their Italian bases because Italy was within retaliation distance.  I assumed they'd done the same again.  Understandable.

Today we took Scooby to the beach for a swim, and noticed a lot of helicopters passing by.  Noisy.  Annoying.  Some were yellow, some were khaki. This evening we got a message from Swansea asking if we'd been disturbed by military fly-pasts.   We logged on to the BBC to find out what we've been missing.  We're currently in Giardini Naxos.  According to our satnav we're 579 km from Tripoli, 771 km from Behghazi, 2097 km from Cardiff and 40km from the US airbase at Catania.

I reckon 40km should be enough.  G'night all!

Tyrrhenian Sea

This evening we're staying at the Costa Verde campsite near Tropea, Calabria.  We were surprised to find out that the area is quite a popular summer holiday spot – it's not a place we'd ever heard about in Britain.  A local man in Tropea, practicing his rusty English, said that most foreign visitors come from Germany, Austria or the Netherlands, so he's not had many opportunities to speak English since he left school.


Calabria doesn't have a good reputation in Britain.  All we knew it for was its reputation for poverty and particularly nasty gangsters.  Historically, it's been a poor area.  The old towns are cramped, a warren of tiny alleyways and stairways, with none of the ostentatious public squares, churches and palaces of the north.  Maybe part of the reason for the difference is that they always seem to have been governed by outsiders (Aragon, Normandy, France, Austria) who might have tended to take the profits home rather than spending it locally. Northern Italy was a patchwork of competing states, where at least the Prince or the Doge lived in the town and bought his silver tableware from his neighbours.

Face to face Calabria's been a friendly place so far, with soaring mountains, tightly packed hill towns, beach resorts and incredible blue sea.  We've not seen much of the inland towns (it's hard work in the van once you leave the flat coastal roads), maybe the stereotype lives on in the hills.

Last night was wet and stormy, but today was hot, sunny and calm.  We celebrated the 150th aniversary of Italian unification by visiting Tropea and eating pizza in the sunshine.  It was a bank holiday, so there were a lot of people strolling and shops and bars were open – probably the first reasonably busy day of the year for the tourism businesses.  No-one was making much of a fuss about the unification celebrations, there were just a few posters saying 'Happy Birthday Italy' and a few flags flying that were still obviously creased from the packet.

At this time of year the Costa Verde is one of the few places that's open.  Well, not so much open as the gate is unlocked, the power is turned on, the proprietor lives on site and is happy to take 15 euros if anyone turns up.  The bar and shop are closed, the showers are deep in fallen leaves but we can park up in a safe quiet spot, get water and mains power which is really all we need.

We are the only people on the campsite tonight.  We've chosen a pitch less than 100m from the sea, we can hear the waves crashing all night but we're just far enough away not to get splashed.  From the edge of the campsite there's a sandy beach that runs along a row of campsites and holiday cabins that are all closed, so we have it to ourselves.

We spent the last hour sitting on a terrace with mugs of tea watching the sun set behind the Aeolian Islands.  The nearest and most famous, Stromboli, stands out as a perfect volcanic cone on the horizon.  As Stella said, this is one of the moments we'll have to remember in the future when life gets hard again.

On technology

Back in October in Blaye, I pulled out my mobile phone to look something up for Les.  He was astonished to see such an old phone still being used “There are museums that would pay good money for that” he said. But on the other hand, Les had just bought a new i-Phone and was having terrible trouble getting to grips with it, constantly missing messages and losing numbers.  My Nokia 3310, which I bought reluctantly so that I could stay in touch when briefly homeless in 2001, does what I need it to (not much) very cheaply. I'm still signed up to a long forgotten deal with Orange which gives me a guaranteed subscription free contract forever.  Since my monthly bill is never more than £5 it suits me fine. Let them laugh!

To be fair to Les, and to me, and to everyone, Les uses his i-Phone constantly for business, I use my phone for emergencies and for saying 'I'm on my way, put the kettle on', so it's each to their own.  In fact, the Beautiful Big Blue Van carries a respectable amount of technology for a twenty-first century nomad home.

As well as a mobile phone each, we've got an Acer Aspire 5532 laptop which was my 20 years service gift from the Environment Agency just before I bailed out.  It's got built in wireless networking so I can connect to the internet, in theory, from any WiFi equipped café or McDonalds.

It's come to my attention that there's been some grumbling that we don't update this blog as often as some people would like.  We're pleased that anyone cares, but have to explain that it's not as easy on the road as you might think.  Certainly not as easy as the people on the advertisements make out.

Yes, there are a lot of WiFi access points out there, but most are not really free.  Not unreasonably they want you to buy something in return for 'free' WiFi.  A typical WiFi search goes like this:

• Write a blog entry on the laptop, ready to publish.  50% battery remaining.
• pull into McDonalds' car park, start the laptop, detect McDonalds WiFi signal but it's far too weak to use.
• Great, they have WiFi, but we can't use it from here.  Close the laptop and go inside.
• Find a table, order the minimum; a coffee and a tea.  There's tea on the menu but no-one's ever asked for it before (this is France), so the staff run around for a while shouting 'Has anyone seen the tea bag?'.  Eventually they find a nettle and radish herbal tea bag.  “Do you have normal black tea?'.  Mystified expression – what's normal about tea?   Total cost 5 euros.
• Back at the table, we're connected to the McDonalds' WiFi network but no internet connection.  Ask another guy who's sitting with a laptop, who tells us it's been slow all morning and he'd also now lost connection.  Damn.  Look at the list of available WiFi connections and spot 'Flunch'.  What's a 'Flunch'?  Where can we get one of those? 40% battery remaining.
• Stella spots 'Flunch', another fast food place just across the road.  Bail out of McDonalds, leaving behind half a litre of khaki tea, and go to Flunch.
• Sit in Flunch, order two soft drinks for 4 euros, start to log in.  It redirects us to Flunch's homepage, which explains that due to the anti-terrorism legislation we have to provide some personal information, after which they'll be able to give us temporary access until we've confirmed our identity by replying to an email... “Yes! Yes! Yes!  Get on with it!”
• Fill in all the forms, get given temporary access, then the connection is cut. Spot a note pinned to the wall, explaining that they cut the WiFi connection during the peak lunch period 12:00 to 14:00.  It's 12:01.  Hover over the battery icon and find we're down to 15% of our battery capacity and really need to think about plugging it in somewhere.
• Back to the van cursing, full of caffeine and pop, 8 euros down to no effect.  We drive off.

So we bought some more technology.  First was an inverter which converts 12 volt electricity from our van to 220 volt AC, which our laptop's power supply can convert back down to 19 volts DC to charge the laptop battery.  A painful purchase because I've already got two inverters packed up in boxes back in Britain, which I didn't think to bring with me.  One of them is a monster 1000W unit which was fitted to our old van when we bought it.  It must have cost a fortune, would give us plenty of power but would flatten our battery in minutes.  The inverter is a great help, but we can only really use it with the engine running, so it takes a reasonably long drive to fully charge the laptop.

Before we left Britain I got myself a Huawei 3G modem, unlocked so that it could be used with a SIM card from any supplier.  It gives me reasonably fast internet access from almost anywhere that I could get a mobile phone signal. 

To avoid high roaming charges, you need to get hold of a local SIM card for the country you're in.  In France I bought a prepay SIM card from Orange for ten euros.  In Spain I bought a prepay SIM for nineteen euros from the Carrefour supermarket (which came bundled with another Huawei modem).  In Italy I got a SIM card with '3' and only had to pay for the credit I put on it.

If you're planning to do this yourself:

• You might have a 3G modem built into your computer, or you may have to get hold of a modem which plugs into your USB socket.  It will probably be locked so it can only be used with the network that sold it to you
• Find out about unlocking your modem on the web or from your provider.  For most modems it can be done for around £5 (www.dc_unlocker.com) but whether or not its legal depends on your contract.
• Don't use the internet service provider's own software.  Install Mobile Partner, which you can download from Huawei, which will allow you to use different SIM cards in different countries 
• Buying a local SIM card can be a bit awkward.  One shop will tell you it's impossible for a foreigner to buy a SIM without an address in the country, but the next shop will sell it to you cheerfully.  You'll need some vocabulary:
• A 3G modem is usually called a 'dongle' in Britain, 'un clef' in France, 'un modem' in Spain and 'key' or 'chiavetta' in Italy.
• The precious little thing that's called a SIM card in Britain seems to be called a 'SIM' everywhere.
• The type of SIM card which requires you to pay in advance rather than getting a monthly bill is called 'pay as you go' in Britain, 'prépayé' in France, 'prepagado' in Spain and 'ricaricabile' in Italy.  This is probably the type of SIM you want as if you don't have a permanent address in the country they can't send you a bill every month.
• France, Spain and Italy all have anti-terrorism legislation which requires people who sell mobile communications equipment to record the identity of the purchaser.  Take your passport along and you'll be OK.  Italy seems to be particularly strict, making free public WiFi internet less common and harder to use.
• The settings in Mobile Partner might take some working out.  Settings for some providers are on the web.  Carrefour sensibly provided them all in the users' booklet.  Otherwise you might have to get help at the shop or call the supplier's technical help desk, a conversation which would stretch my English let alone my Italian!

The 'dongle' is very useful but not great for doing jobs that need a lot of information downloaded or uploaded. Stella was feeling guilty that she hadn't posted any photos on Facebook, but when she tried it took 5 mins per photo to upload, so there aren't many posted!

Another bit of snazzy technology is Stella's Kindle ebook reader.  Before we left Britain I (Richard) was pretty sceptical about them.  I couldn't understand why you'd carry an ebook reader when for similar money you could have a proper laptop with a colour screen, a proper keyboard and the ability to run proper programmes as well as read books.  Now I know the answer...

Reasons to get an ebook reader:

• long long battery life.  Possibly weeks instead of the two hours I get from my laptop
• the high contrast screen really is much easier to read
• smaller and lighter, even than a netbook.

In addition the Kindle has some clever networking built in.  It's intended to allow you to connect to Amazon's shop to spend money and download books, but also gives you free limited clunky web access which on several occasions has been really useful.

Our wedding present from Richard's parents was a Garmin Nuvi Satellite Navigation System.  We'd owned a cheap Satnav before, which only had UK mapping.  We wanted something that would help us throughout our travels, and save us from having to buy and carry kilos of local maps.

It's an incredible piece of kit.  We spend a lot of time swearing at it as it sends us on silly routes, but in fact a piece of equipment that will fit in your pocket carries detailed road maps of the whole of Europe, at least one voice for every major European language (we use the local voice as they pronounce the place names better), a collection of useful landmarks, and can certainly do far more than we've asked it to.  We leave it on whenever we drive, as it logs our route and works out an estimated fuel consumption and cost for every route.

Apart from that, our technology is all gas oven and pedal bin, but not a bad showing … in spite of my venerable cellphone.

Pour Votre Santé, Bougez Plus!

We crossed the Spanish border into France, intent on getting to southern Italy before we run out of time.  It was surprisingly a relief to find ourselves in France – surprising to find how easy and familiar it felt after Spain, like coming home.  That was partly due to our French being better than our Spanish (and much better than our Catalan) but also France seems to be more comfortable, well organised and at ease with itself.  However, if we wanted to feel as if we were coming home we'd go home!  Italy was waiting.

Both the French and the Italian Rivieras were a bit of a struggle. The  whole area is peppered with "No dogs" and "No motorhomes" signs.  We didn't feel welcome, but to be fair it's meant for people like Richard Burton and Sophia Loren, not for the likes of us.



So we headed south, calling at Genoa and the Cinque Terra towns, then left the coast for the hills of Tuscany.  Florence was the first foreign place we visited together when we first met, and Richard had been to the area on a family holiday many years before.  We were looking forward to a more leisurely exploration of the area and to revisit some old favourites.

The Cinque Terra towns were a revelation – we'd never heard of them although they are clearly a huge tourist destination, and well visited by Americans and Japanese tourists even at this time of year. They are a UNESCO World Heritage site and consist of five picturesque little fishing villages clinging to the steep, rugged coastline of Liguria and linked by a very scenic coastal path and a train line. We visited  Manarola, the last but one of the Cinque Terre towns, as it had a free place for motorhomes to park for the night & get water. Our plan was to walk along the 'Via del Amore' to Riomaggiore, the most southerly of the 5 towns, on one day and then walk in the other direction along the coastal path as far as we could manage the next day. However, the heavy rain had caused landslides and the coastal path was closed, all except the 'Via del Amore' between Manarola and Riomaggiore, so that was all we did in the end.



Manarola is an extremely pretty town with pastel coloured houses tumbling over each other down to the water, a bit reminiscent of some places in Cornwall. The houses run steeply down to a small stone slipway crowded with beached boats and a tiny rocky harbour, all set off by sea cliffs and vine covered hillsides. As it was a beautifully sunny day, the scenery along the 'Via del Amore' walk was at its best, and there weren't too many other tourists to share it with. We walked along a winding pathway with gorgeous views down the cliffs to the little pebbly coves and crashing waves below. The path cut through the cliff, which overhung the path in some places with netting holding the rocks up. One part was a tunnel which was filled with romantic graffiti (we've noticed that a very high proportion of graffitti in Italy is romantic) – some of which was printed on postcards in the local shops. Everywhere there were padlocks with couples' names / initials carved on attached to fences, railings, netting, benches etc. Some people who hadn't brought padlocks (or hadn't bought them from the gift shop!) wrote on bits of cloth, post it notes, bits of plastic bag ….. We just took photos and stopped at the pathside Café Amore for coffee, on a terrace glued to the cliff face looking out over the turquoise Mediterranean.




Life in the Cinque Terra must have been miserably hard in the past.  The towns cling to such steep hillsides that the only way in and out must have been by boat (and their harbours aren't great) or a real hands and knees scramble over the mountains.  In the late nineteenth century the railway was pushed through the coast just above sea level, then road access followed.  Tourism has brought a new prosperity, but the National Park authorities and the local agricultural cooperative are trying hard to keep it alive as a working agricultural area, not just a theme park.  They still raise grapes on steep narrow stone terraces as they always did, but now the wine sells to tourists at a premium price, and now the hillsides are scribbled over with nifty mini-monorails that carry workers and goods up and down the terraces.



The beauty of the Cinque Terre is a happy accident, coming from the shape of the land and the efforts of generations of struggling farmers.  One house in Manarola had been decorated (in the 1990s) with frescoes, and it looked quite out of place - this wasn't a town that could have afforded such luxuries.  Elsewhere we've visited riches, luxury, ostentation and oneupmaship have been very much on display.

As always when we visit Italy, we're stunned by the richness of their architectural and artistic heritage.  Where a typical British town might have a Norman church (probably gutted by Cromwell, rebuilt by the Victorians) and maybe a few walls remaining from the castle (probably blown up by Cromwell, quarried by the Georgians), a typical Italian town seems to be crowded with churches from the same period (clad in marble and filled with frescoes, mosaics and paintings), palaces, monasteries and grand public buildings from every period from the Roman Republic to Mussolini.

We walked in pouring rain through the old port city of Genoa, past gloomy streetfronts that at first sight looked badly in need of a lick of paint.  Then we  noticed carved crests peeking out here and there, and patches of designs on the walls under the eaves.  The more we looked the more we saw; Renaissance frescoes of aristocratic crests and imitation architectural detail revealing that these tired old blocks of flats, halal butchers and mobile phone shops were actually the splendid palaces of the merchants of the Genoese Republic, fallen on hard times.

There's no point describing the 'Field of Miracles' in Pisa as it'll all be in your guide book, and anyway you won't believe it until you see it.  Suffice to say there's much more to Pisa than the leaning tower (and much more to the leaning tower than its lean).

 

 
There was however one thing I noticed that I've not seen anyone else mention.  The walls of Pisa cathedral have incorporated chunks of marble taken from ancient Roman buildings, slotted in un-selfconsciously with no attempt to hide what they are.   In one place the words 'Caesar Augustus' are visible, upside down, but as clear and crisp as if they were newly carved.  If any one of these stones turned up anywhere in Wales it would cause a sensation and probably be the centrepiece of a new museum, but here they're just architectural salvage.



There's also no point describing the Duomo, Baptistry and Campanille in Florence for the same reason.  We remembered them fondly from our first visit, but this time they still took our breath away.  Even though they were built over a period of centuries, the archtects still manged to create a harmonious ensemble.  From a distance, you get an impression of shining green and white marble and, in spite of the bulk (these things are huge), a very cheerful light hearted atmosphere. The emphasis seems to be on celebration rather than on guilt.  Close up, you can see that every surface is covered in intricate ornamentation; from knotwork borders to grinning grotesque faces to scenes of daily life in the fourteenth century – you could explore these stones for months.



We're pleased that we happened to visit these towns in the right order; Pisa and San Michele's church in Lucca are especially spectacular if you haven't just arrived from Florence.

While we were walking around Pisa we fell into conversation with an English man who lives there.  He made a passing comment that the Italians don't make enough of their monuments, complaining that there were splendid churches in Pisa that were crumbling.  It's true that we stumbled across, for example, a church in Lucca with a facade covered in a tenth century romanesque mosaic that hadn't even made it onto the tourist office's map.



But to be fair, my impression is that the Italians have no chance of protecting everything they have.  These riches must also be a burden in a place where you can't even paint your kebab shop because it's covered in sixteenth century frescoes and you can't dig a hole to put up a telephone post without hitting a mosaic floor, a temple, a tomb or a palace.

I'm not sure I fully understand all the reasons that Italy is so rich in monuments, but a few historical factors must have contributed.  At particular times these towns must have been incredibly rich, building splendid things, and then falling onto hard times that meant they couldn't afford to knock them down to build something new.  Towns like Swansea or Cardiff, in contrast, were at their richest during the Industrial Revolution, so most of their relatively meagre collection of mediaeval monuments disappeared to make way for streets of Victorian offices.  Italian society seems to have been dominated by competing states and competing families who used art and architecture to show off to each other (when they weren't slaughtering each other).  More prosaically, most of Mediaeval and Renaissance Britain's secular buildings were made of oak, hazel laths and plaster, so easily gave way to rot, beetles and fire.  For some reason (Wealth? Ostentation?) Italy seems to have built in limestone, brick and marble that doesn't disappear unless someone really wants it to.

So ... yes we are having a good time.