arrived at the check-in counter at olu deniz airport and was mildly perturbed to discover that they had never heard of me. this despite the fact that they had already charged 200 euros to my credit card. oh well, turned out that they had in fact heard of me at last and i was seated on a very cramped dutch airline bound for holland. i was actually quite surprised to find that an airline based in the country which has the tallest population in the world had such cramped quarters. oh well, never mind. i watched ice age 2: electric bugaloo (or whatevere), arrived amsterdam safe and sound around 1am and after a €25 taxi ride, was tucked into my €8/ hour hotel room (€80 per night and i would be spending less than 10 hours there ...) near the airport by 2am. quite a shock to the pocket book after spending only $50/night in olu deniz!
next morning, i caught the free hotel shuttle to the airport. i would have taken it when i arrived but unfortunately, it only runs between 6am and midnight. is it me, or isn't one of the main purposes of airport hotels to provide accommodation to people who arrive at very late/early hours in which case, wouldn't a 24-hour shuttle be in order? oh well, never mind. i caught the train from schipol airport to utrecht and was safely at greg and saskia's house just after noon.
saskia and greg started the sweet things bakery about 2 years ago and since then, it has been growing like mad. they are having a tough time keeping up with the demand and finding competent staff so have taken to working in shifts: saskia during the day and greg during the night which meant that greg was at home to greet me. and, of course, so were bruno, frankie and little louie :)had a very relaxing time in utrecht with greg & saskia, albeit not with the two of them together. on friday, greg and i went to amsterdam for the day and took a canal tour of the city. of course about halfway thru, the rain started. it came down in absolute buckets but luckily, the boats are covered with glass tops so we were protected from the elements. the funny thing was, i hadn't realized until then that i had actually really been missing the rain. i quite enjoyed being on the water in the rain, safe and warm and dry, but still able to hear the rain pounding on the windows and see it punishing the sea. you can take the gal out of the rainforest ...
next day, i wandered around utrecht a bit more and then caught the night train to milano, where the coffee comes from the gods and supermodels really do roam free, and met up with my friends vittorio and paolo and their families. i arrived early sunday morning, checked my bags at the station and toured the duomo (cathedral). it is italy's largest gothic structure and one of the world's largest cathedrals with 135 spires and over 2000 statues. it was open to the public; however, it is still an active church and being sunday, services were taking place so i didn't feel all that comfortable gawking inside and instead headed up the elevator to the roof to take in the incredible architectural masterpiece up close.monday, i went into the offices of incisa & bernezzo (paolo & vito's company) and at last, after about 8 years, met my friends enrica & liliana face to face. it was great to put the faces to the names after such a long time.
tuesday was a day trip to lake como. what a majestic sight. the villas must be seen to be believed. i really have no idea how some of the places could ever be constructed, even with today's techniques and machines. paolo's wife, alessandra, grew up around lake como and gave me some great tips. instead of stopping at bellagio, which most people seemed to do, i continued on to varenna where i had a delicioso panini and a glass of moretti and then wandered through the narrow streets to villa monastere, a former private villa that is now a convention centre with a beautiful garden. the one sour note is that i did have quite a hard time shaking george cloooney. it was getting embarassing. every time i turned around, there he was trying to seduce me. i almost had to call the polizia he was bothering me so much!
wednesday morning, vittorio had to go to tuscany on business so he picked me up early and took me to pisa and lucca. unfortunately, we could not get an early enough time to go up the leaning tower so only viewed it from outside; however, it is still an incredible building to behold. it is built on silt and began its lean right from inception and continued to lean through the ages. the inclination became so pronounced that it was declared unsafe and has only reopened to tours fairly recently after extensive foundation work to reduce the inclination by about 30cm. it now leans only 4m 2cm from vertical now which is still quite significant. and here, of course, you see me crushing the tower of pisa!!vittorio dropped me in the sleepy tuscan town of lucca where i spent the rest of the afternoon wandering through its quiet streets and climbing one of the towers for a better view of the town before hopping a train to florence for a couple of days.
1 comment:
Where are you now beekster????????
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