Back to AU

Having spent our week in New Zealand, and a lovely week it was, we were ready to return to Australia and get on with seeing more of the continent.  We flew from Auckland to Brisbane and picked up our rental car.  It turned out to be a nice new Toyota Camry - all of 1400 km on the odometer.  Actually a very nice car but the first I remember renting in another country with an automatic transmission.  THAT caused me problems that I really never expected.  Driving on the left hand side of the road means that your left hand is used for shifting if you have a manual transmission.  If you hiave an automatic it leaves your left hand alone to get into trouble.  In my case I kept trying to turn on the turn signals with my left hand as I do in the states.  Except that the wand on that side of the steering column was the windshield wipers.  Grrr!  I must have hit the wipers 20 times when I wanted to signal a turn.  Double Grrrr!  What an idiot.  In fact I didn't realize what was causing my problem until my wife pointed it out after we got rid of the car.  Oh well.

We pretty much picked up the car and left town thinking we'd take a few days driving up the coast then dropping the car in Cairns where we could visit the Great Barrier Reef.  Sounds like a plan, huh.  Well, you know what happens to plans....   We stopped the first night in a place called Mooloolaba.  It was a nice little town, well not so small, but nice.  Nice enough we stayed a couple nights rather than the one we'd planned on originally.

We were walking along this path next to the beach looking for a specific restaurant.  Tough life, huh.  It's pretty late in the Aussie summer so while there were people on the beach it wasn't really crowded.  Then you turn the other way, towards the land and it looks a little different.

There are a whole bunch of homes and hotels over there!  Not that it's a bad thing but it is sure different from the deserted beach idea.  We finally found the restaurant and had a lovely lunch.  Granted it was $100 AUD (about $75 US) but it was really great.  We were more than thirsty after our hike to find this place and the waiter brought us THREE bottles of water in addition to the usual food and wine.  You can be sure his tip was substantial. 


This was the first time we've ever stayed in a self- catering apartment hotel.  What it means is that we had a one bedroom apartment with no room service.  When we leave they come in and clean it but otherwise it's up to us.  It worked really well because we like the convience of being able to eat 'at home' if we want.  We had a regular fridge to keep wine and water and even food.  There was a washer and dryer so we could do laundry.  Pretty cool.  We found others like this place later in our travels in Australia.  It's unusual for us but it worked out really well.

In Mooloolaba I did see something I've never seen before.  It was in the marina near the boat ramp.

It's a great idea making sure that people know if their GPS is working or not but I've never seen anything like it.  Good on the Aussies!

Anyway the next day we drove another 60 or 70 miles up the coast to Bargara, Queensland.  My wife is a Trip Advisor junkie and she found us another self-catering place on the beach so what's not to like?  That's the place where I took the photos I posted while we were gone:  nice blue sky one day and clouds and rain the next.  Cyclone Debbie was coming ashore in Australia and she was one big mean gal. 

We lived in Florida quite a while and know better than to fool with hurricanes.  Just because the cyclone is turning in the opposite direction doesn't mean it's any 'nicer' so we took the hint and decided to return to Brisbane rather than continue up the coast.  It was now that we discovered something that really could have been nasty.  We arranged our car rental via National but they use a local company, Redspot, to actually supply the car.  It turns out that the paperwork we had from National showed us picking up the car in Brisbane and returning it in Cairns.  The paperwork from Redspot showed us returning the car to Brisbane!  Can you imagine the hassle if we'd continued on to Cairns?  What a screwup.  We are just glad we didn't end up in Cairns with a car that was supposed to be in Brisbane!

Well, then there was the 'other thing'.  You have to remember that I'm 68 years old and it's 20 years since I had a police traffic stop.  One of our 'traditions' is that whe we stop and park our trailer, which we consider our home away from home, we have a glass of wine. It's just a celebration of the safe landing.  We almost always have the makings of our dinner so we won't be driving.. SO, we had a glass of wine when we landed in Bargara.  And then figured out we had nothing to eat so we headed back up the road to the grocery store.  Except that there was a policeman in the middle of the road doing a random traffic stop!  Well, his first question is 'Have you been drinking"  Well,, what could I say?  Duh, I had a glass of wine about 10 minutes ago officer.  He had me blow into his machine and just told me to get out of there..  I am sure I was legal but I guess it was a learning experience.   

So we ended our six day car rental in Brisbane. Turns out it's a nice city and we had a nice time  but it sure could have been nasty!  We stayed in the Next hotel on the riverside and it turned out to be a great choice.  We could see this great spot from which to view the city and wanted to get up there.  It turned out to be farther than we thought and pretty steep but we made it! 

Did I stay steep? The stairs downhill where steep as well.

I'm not sure if we would have gone up all the stairs but we were happy enough to go back down them!  Other than the hills, Brisbane was lovely.  Which brings up a rather interesting subject. My wife has a Fitbit.  When we are home we are in the 5-6,000 step category; when we are traveling it's not unusual for us to to 10,000 steps and that was happening here.  It isn't something we plan, it just happens.  I guess it is a result of being in a new place.  Who knows? 

We did want a nice steak dinner so we went to a highly rated local place the Breakfast Creek Hotel which is actually a restaurant.  There are two choices:  pick out a steak and they cook it for you and deliver it to your table in the bar or go into the restaurant and have servers and stuff.  We preffered the latter.  So they seat us and have to move us immediately because the lighting isn't working.  Honestly, we hadn't been there long enough to notice but it was nice. Then we ordered:  my wife a bone in rib-eye; myself a filet.  Well, the rib-eye was horribly overcooked and when my wife sent she was told it was perfectly cooked.  My filet was supposed to be med-rare and I didn't bother to send it back.  It was about an inch thick on one side and an inch and a half on the other. How the hell are you supposed to cook something like that the same throughout?  Really?  Well, our recomendation is to skip the Breakfast Creek Hotel unless you don't give a damn about your dinner. 

There was one place we ate that was king of interesting in one of the malls.  When you go in you get a "credit card" so whenever you order something it gets charged to your card. My wife only had a salad; I had a pizza and got us a bottle of wine so when we left we presented our two cards and were given a bill for the total.  Pretty cool but definitly different!

One thing we were happy to find was this monument to the US Navy's operations in the Pacific back in the WWII days.  It's always nice to remember what we've helped make possible in the world.

The next morning we took a boat trip to the first ever Koala Scantuary.  Well at least it was ok.  We took a boat ride back up the river to get to the place.  They had a narration about things along the river that was really pretty cool.  Finally we get to this place:  lots of only in Australia critters but a couple of hours was more than enoughl  So then we go back down the river and hop off.  Back to current day Brisbane.  More next time, take care!

Onward!

Having visited Tasmania and really loving the place it was time to move on.  Even with scenery like this we had to go.

I'm not quite sure where the idea came from to visit Tasmania first and then New Zealand but that was our plan.  In hindsight maybe doing NZ first would have made more sense but now we had to make our way to New Zealand.  You might think that would be an easy thing but actually it's reasonably difficult.  In the end we spent the better part of a day flying from Hobart to Sydney then Sydney to Wellington. 

We had heard that due to seismic activity that transport on the South Island was difficult so decided to limit our visit to the North Island.  It was a shame since I know the South Island is supposed to be spectacular but we were still limited by time as well.  I'd heard about the scenic train that runs between Wellington and Auckland and we were able to get tickets on the day after we arrived in Wellington.  The train runs north on one day then the next day it returns to the south so we had to leave on the day after we'd arrived.

The train has four carriages and a viewing carriage that has no seats or windows, the better for taking photos.  I spent a fair amount of time out there!  LOL  The North Island has quite a bit of farming in addition to lovely mountains and valleys.  I won't admit to how many photos of cows, sheep and horses I took!

I must admit that I wasn't the only one back in the viewing car.  At one point the train track actually goes around in a huge circle crossing the track again in a tunnel under it all to try and get down a mountain.  It brought out the photographers for sure.

The downside for the train is that it is a 12 hour trip and that's if you get off on time.  We were about half an hour late getting started so we were on the train from shortly after 07:00 and arrived in Auckland after 19:00.  The station in Auckland is pretty much a joke.  I'd read about it but hadn't really believed that it could be that lousy.  I was wrong.

There was a bus to take you downtown but it was full in an instant and our hotel wasn't downtown anyway.  There were a few cabs but there was a huge queue for them so we decided to walk.  We weren't out of the parking lot when a couple of guys who had been working on the train stopped us.  We explained we were going to walk to our hotel but they insisted on taking us in their car and boy were they lifesavers.  Our hotel was in a suburb called Parnell which is probably 3 miles from downtown and all uphill.  It would have taken a long while to walk not to mention we'd probably have gotten lost.  Thank you, Mark and friend from NZ Rail!

The next day we started exploring Auckland.  It is a beautiful city but you've got to like hills.  We ended up walking down to the city then taking the bus up the hill when we were tired in the evening.  That was a cool deal.  Of course we headed for the water first thing.

The waterfront is protected from intruders by this huge old fence.  It was painted to within an inch of it's life too.  It was definitely red.  Behind the fence were the wharfs.

This ship was visiting the first day we arrived.  The next day there was a different cruise liner in the same place.  Off to the right was a car carrier and, again, the next day there was a different car carrier.  The port is just crazy busy. 

One of the things I really love is the mix of old and new buildings.  These fantastic new creations are just across the street from a beautiful old building.  I thought it was just great. 

I didn't mention the reason for being in a hotel in the suburbs:  cost.  When we were looking we were seeing typical prices of $400 a night in downtown.  I know the NZ dollar is less than the US but still that was over our willingness to spend.  Even so we were in the $150 range.  An advantage of the suburb was that there were some really excellent restaurants around so that was enjoyable.

There was also the view from our little balcony.  It was nice at sunset with two chairs and a small table and a bottle of New Zealand wine.  Soon enough though we needed to leave New Zealand and return to Australia to continue our explorations.  Thanks for stopping by!

OK, I'm back....

My last post was a first for me; I posted while we were away on one of our trips.  In this case, we were on the eastern coast of Australia just before Cyclone Debbie came along to kick some ass.  It was definitely a case of good plans gone bad.  But let me start from the beginning.

We flew out of Las Vegas to Los Angeles then on to Sydney.  Needless to say, it makes for a long day!  Well, since you cross the international date line, it's more like two days.  We left Vegas at 18:00 on Tuesday the 14th and arrived at our hotel in Hobart, Tasmania on Thursday the 16th.  Hmmm.  The LA to Sydney flight arrived fairly early in the morning so rather than trying to find something to do while we were all jet-lagged we figured we could fly down to Hobart and arrive at a more normal time in the early afternoon.  So that's what we did and it really did work quite well.

We really enjoyed our time in Tasmania.  We mostly stayed in Hobart.  It is a small city (in the 150K people range) but has a waterfront and a nice downtown area.  We did a lot of walking!  Of course you have to visit MONA - The Museum of Old and New Art so we signed up for the boat trip.  You can get to the museum via car or bus or via their own ferry; we love the water so the ferry was obviously the thing.  On the ferry you can go 'normal' or 'posh'; we went for 'posh' which basically means you get a glass of wine and some little nibble while on the boat.  The museum itself was interesting and it did have both old and new art work.  Some was mildly titilating but overall it was really quite interesting.  We enjoyed it a great deal.  The guy behind it, David Walsh, has a sense of humor that is also on display.  It makes the museum more of an experience than a conventional museum.  I'd like to be able to go back more often. There is a winery on the same property as the museum and we toured it as well.  It is the Moorilla winery.  Though it is small it seemed to be a very high-end operation and I understand the wine is well thought of.

One of the things I most liked about Hobart was the continued use of older buildings.  Everywhere we went there were old buildings still being used.  I'm sure the interiors were completely revamped but it was pretty cool seeing '1896' or 'Hobart Gas Company' inscribed in the stone.  We also managed a walk though a park where there was a tree planted for every man killed in World War I.  We may do things like that in this country but I haven't come across them.  There was also a small group of trees planted by the crew of the USS Enterprise when they visited Hobart in 1976!  I'm not sure why that affected me but it did.  Of course I consider New Zealand an ally of the U.S. in general terms.  I guess this just made it a little more specific.

Just one of the older buildings. For all I know it is still used by the Marine Board!

A map of the trees planted in honor of soldiers lost in WWI.  As trees die via storms or whatever they are replaced with new ones.  

Next we will move on to visit New Zealand then return to Australia for more fun and frolics.  Thanks for stopping by!

What in the world?

Our view day before yesterday looked like this.

Our view from yesterday looked like this.

Where in the world are we?  But we are on the way home for more life in the slow lane.  Best wishes!

Life in the fast lane - NOT!

I haven't been blogging because the hightlight of my days has been our annual fight with weeds in the yard.  Exciting stuff, huh.  We usually buy at least one new sprayer every year; they just get clogged up or stop holding pressure or whatever.  Then we go over the lawn.  This year we used about 10 gallons (38 l) of spray on the first go-round then another 5 gallons (19 l) when the tiny weeds had grown a bit.  I'm thinking there are another 2 gallons (8 l)  in my future since there are yet more of the tiny guys popping out. The weather has been quite mild so the weed population has been enjoying life. 

Otherwise we did manage a trailer trip to San Diego.  Our son and his girlfriend live there and we like to check up on them from time to time.  The trip over was uneventful.  We normally stay in the same park since we love the view of the water.  They keep raising the rates but we just have to do it.  Their wifi is almost non-existant so that is the bad news.  Still, being without the internet for a week is probably good for the soul. 

Our trailer has a picture window in the back so when we back into our space we get a great view.  Sunsets can be great.

There are always people to watch.  In this case rowing crews out practicing.

The traffic is always awful and this time we seemed to hit rush hour more than usual.  Of course driving this huge truck doesn't help any.  It also doesn't help that the city has taken roads designed for two lanes in each direction and changed them to three lanes in each direction without actually widening the street.  Those lanes are narrow!  The streets are also very poorly maintained.  I think they do a lousy job here at home but they are superstars compared to the work done in San Diego. 

We did spend a day at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park.  We did really enjoy the day but I have to admit to thinking it's pretty expensive.  Adult tickets are $52 and if you want to go on some of the tours the prices go up fast.  I could see a family of four dropping $500 quite easily.  At some point we got thirsty and discovered that a bottle of water is nearly $5. 

Still, it's fun to watch the animals.  These elephants had some hay in a bin up above them but there was more hay hidden in that round toy.  Only one trunk would fit at a time so the big guy was hogging it.

I also liked this shot of the giraffe drinking.  He must have been doing good because he was there for quite a while.

Of course none of us had a camera; my wife's camera battery was dead, our son doesn't own one and I left mine at home.  Grrr!  At least we got a few cellphone photos. 

So, that's my  life these days.  A little weed killing and a little animal watching - as I said, life in the fast lane.  Thanks for stopping by!

May you live in interesting times

I'm no Chinese scholar but I've always heard my title to be a Chinese curse.  Well, we're in for it now.  Let's hope things don't get TOO interesting.  As I've said before, I didn't vote for the man but he is our new President.  For eight years I've heard and read about people disrespecting President Obama.  I've got to give this new guy a chance.

On a happier note, it's raining in the desert.  The weather folks are saying that the three storms that started yesterday should give us about a inch of rain.  That is about 25% of the annual quota so it's a big deal.  Fortunately it is spread out over several days so it shouldn't cause any flooding.  Yes, it does flood out here, just not this time.  And just to make it more interesting people don't really know how to drive in the wet. 

Well, actually, I don't think many of them can drive worth a darn anytime.  I had the enjoyment of driving home from Las Vegas the other night.  The number of people who tried to hide in my blind spot was amazing.  They seem to be the same people who think turn signals are the work of the devil.  There was even one genius in a new Audi TT Coupe that was driving without headlights - this is about 3 hours after dark.  Grrr!

The rain does make for some interesting photos.  Here are a few from the last couple weeks.

Here's hoping for a great 2017!

Happy New Year!

I certainly want to wish everyone a joy-filled, healthy and prosperous new year.  Well, I can dream, can't I?  You must understand that I am a very conservative person and conservative people dislike the unknown.  They also dislike large changes.  We here in the US are faced with a new President who is very different from the last several Presidents.  He also doesn't seem to have an agenda, I should say a fixed agenda.  It seems to change over time.  He is talking about dismantling, or attempting to dismantle, parts of the federal government.  What was I saying about disliking change?  2017 will be an interesting year for future history students.

Around here the conservative person can be pretty happy.  It is cool, highs in the 50's (12C), freezing 2 nights out of 5.  In the last couple of days we've had a storm front come up from the Gulf of Mexico bringing lots of wind and some rain.  But the basic look is almost always the same.  We have lots of brown dirt with some vegetation and a backdrop of beautiful mountains where ever you look.  We've told each other a thousand times that without the mountains we just wouldn't be here.  Every time you look at the mountains they look different.  Sometimes there is sun, sometimes a cloud obscures part of the mountain, sometimes the cloud casts a shadow on the mountain.  They are always the same and always different. 

I was poking around on the internet the other day and found the photo posted below.  I don't own it and if you do and it offends you to have it posted here I apologize and will remove it.  However, I just find it to be so amazing that I had to share it.

It is a photo I certainly wish I had taken; especially if I can ignore the whole taking pictures while driving thing!  Anyway, I do love it and wish I'd taken it.

So we are having a quiet winter out here in the desert.  I hope you and yours are having a quiet and peaceful start to the new year as well.  Take care and best wishes!

Happy Holidays!

Here's wishing best wishes to every single person in the world.  It's Christmas AND Hannukah so that's pretty unusual.  We celebrate because of the love that is supposed to be filling our hearts and minds.  As athiests that's about as good as it gets.  Of course we have a tree.

It has been an odd few days around here. We started with some mist then we had the 'rain' continue for over 24 hours!  That's just totally unexpected.  Then we had fog.  Real, can't see the neighbor's house fog.  No photos of that because I was just loving it.  Of course I don't have to go anywhere in the fog.  That's when it becomes less fun really fast.  And because we had rain, there is snow in the mountains.

Not exactly cloudy around these parts is it? 

Sorry that I've been AWOL since Thanksgiving but actually there hasn't been a lot going on.  I managed to get some kind of cold that has kept me pretty close to home.  A smarter guy might have gone to the doctor but, well, it's me.  We did manage to do the usual food drive stuff and Toys for Tots but those are pretty low impact.  Today we are having our daughter over for dinner but that's about it.  We gave up gift giving years ago.  We are all adults so buying each other shirts or jewelry that isn't quite right - why bother? 

I'll try to do better with blogging.  I'm pretty good at reading them; it's this writing thing that is harder.  Thanks for stopping by and Happy Holidays!

Happy Black Friday USA

I guess I missed the Thanksgiving post but I was busy!  My wife and I decided that we ought to do somthing for others this year.  Our town has a Community Dinner and we decided to volunteer.  I guess there are others who volunteer sooner  because we were assigned as drivers to take meals to the home-bound.  Actually it was great.  The people knew someone was coming around and were looking forward to their meals.  My three deliveries were to an older guy who wasn't moving around very well, a very old lady who was using a walker and a guy who was caring for another two people.  It was a great experience and I'm sure we will do it again.

Then we came home and started on our own Thanksgiving dinner.  Well, that worked really well even if it was after 15:00 when we ate.

Yes, pretty conventional but definitely good.  And my wife found a reciepe for a coffee-chocolate hazelnut pie that was really amazing.  The whole day was a 10.  And we can definitely recommend the 2016 Beaujolais Nouveau. 

Otherwise we are back in our groove.  It is 26F this a.m. (that's -3 to the rest of the world).  Brrr!  But it will warm up later and we will be able to take our walk.  We bought a couple extra things at the store so we don't have to go out; this Black Friday shit is just crazy!  Neither of us is much of a shopper so braving a crowd of people looking for bargains just doesn't work for us.  If I get all wild and crazy maybe I'll check out Amazon later.  How busy could it be?  LOL

Now that Italy is but a memory we are talking about Australia.  Now we just have to figure out what we want to see and how to manage it.  Of course NZ will be included.  Neither of us is all that hot on the island nations of the South Pacific so that will probably be it.  Ntext spring, fall for them, is the general target but we all know that shit happens!  Some day there will be photos but there is absolutely no guarantee!

Thanks for stopping by.  Have a good one!

Final thoughts

We've been home about a month and a half now and things are returning to whatever normal is.  Well, except for the election.  That was disappointing!  But that's another story.  I do have faith that this country can survive even The Donald.

Italy was really great.  It was horribly crowded but if that's my worst problem it's just another thing to 'get over'.  It occurred to me that I haven't posted any photos of our hotel rooms.  My wife is a great supporter of Trip Advisor because of that we would ordinarily find a hotel and make a reservation for the next day.  She mostly used the phone app but used the tablet on occasion.  This room in Siena is typical for us.

She ordinarily looked for free wifi and free parking.  That got us into the $120-$150 range room.  We did have smaller rooms a couple times but this is quite representative.  The parking usually kept us out of the city center which is both good and bad.  In Siena we drove to public parking so we could walk in the city.  In larger cities, we planned it so as to not have the car.

The bathroom is also quite typical:  sink, shower, toilet and bidet.  We had a couple showers that had a problem; most notably the one in Venice where the hot water would disappear for a few moments in the middle of the shower.  However Venice was it's own special place.

It was an old apartment and probably typical of Venice.  U.S. building codes definitely weren't in effect.  There was an inset in the hall floor that said 1863 F B; perhaps that is the year it was built.  The bed was a queen size but it worked and we enjoyed the apartment aspect of the place.  It was about 400 sq. ft. comprising living room, kitchen, bath and two bedrooms.  I posted a picture earlier of the 'street' which was certainly less that six feet wide.

Much of the furniture was old.  That's not bad just different.

The eat-in kitchen was certainly adequate and had a basic selection of pots, pans, etc.  The white cabinet on the upper right contains the instant-on water heater that also went instant-off during our showers.  We did make a traditional meal here once.  Otherwise it was used for breakfasts mostly.

For two weeks we rented a car drove about in the country and in smaller cities.  We had a Renault Captur.

Frankly we thought it was rather odd looking with it's two-tone look.  In this country I'd expect it to be a used police car but, no, it was nice and new.  We did see two or three other cars with the same paint scheme but I guess it's an acquired taste.  It was a six speed manual with a rather small, frugal engine.  We found it quite comfortable.  On the back roads we mostly used we would seldom exceed 90 kph.  Once we found the Italian version of Gas Buddy life got better.  Not just because we found cheaper gas but also we could find the station which was a problem once or twice. 

So that's the odds-n-ends of the Italy trip.  Since then life has slowed to it's usual pace.  We did go spend the night in Las Vegas a few days ago.  We stayed at one of the smaller strip hotels, Casino Royale, but I got a kick out of the view from our window.  

It seemed appropriate to be where we could see the Las Vegas version of the Rialto Bridge at the Venetian next door.  Thanks for stopping by.  Take care.

End of the trip in Venice

When we left Lake Garda we went north and down through the mountains towards a city called Vicenza.  This was for practical reasons only.  We needed to do some laundry and we needed to be close to the Venice airport so we could return our rental car the next morning.  The city had all we needed.  The hotel we stayed at was close to the motorway so it was really a business person's hotel.  We did have a small balcony though so spent part of the afternoon out there.  The view is mostly of the apartment buildings nearby but you can see the mountains.  You can also see our little rental Renault (black with a white roof) in the parking lot.

We decided to take the car on one last mission and went up to a small town called Bassano di Grappa.  They claim to be where the grappa liquor was invented.  It was simply a small but busy city.  We had lunch at a little 'British Pub' by the side of the river.  They had pretty good food, English beer and a nice view of the river, the ancient covered bridge and the Alps.  Not a bad stop at all!

The next morning we were off to the Venice airport.  That was kind of an experience.  There are three parking garages all with the same first number; I don't remember exactly but they were like 5A, 5B and 5C.  It wasn't clear to us which one housed the rental car return so we ended up going up and down 5A and 5B before finding the return at the very top of 5C.  Well, we made it anyway! 

So now we got the bus into town, which leaves you at the railway station, and went looking for our hotel.  The hotel advertised itself as being close to the railway station and sure enough, it wasn't hard to find.  My wife had opted for what they called an 'apartment' so we were eager to find out what we'd rented.  The folks at the hotel were very nice giving us a cool drink while they hunted up someone who could take us to our new digs.  This little gal grabbed my wife's bag and off we went.  I was expecting the 'apartment' to be two or three buildings away.  Well, it was more like half a mile!  We actually measured it using my wife's pedometer!  We went along across a couple canals across a couple small piazzas and finally down this narrow passageway.

In the end it was fine but it sure wasn't where we had assumed it would be!  It was a 2 bedroom apartment with a small eat-in kitchen, living room and bath.  The bath was sketchy but it was kind of fun living there.  And, what did we do in Venice?  We walked! 

My wife and I both love boating and have owned several.  I always assumed that we'd use boats to get around Venice but we never got on board a single one.  There are plenty of boats though.  Work boats are used to carry goods all around town.

Most tourists will be using the vapparetto which is basically a boating bus or a boating taxi.  In this photo you see both.  This vaparetto isn't very crowded but most of the ones we saw were packed!  The water taxi's looked pretty cool.

Even the police use boats.  These two cops seemed to be having a fairly nice ride.

However, as I said we walked everywhere.  Did I mention that Venice is a car-free zone?  Not a car in sight when you are talking about the interior of the city.  It's just not possible.  There isn't anywhere to drive them much less park!  Delivery of things is via boat until you have to carry whatever on the 'street'.  Then you use a specialized wheel barrow.  The front forks extend a couple feet and have little steel wheels.  You then tip the barrow back so the wheels are on the next step then slide forwards until the main wheels have support then repeat until you are on top of the bridge.  Going down is just going slowly!  Those guys earn their pay for sure.

Of course everyone wants to visit St. Mark's Basilica on the Piazza San Marco.  We wandered on over there in quite a round-about manner but here's what we found.

Talk about people!  My wife and I aren't ones for crowds and this huge Piazza was filled to the brim.  As we walked along we were just weaving between tour groups each with their guide.  Some of the guides had little radios that transmitted to their group only but lots of them just yelled.  Then we saw the lines for the Basilica and the Doge's Palace.  Suddenly finding our way OUT of the Piazza sounded like a great idea.  I did take a photo of San Giorgio Maggiore church across the water.

So what we did for the remainder of our three days in Venice was to just love the city and avoid all the tourist highlights.  If we ever decide we absolutely MUST see St. Mark's, we'll go in February or sometime.  We did cross the famous Rialto Bridge.  The interior walkway was being redone and was kind of a mess but the outside is still very beautiful.  It is also very crowded both inside and out!

On the Grand Canal is where the grandest homes were built.  They are still pretty grand.  This was across from a restaraunt where we had lunch.

That lunch was kind of a special one just because the place was on the canal.  When I say special, I mean expensive.  But it wasn't too bad and every once in a while it's good to try something new. 

So that wound up our trip to Italy.  My wife's pedometer got a good workout and we saw more churches than I would have though possible.  We flew from Venice to London and London back to Las Vegas.  Where ever we have lived coming home always feels good.  Coming home to Las Vegas was no exception.  It's good to be back.  I'm sorry I've been so tardy about posting these.  I think I'm getting slower with every trip.  Anyway, thanks for stopping by!

Lake Garda and the town of Malcesine

The three great mountain lakes in Northern Italy are Lake Maggiore, Lake Como and Lake Garda going from west to east.  We decided to visit Lake Garda simply because it was on our way to Venice.  It turned out to be a very interesting choice.  The lake is quite long and narrow and the town of Malcesine is about half way up on the eastern shore.

Our hotel was about 2 km from the town center but there was a lovely walkway along the lake shore that you could take to the center.  That was great.  You will note that the town is long and thin because the mountain is right there.  There is a gondola ride that goes up it and every afternoon we saw para-gliders.

Looking across the lake you can see the buildings from the little towns on the other side.

The town center itself was BUSY!  We had lunch there but didn't want to stay.  The thing we didn't realize before we came here was that many of the tourists visiting were from Germany or Austria.  I think there were three German networks and two Austrian on the television feed; we had BBC World News.  When we were downtown every other car had German license plates.  It was kind of different.  One of the other reasons the town center was so crowded is because there are ferries carrying people up and down the lake.  The tourists are let off in the center of town, they wander around a bit then go back to the town where they are staying.  

Our hotel was quiet, perhaps because we were on the back side and we had a balcony!  You can see also how the mountain raises up with little shore line for building.

Given that we had a balcony and given that there was a little grocery store right across the street we couldn't help but have a picnic dinner out on the balcony.  Tough life but someone has to do it!

There was one thing I'd never seen before in the little store across the street.  Taps where the customer could get a plastic container and help themselves to wine.  Not bad!

My kind of grocery store!  And it was only 1.80 euro a liter.  Somehow I don't think Safeway is going to pick up on this marketing ploy. 

We are almost back to Venice.  Another stop in the town of Vicenza then off to Venice.  Thanks for coming along.  Take care.