Holidays

Family Holiday In Italy

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Jane and I, our three sons, their wives/fiancées and our two grandchildren all made our way to a rather splendid villa in Italy for what turned out to be a wonderful holiday; all that I had hoped for and more. 

The Dramatic First View Of Our Holiday Villa As We Arrived

Getting everyone together for a family holiday for the first time like that was a feat of flexibility on the part of those, unlike me, who are still managing careers.  It also involved precise scheduling and effective logistics including three hire cars, enterprising use of car boot space, and multiple airports and pick up points.  I felt very privileged and lucky that we could manage it.

We stayed in a villa near Lake Bolsena, about 90 minutes north of Rome (where, at the end of the holiday, Jane and I, plus Youngest Son and fiancée, went to the wedding of one of Jane’s nieces).  The villa was in a very rural, rather remote setting overlooking an ancient volcanic caldera and Lake Bolsena within that.  It was an elegant, comfortable and well-equipped villa.  Importantly, for the relative youngsters and, especially, the grandchildren, it had a substantial swimming pool.

The Evening View From Our Terrace With Lake Bolsena In The Distance

We had every breakfast and evening meal at the villa.  The group included excellent cooks and baristas plus willing clearer-uppers afterwards.  I barely got a look in on either aspect but took responsibility for the recycling and most of the considerable waste disposal.  Despite the local market and supermarkets being a little disappointing we ate extremely well and the bottles and cans recycling bins were repeatedly overflowing.

Catching Stray Wildlife In The Pool

Orvieto was about an hour’s drive away and is perched on the top of a prehistoric volcanic plug.  We had been there when our children were very young but while memories fade, of course, the key visitor sites were unchanged.  Given we visited the city just out of prime tourist season this time, the crowds felt substantial.  However, as ever, a few yards away from the main tourist routes, the streets were quiet and picturesque. 

Quiet Orvieto Square In Front Of The Church of Sant Andrea And A 12-sided Tower

After a very good lunch with the grandchildren and their parents, Jane and I left the group to visit Orvieto Cathedral which dominates the city and which can be seen from many miles away.  The façade is wonderfully preserved and impressive.  The other walls are also memorable – both inside and out – since they, and the internal columns supporting the roof, are unusually, horizontally striped with alternate layers of basalt and travertine.  It was great to be able to visit and remember it again.

Views Of Orvieto Cathedral

We visited a few of the smaller towns around Lake Bolsena.  Now edging beyond the tourist season, some of these reflected what we have read about small rural Mediterranean villages gradually emptying out and becoming inactive backwaters.  Our closest town was Grotte Di Castro.  It is beautifully (but seemingly precariously) situated on a high ridge; of course, these hill-top towns are two-a-penny in much of Italy but even so it seemed surprisingly quiet and there were a lot of ‘For Sale’ signs.

Views From And In Grotte Di Castro

Montefiascone on the opposite side of Lake Bolsena was bigger and busier.  It too had wonderful hill top vistas and inviting alleys and cobbled streets.  Their steps and sharp inclines challenged my currently dodgy left knee but I think the exercise did it good.  While in the town, we were lucky to avoid the storms that seemed to be gathering all around us and, having failed – not for the first time – to find a restaurant both open and selling pizza before sundown, we headed back to our villa via Bolsena. 

Stormy Weather Over Montefiascone With Views Of Lake Bolsena and Cattedrale Di Santa Margherita

The town of Bolsena was much closer to our villa and did offer takeaway pizza during the day.  We sampled that with First Grandchild (FG) in mind couple of times since he had said a few weeks before that pizza was what he was looking forward to most about the holiday.  In the end, I think we were more concerned about tracking down pizza than he was.

Bolsena

Bolsena is another attractive town perched on a volcanic outcrop.  Several of us had a good lunch in a restaurant adjacent to the lake.  While FG played with a new remote-control toy, several of us took turns to take very pleasant strolls down a street lined with huge plane trees and up through its pedestrianised alleys to the castle and main church.  From the top of the town there were broad views of the Lake Bolsena, its islands and the surrounding ridges.  Second Grandchild (SG) was entertainable, calm and happy (as usual), FG had his new toy, and we all had a relaxed time in the town.

Views of Bolsena

Lake Bolsena is the largest volcanic lake in Europe and there was volcanic activity within it as little as 2,000 years ago.  With it being so close to our villa, a swim in its waters was on the holiday agenda for many (but not me; I really don’t like getting wet!)  SG and his Dad also missed out because it was nap-time but the rest of the group had a boisterous time in the water.  FG loved the water and all the splashing with his Granny, Mum, Dad, aunts and uncles.  I took charge of capturing the action on camera with the big sky and gorgeous landscape around the lake in the background.

Frolics In Lake Bolsena Under A Lovely Blue Sky

Much more swimming, splashing and fun and games were done at our villa.  It was lovely to see both grandchildren ignoring the coolness of the water and just loving every moment in it.  I also loved the opportunity to take both of them around the villa on little walks.  FG is old enough now to appreciate nature and we had lots of lizards, millipedes and ants to observe and blackberries to eat on our ‘adventures’ (as he called them).

Quality Time With FG

And then it was time for us to leave all this fun and conviviality.  It had been so good to see everyone enjoy the holiday with its mix of group and separate activity, the games, the food and drink and the diverse chat.  I hope we can repeat the model again but practicalities may intervene to prevent that so, for now, I am just going to continue to soak up the happy memories.

Goodbye, Family Holiday In Italy

Scratching The Surface of Tasmania

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Tasmania is more than half the size of England so it is no wonder that, in the five days Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I have been here, we have only seen a fraction of the island. However, having met up with Youngest Son (YS) here, we have seen a good deal of the south-east of the island and of Hobart, the capital. Once again, Australia has been spectacular.

Panorama Of Hobart From Mount Wellington (Originally Called Kunanyi)

It was great to see our exuberant and bouncy YS again. Having now parted once more, as we head to Perth and he heads back to Brisbane, it is nice to know we will see him back in the UK in May as his three-year sojourn in Australia comes to an end.

LSW certainly welcomed YS’s love of driving; he drove us proficiently and everywhere. We started in Hobart but soon hit the road east through wide valleys of brown grass and rolling hillsides covered with dense eucalyptus and pine, to the little town of Swansea. Here we did a couple of coastal walks and then drove on to the dramatic Freycinet Peninsula.

Lichen Coloured Rocks At Loontitetmaorrelehoiner Track, Swansea

Here, YS got us up very early to walk up to the lookout across Wineglass Bay to see the sunrise. The climb started in the dark silence with a terrific view of the stars and Milky Way above. It finished with the sort of sunrise view over pink granite cliffs and a remote circular bay that one sees in picture books. We were alone as the sun came up, gradually lit up the rocks and triggered the dawn chorus of birds. It was spellbinding.

Wineglass Bay and Mount Mayson from Wineglass Bay Lookout At Sunrise

There were two more highlights nearby. The first was a walk to Cape Tourville Lighthouse as a brief, violent storm hit the coast. We could see the rain coming in sudden, vicious gusts of wind. We rushed some photographs and ran back to our car. We reached it as the hail hit. It was all very invigorating.

Storm Approaching Cape Tourville

Then, as the rain cleared and newly cleared air settled again, we visited Sleepy Bay. This was lovely and, as usual, almost empty of fellow walkers. We pottered around for a calming hour or so amongst the brightly coloured boulders and gritty sand filled with shells. We visited other bays but this was my favourite.

Sleepy Bay

From the accurately named 9 Mile Beach at Swansea and the Freycinet Peninsula, we travelled on to the larger Tasman Peninsula. Here we focused on the famous coastal features near Eaglehawk Neck and Port Arthur namely: Tasman Arch, Devils Kitchen, Blowhole and Remarkable Cave.

Remarkable Cave, Tasman Arch And Blowhole

All are similar geomorphic features showing the sandstone and volcanic dolerite coast at various stages of erosion. Each was great in its way and all were wonderfully accessible and at their best in the welcome sun.

View From Devils Kitchen, Tasman Peninsula

We returned to Hobart having failed to visit the world heritage site at Port Arthur that showcases early immigrant convict treatment and not having undertaken a really big hike. There just hadn’t been time.

Nor was there time to do all the trips out to National Parks around Hobart. But our days were, nonetheless, full (and not just with eating and drinking in fun bars and restaurants such as Hobart Brewery and Aloft on the vibrant waterfront, and Kalbi in grittier North Hobart).

Preachers Bar In Salamanca Square – With Coach Seating In The Beer Garden!

We reached the peak of monumental Mount Wellington which towers over Hobart. It is covered by huge eucalyptus trees at its base, shorter eucalyptus further up and boulder hugging shrubs and lichens at the top. It’s rocky sides are sheer with spectacular pinnacles of rock (known as the ‘Organ Pipes’). It’s an impressive and very accessible mountain. The views from it rival those we saw last year from Cape Town‘s Table Mountain.

Windy And Stupendous Views On The Top Of Mount Wellington

We travelled north up the Derwent Valley for a rather fine lunch in a converted convict hospital and mental institution (Agrarian Kitchen in New Norfolk). We got away and travelled south to visit some of LSW’s old college friends who migrated here 30 years ago. Their hospitality was very generous and it was fascinating to hear of their lives in Tasmania including their gardening challenges with the local wildlife.

Derwent Valley Cliffs At New Norfolk

On the way with these friends to the local, authentically rustic pub, and then on the way back to Hobart, we saw a lot of marsupial wildlife (wallabies, pademelon and something smaller) for the first time. I saw the full range of stuffed versions at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. This also had an excellent exhibition on Antarctica, the remote islands between Antarctica and Australia and, of course, the impact of climate change.

A Couple Of Our Friends’ Domesticated Animals: Selby and Thomas

Our final full day in Hobart started with a wander around the large and colourful market in Salamanca.

Colour And Goodness At Salamanca Market

However, the day was dominated by a trip to The Museum of Old and New Art (MONA). This was fabulous and I will leave it at that here and cover it in a separate blog post when I get home. At the point of writing this in Hobart airport, I think it is simply the most entertaining art gallery I have ever visited.

I visited Battery Point, an upscale residential area overlooking the bay in the early morning sun after breakfast on our last day.

Typical Battery Point Houses And The Castray Esplanade/Yacht Race Judges Hut

Now we are on our last leg of our Australian adventure. Perth promises to be every bit as interesting as Sydney and Tasmania. Once again though, all we can hope for is a taste of it.

Early Morning – Last Day In Hobart

Spectacular Sydney

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I’ve seen a lot of Facebook and Instagram pictures of Sydney Harbour but nothing really prepares you for its scale and beauty until you are on a ferry crossing it. Long-Suffering Wife (LSW) and I have again been fortunate with the weather here but I imagine that Sydney Harbour is spectacular in almost any weather.

Looking Back At Sydney From The Manly Ferry

From the ferry one gets different perspectives of the iconic Sydney Bridge and Opera House. But once in open water the most impressive things are the sheer scale of the outer harbour, the multitude of interesting inlets and bays that line it, and the vast number of people on the water in something or other. I also liked the dramatic cliffs that stand on either side of the opening onto the Pacific.

Sydney Opera House (Of Course!)

We cleared some of the fuzz of not having slept for about 36 hours in transit from Doha, by wandering through the city, the Botanic Garden and the Opera House, and then boarding a ferry to Manly. The ocean breeze was as refreshing as the first cup of Australian coffee we had in a typically hip coffee bar in a Manly backstreet.

Manly Beach

Later in our stay in Sydney, LSW and I met up with an old friend who moved here a couple of years ago from our home town in Gloucestershire. She suggested another ferry trip and then a walk along the eastern promontory that protects the harbour. The views from Rose Bay to Watson Bay were again spectacular – this time, not only of the harbour coastline, but also of the grand glass and swimming pool-fronted houses that overlook this.

View of Sydney From Near Rose Bay

The Bondi Beach to Coogee walk we did on our last full day was also wonderful. This time we could see the full force of the Pacific Ocean. Again, the walkways and availability of quality drinks, eateries and other conveniences was excellent. As we noticed when we drove along the Great Ocean Road From Melbourne 18 months ago, Australians are (rightly) proud of their natural environment and want to make it accessible so it can be appreciated.

Bondi Swimming Pool, Bondi Beach And Coogee From Marks Park

Rock Formations Near Bondi Beach

Our other excursion out of Sydney centre was to the Northern Suburbs Memorial Gardens and Crematorium. This was definitely off the normal tourist routes! The reason for the visit was to find LSW’s grandfather’s crematorium plaque. It took LSW a while to relate her old map to the current, extended crematorium layout but she found it and so a big emotional to-do was ticked off.

LSW’s Grandfather’s Plaque (Died In Sydney 1953)

Of course, we also spent a lot of time walking around, drinking in and eating in Sydney centre. The streets and shops we saw were perhaps less interesting than those we recall from Melbourne but we loved the cafes and restaurants (especially Chin Chin, Paramount Coffee Project, Social Brew Cafe and the Quarrymans Hotel rooftop bar). We stayed near Darling Harbour which was lively and close to the rather sweet and calming Chinese Friendship Garden.

Darling Harbour

Panoramic View Of Chinese Garden Of Friendship

The Art Gallery of New South Wales (NSW) was even more impressive than expected. There was some great Aboriginal art and a wide selection of work by Australian and international artists (Brett Whiteley, Francis Bacon, Lucien Freud, etc.). But what made our visit exceptional was a special exhibition there of ‘Masters of Modern Art From The Hermitage’. This told of the history of this amazing Russian collection and included great examples by Matisse, Kandinsky, Picasso, Delaunay and many others. It was a very high quality show.

Examples Of Aboriginal Art At The Art Gallery of NSW

The Aboriginal art tended to support my theory (in my last blog post from Qatar) that desert artists tend to go for bright colours. However the Matisse, Delaunay and Kandinsky paintings on show underlined the mastery of colour by many European artists.

Examples of Delaunay and Kandinsky From The Masters of Modern Art From The Hermitage

After all that, the Museum of Contemporary Art felt tame. We didn’t stay long and soon retreated to a roof top bar.

Snapshots of Sydney (Bridge, Opera House, Queen Victoria’s Building, Botanic Gardens, Hospital)

We loved Sydney. it was especially lively due our visit coinciding with Mardi Gras celebrations and the weather was lovely. The food and drink was every bit as good as we had hoped/expected. The people were friendly and the service in pubs, restaurants and cafes was excellent. There is, as anticipated, plenty to see in the City beyond the obviously iconic. And the harbour is truly magnificent!

Random Bits Of Wildlife We Saw (Fairy-wren, Rainbow Lorikeet, Some Sort Of Iguana, Kookaburra)

On now to Hobart in Tasmania. The highlight there will be meeting up with Youngest Son (YS) who has travelled down from Brisbane for a few days. There will be other treats too I think….

Qatar: Architects’ Playground

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On our way to Australia, we stopped over for a couple of days with Long-Suffering Wife’s (LSW’s) brother in Doha, Qatar. He has been in the Middle East for many years. Currently, he is working on the design and build of one of the new stadia for the 2022 Football World Cup.

Doha’s Museum Of Islamic Art

It was great to see him in what has become his new natural habitat. Despite his work pressures, he kindly accommodated us and introduced us to some of the night life. This included the lively and labyrinthine Souk Waqif and some of the numerous hotels that cater for business expense accounts, ex-pats and the indigenous rich. LSW loved the valet parking but the highlight for us both was dinner at an Iranian restaurant called Parisa in Souk Waqif. The food was substantial and flavoursome and the decor was simply astonishing.

Parisa Entrance And Main Interior

Qatar is, in most ways, a very young country. For centuries it relied on fishing and pearl diving. It’s incredibly rapid growth has just been since the discovery of oil in the mid-20th century. Now it is vastly wealthy with investments all over the world and massive infrastructure development at home.

Construction seemed to be everywhere although there was a feeling that some had slowed recently due to political conflicts between Qatar and some of its neighbours.

Along the thoroughfares, new landscaping (with expensive-looking paving, date palms, colourful petunias and leaky pipe watering systems) is joining up buildings that are springing up from bare desert. Clearly there has been a massive amount of money and architectural imagination at play. The architects have had a huge amount of fun with everything from the buildings to the lamp-posts.

Part Of The Central Business District (CBD) (Including The ‘Condom Tower’)

The most impressive buildings I saw were the Museum of Islamic Art and the Jean Nouvel Museum. The latter is not yet complete, and was hard to get close, but it looks wonderful already.

Jean Nouvel Museum From The Corniche

Also, we were impressed by the Msheireb Downtown Area. This is a swathe of Doha that was part of the mid-20th century expansion, that then fell into disrepair and which has recently been cleared. It is being replaced by an innovative, relatively low rise, sustainable development. This uses shade and the wind for cooling and removes cars to underground passages. The area re-built so far feels accessible, fresh and calming.

Views Of Msheireb Downtown Area

Not all the new architecture works for me. Some of the buildings are bizarre or just ugly to my eyes. The blingy palaces and residential blocks on the artificial islands called The Pearl were particularly soulless and disappointing (although the gin palaces in the nearby marinas were as impressive as expected).

My impressions here were not helped by the piped muzak – truly ghastly – or that I temporarily thought I had lost my wallet. Fortunately I had simply left it at LSW’s brother’s house so my doom and gloom contingency planning was quickly made redundant.

The Pearl Tower Blocks And Marina

Qatar is fiercely proud of its heritage and culture. There are a number of cultural centres. One we visited was the Msheireb Enrichment Centre, on a huge barge, which provided some well presented, fascinating insights. The exhibits posed provocative questions about the role of social media and women, and about sustainability and climate change (surprising given the country’s dependence on oil/gas revenue and the car). It also explained the objectives of the Msheireb Downtown Project.

As part of that project, four historic buildings have been restored/re-built and now house interesting exhibitions on life in pre-modern Qatar, on the role of oil in the country’s development, and on slavery. The buildings were peaceful and cool in every sense.

Inside Bin Jelmood House, Msheireb Downtown

LSW and I visited the Mathaf Arab Museum of Modern Art several miles to the west of Doha centre. The trip was worthwhile despite none of the artists being known to us. The overall impression I got was that the desert light prompts artists to use a more colourful palette than we often see in the West.

One Of The Rooms At Mathaf Arab Museum Of Modern Art

However, the centrepiece of the Qatari focus on culture is the Museum of Islamic Art. We visited twice (all the museums are free), the second time to focus on the threat to Syrian monuments and cultural artefacts posed by the war there.

Various Items (Invariably Much Older Than Expected) At The Museum Of Islamic Art

A little like the Kolumba Museum in Cologne that we visited late last year, the emphasis is on quality not quantity. The pieces on show are terrific, the lighting is atmospheric and the interior architecture is inspiring. We loved it.

Inside One Of The Museum of Islamic Art Exhibition Rooms

The Cafe In The Museum Of Islamic Art Overlooking The Sea And The CBD

Our stopover in Doha was a huge success. It was made special by being able to meet up with LSW’s brother but we may well visit again on our way east in the future even if, by then, his work in Qatar is done.

Now on to Sydney.