Ippoippo

Finally… I got around to sorting out the photos from our little rail trip to Italy.

… yeah, this post is a week late, but there you go.

The Italian Job

Last Sunday, we got back from Italy having spent a week there.
On the previous weekend, we travelled up to London on Saturday night, crashing over there before taking the Eurostar (our second time using it, but first time from St. Pancras) to Paris. We then caught the Sleeper train in Paris to take us onto Florence (arriving on Monday morning). The sleeper train was pretty good. The conductor in our carriage was a very friendly Italian chap, who made us Cappucino in the morning to wake us before our arrival in Florence.

Monday was spent pretty much wandering around Florence. The market was pretty good, though it was very strange to be in a conversation with some of the stall holders using Japanese! Turns out a lot of Japanese ladies (who have married Italians) live there, and a lot of them help out on some of the stalls selling local produce. Any stall with a Japanese person on it has a real advantage when it comes to visiting Japanese tourists!

Talking of tourists, Florence is a very tourist-y place The place we ate at (despite being recommended in my guide book) certainly had a tourist orientated feel to it (atmosphere was spoilt by a very large and loud tour group all chomping on a set meal which looked rubbish!).
On Tuesday, we headed off for a wine tour down in San Gimignano region (a white wine area in Tuscany) and then onto Chianti region itself.
The tour was a different style to the wine tour we did in Australia (which was very casual). This tour, whilst not being in your face formal, still had a more ‘lets learn about traditional wine’ feel to it. It was pretty interesting though.
Tuesday evening was then spent in a wine bar on the other side of the river Arno (on the south side away from the main city). Much better. Less touristy feel, though the staff could still speak a reasonable level of English to help out with my poor Italian.

On Wednesday, we took the train for the our journey up to Bologna. I’ve stayed in Bologna before, as a base for when myself and two friends went to the San Marino Grand Prix down in Imola.
It was less busy than Florence, with not many tourists it site. Hurrahh!
Yuko really loved the streets and architecture, and on of the main shopping streets (Via Indipendenza). The one disappointment was where we ate on Wednesday night, at Pizzaria Nicolas in Piazza San Martino. We ate there twice when I was in Bologna back in 2001. Huge pizzas, and great food! This time, the pizza’s were still big, but the didn’t taste as good.
On Thursday we spent the morning in Modena and Maranello, having lunch at Ristorant Cavallino opposite the Ferrari factory.
Thursday evening was great though. Deciding not to bother with the guide book, or my previous experience of Bologna, we decided to find a random place to eat.
So we stumbled across Trattoria dal Biassanot (Via Piella). What a great place!!!! The staff were really, really nice (spoke English a fair bit, though we used as much Italian as we could with them). Food was great though. The best thing was trying ice cream with proper 10 year old Modenese Balsamic Vinegar on it (which is very syrupy). My god!!!! It’s wierd how adding a little drop of that vinegar almost adds like a lemon-ish taste to the rather creamy ice-cream they had.

Friday was our last day in Bologna, so we spent it shopping. Getting ham, tortellini, and balsamic vinegar to take home. Our sleeper train back to France wasn’t until 10 that night. So, we ate again at Trattoria dal Biassanot.

The sleeper home wasn’t so fun. They people next to us were loud, and the conductor this time was a miserable sod. Ahh well.

New Toys

On arrival back in the UK on Saturday afternoon (we got back to Paris in the morning) we headed straight to the Apple Store near Oxford Circus….. and got both myself and Yuko are iPhone 3G. Woohooo. Yuko has the 16Gb White, and I’ve got the 16Gb Black. It did take about 1 hour of queuing though!! Yuko loves the phone because it works in Japanese, and we have unlimited data access, so she can use her phone in exactly the same way as she would use one in Japan (i.e., use Email rather than SMS). Having said that, SMS still works in Japanese too.

The last couple of weeks have been quite busy in work… hence the lack of posting. This week is the last ‘big push’, so it will be nice to get that out of the way.

Meanwhile, Yuko and I have been reaping the rewards of our gardening, sampling some of the potatos, turnips, various herbs, various salads and onions that we’ve been growing.
We’ve haven’t eaten much of it yet, but our Kale plantation has grown really well, and the peas and beans are on the way now too. Some of the oriental greens have now been planted for later on in the year.
All good stuff anyway.

Next month, Yuko and I are also off on holiday to Italy (Florence and Bologna). Now, since jetting off there is somewhat ‘un-eco’ (going there is un-eco too I admit), we’ll be going by train instead. So, it’s off to London by train, then hope on the Eurostar to Paris. Then we’ll take the sleeper train from Paris to Florence. We’ll get to see a fair bit of the journey on the way down I guess, before so that will be quite nice I hope.
The plan is to spend a little time in Florence, with a little trip out to the wine making regions before heading up to Bologna. This will be Yuko’s first trip to Italy and the my second (my first being to Bologna as the base for daily trips down to Imola for the San Marino Grand Prix back in 2001).

We’ve decided to do this now because fuel costs (and thus travel) are heading up now so we should do this while we can. Also, this will be our first holiday together since we’ve got married (yeah, I know we’ve been to various places since then, but the trip to Australia was for my work and trip to Japan last December was more about family and friend commitments, and the trip to Paris was really only done as a favour for Yuko’s cousin when he visited the UK)… so at long last get to have a week off together. Hurrrahh!

Looks like Tsukiji market has got to popular.

Must admit, we missed the auctions, because the trains from Matsudo (where we lived in Japan) we not running early enough for us to get there for them. We still got to see plenty of the aftermath though.