A not so Joyeux Noël

Santa brought me a case of food poisoning for Xmas this year. Not what I actually wanted big guy – the Italian leather fur lined gloves would have been *way* more appreciated. So that little event kind of put paid to our Xmas lunch plans. By the way, you might want to stay away from this place (although the entrees were delicious): Trattoria da Ginone. Chris then proceeded to burn the ragu that he was making for himself so it was a pretty miserable culinary experience all round. Oh well, I guess this is what ‘travel stories’ are made of. Certainly I won’t ever forget Xmas in Florence!

This is where we’re staying: Tintoretto, a lovely 16th century palazzo only a road away from the river Arno and a stone’s throw from the Ponte Vecchio.  It looked idyllic in the pictures, but having to run up two flights of stairs to go to the bathroom is not the best use of my time when ill. Oh well, who was to know… Anyway, I’ve recovered now so looking forward to getting out there and exploring. We bought a ‘Friends of the Uffizi‘ membership which for only €50 each gives us unlimited access to all the galleries and museums in Florence – I might be all cultured-out by the time we’re finished with Florence!

Joyeux Noël

OK, I’m suffering a bit of a language crisis here. All this conjugation of French verbs has left me bereft in sea of multilingualism in Italy. I’m so confused I don’t know what is coming out of my mouth: French, Italian, English… not than anyone could understand me before anyway 🙂 Florence looks very promising shopping-wise however so this could be a very good visit (although not so much for my bank account – err… what’s left anyway). Mind you, we were lucky to get here. I can’t believe we managed to get on the wrong train again so soon after our Lyon disaster*.

Xmas lunch is going to be interesting, but we should manage to cobble something together. Well, I say we, but I think we all know by now that Chris will be the master chef in this oven-less kitchen. Just one thing: Emma DO NOT ring me at 6am xmas morning. Remember the 7 hour time difference and a merry xmas will be had by all.

*a yet to be documented adventure involving a station siding in the middle of nowhere, a pub with really bad wine and a raucous choir. Ohh. and let’s not forget the drum.

Secret passages

Finally woke up to snow this morning! Not quite enough to make a snowball, but snow nevertheless. Now that I have achieved the only thing on my bucket list, I guess I’ll need a new purpose in life 🙂 Not much has been happening travel wise – but last weekend we had the Escalade festival which celebrates the Swiss fighting off their French attackers in 1602. This is a huge event in Geneva and it seemed the whole town turned out for it. They have a ‘secret passage’ which they open up once a year and naturally we made a beeline for it. I have to say I expected a bit more out of a secret passage, though it was interesting to walk in the footsteps of those who have gone before us over 400 years ago.

Our big adventure starts next week  – we’re off to Florence for xmas and new year’s so there will be more frequent blog updates over the next six weeks. What comes after that has changed many times, but we should have some news soon… Meanwhile, my capacity for alcohol consumption has increased dramatically. I’ll shortly be able to drink my own body weight in an evening. Oh, by the way I’m getting a gym membership when I get back to Australia in Feb!

Grace & shopping

Now I’m not big on the whole cultural experience – seen one cathedral, seen them all, I always say – but today I saw something so beautiful I can scarcely put it into words: The Basilica at Notre Dame in Lyon. I was so utterly gobsmacked on walking into the cathedral, that I stood for several minutes just gasping at the incredible mosaics and stained glass windows. If I can’t put my faith in god, at least I can believe one could be closer to him in a place like this. Words are so inadequate here – it was unexpected… to say the least.

The gallo-roman museum we traipsed to next wasn’t as awe-inspiring for me, although they did have a special ‘history of medicine’ exhibition going on with some fairly interesting items on offer such as a four-valve vaginal speculum! What did they get up to in the old days? Culture out of the way, we proceeded to walk practically every street of Old Town in Lyon; shopping, then attempting to find a restaurant that wasn’t too touristy. At some point you just give up and sit down at the next bar you find. Unfortunately that doesn’t bode well for the wine choice, but one drinks on regardless…