I flew Sleazyjet to Malpensa late in the evening Fri 4th. Malpensa was a fairly messy airport with dubious transfer to the city center. There was supposedly a train to central Milan called "Malpensa Express" , but this was not running in the evening. There were no signs to buses to city center, so I spent some time finding the proper bus stop. I saw other tourists running around more confused. The airport also seemed to have a fairly badly planned layout. I could not help myself from chuckling at the policemen frantically trying to stop people from stopping in the bus lane to drop people off. Apparently they forgot to make a pick-up/drop-off zone close to the terminal. It was a long bus ride into the center (50 minutes), so I didn't get to my hotel until very late.
Saturday I took a morning train to Como, and continued by bus to Bellagio. I was glad I wasn't driving myself. The road was so narrow that it was only just room for two cars, so before every blind turn, the bus driver would honk the horn like crazy to warn other drivers that they need to brake. Other than that it was a fairly nice, one-hour bus drive with spectacular views of Lago di Como. This lake looks so much like a fjord, it's almost like being home in Norway (except that it's 15 degrees hotter and way more people, of course). Bellagio is located at the point where all the arms of Lago di Como come together, so it's supposedly the best place to see the lake. It's also a resort village with lots of upscale hotels and restaurants and private villas of the rich and famous. I spent a couple of hours there walking around looking at the great views - my pictures do not give them justice.
On the way back I had some issues with the bus driver not accepting my ticket, and not speaking a word of English. He could not tell me where to buy a different ticket, so I searched around the posted timetables and found something about "tickets sold in news kiosk in Piazza Massari". After locating a city map to find this piazza, I found that it was quite far away, so I had to run over there, get a ticket and run back. I made it just in time. On the way back the bus driver hit another car in the side when going around one of those blind turns, so the roads were very narrow indeed.
I jumped out in the center of Como to look at the huge Duomo. Como is a fairly small town, but for some reason they have a cathedral-size church in the center. I struggled a bit to get back, since there were hardly any signs to the railway station, and some people I asked for directions pointed me the wrong way. After asking some more people, I finally found it, but I think I really need to learn some rudimentary Italian. Unfortunately, I missed my train, since the ticket machines were out of order, so there was a huge line at the ticket counters. The cashiers seemed to have all the time in the world, and lots of Italians around me were really angry with how slow these people were. In the end I jumped on a regional rain to a station in the outskirts of Milano, and made my way to the center using the Metro.
I spent the evening walking around in the center and visiting the party district (Porto Ticino). Around two canals they have lined up an endless row of bars, pizzerias and clubs. They were all full, and the streets were incredibly crowded. At times it felt like being at the Koniginnenacht in The Hague (only that the women were way better looking, of course)
Sunday I took the metro to Castello Sforzesco and walked around the whole castle. I found it pretty uninteresting, except for an exhibition of anatomical drawings made by Leonardo da Vinci. I continued over to the Santa Maria del Graze. Turned out they were closed, even though the sermons were finished (Angry priest shouted "Chiuso! Chiuso!" and pushed tourists out. The outside plaques said they should be open, so I don't know what that was all about). Also, in order to see the famous "Last supper"-picture, you needed to book in advance, and time slots fill up two weeks in advance. I went back to the center instead, and climbed the stairs to the top of the Duomo. It had really nice views from the top, but the interior wasn't that interesting.
Monday I was supposed to continue south to Genova. I share my office with an Italian, so he had warned me about there being a train strike on this day. I had printed special timetables before going, to make sure I would find a train which was not part of the strike. What I didn't know, was that over the weekend the strike had been expanded to also include all buses and all metros, so suddenly I found myself staring at a closed metro station 4 km from the central station half an hour before my train was supposed to run. All the taxi-stands were jam-packed with people, so I was definitely in trouble. Luckily, I managed to grab a taxi waiting on a red light, so I made my train to Genova, but only just.
Tuesday I went by train to La Spezia, visiting the nice naval museum and walking along the harbor. I went by regional train back towards Genova to get to the famous national park called "Cinque Terre" (which is on the UNESCO world heritage list). Essentially this is five isolated villages, hugging the cliffs next to the sea. They have kept their traditional character, so it's a nice pointer to how Liguria used to be. I started walking from the first of the five villages (Riomaggiore) walking the "Lover's Path" (Via dell' Amore) next to the sea over to Manarola. From Manarola the path becomes more primitive, before ending in a series of steps (400 or so) leading up to Corniglia. I spent a couple of hours just walking between these small villages before taking the train to Vernazza, which is the biggest one (so...checkbox-wise I got four out of five villages).
The morning after, I took the ferry to Portofino, which is a very pretty small village on a very picturesque peninsula. Supposedly, it's also a hangout for the rich and famous, so they call it the St. Tropez of the Italian riviera. I walked around the pretty streets and gardens for an hour or so before jumping on the bus to Santa Margherita Ligure, a beach resort village further up the peninsula.
I spent the afternoon seeing the rest of the sights in Genova, like the San Lorenzo church, which had a nice relic museum filled with crusader booty. The relics included stuff like "splinters of wood from the true cross", "the plate which was used to serve John the Baptist's head", "John the baptist's ashes" and of course, the holy grail. A bargain at only four euros... ;-)
I finished Genova by visiting their aquarium, which is supposedly the biggest in Europe. I didn't find it all that interesting, since I found the Barcelona one with the shark tunnel nicer. Their penguin tank was kind of cool, though. I also liked the hummingbird forest, since I've never seen hummingbirds up close.
Thursday morning I went by train along the Riviera di Ponente to Ventimiglia, the border station to get to France. Inside the station the ticket machines were broken AGAIN, so I had to get in the long queue to buy a ticket for my train to Nice. I barely made my train, and I was really pissed at Trenitalia for not servicing their ticket machines. Almost every train station I walked into in Italy had broken ticket machines, and overall I think I spent almost an hour every day waiting in train stations. Not my idea of a nice holiday...
Since I was in the area, I decided to visit Monaco with the city of Monte Carlo. This is a tax paradise on the riviera, having an expat population of a whopping 80%. I stayed overnight in Nice, a fairly uninteresting travel destination. In general there wasn't all that much to see there, except the Promenade des Anglais which is a long street that runs next to beach. Definitely only for the party-crowd. In the evening, I had dinner at a nice Italian restaurant, finally being served some good food. For some reason I only found bad restaurants in Genova.
The next morning I jumped on the train to Aix-en-Provence. It was a very nice train journey. The railway hugs the coastline most of the way and you get a really good look at the Cote D'Azur. Also, the French trains were nicer than the Italian ones. Aix-en-Provence itself was a very nice city with a compact city center full of outdoor restaurants. It looked typical Provencal with all houses in the same colors and narrow streets. Lots of quaint little shops selling wine, confit and foie gras added to this very French atmosphere. Definitely a very touristy city, without it being over the top in any way. I really liked Aix.
Saturday I took the TGV-train to Paris. The TGV was very nice, but extremely expensive (The price was the same as my flight ticket Paris-Rotterdam). It was a very fast, comfortable train and a good way to get to Paris. It only spent about two and a half hours to get me from the coast in the south all the way up to Paris in the north, so I found that impressive. The scenery wasn't as interesting as I had hoped for, except for the first part through a very typical Provencal landscape with yellow sunflower fields and deep purple lavender fields.
My hotel in Paris was in the lively Marais district, very close to the Bastille-area.
On this visit to Paris, I wanted to do stuff I didn't have time for the last time I was there. That was mainly Versailles and the Louvre.
I took the metro over to the Louvre without any real plan for what I wanted to see. As luck would have it, I didn't have much choice in what to see anyway, because there were so many people there that you just had to more or less follow the stream of people floating through the museum. It was fun to see the Mona Lisa room where people were pushing and shoving and jumping up and down to get close enough to take pictures of the painting. Almost like watching fish jumping in a fish farm. I just walked past, threw a cursory glance from the side. Been there, done that. Check.
Overall, I didn't find the Louvre all that interesting. Probably I was jaded from looking at Italian church art for a week before. In addition, some of the older stuff, and the Egyptian stuff were way better in the museum in Berlin.
I spent the evening having drinks in different bars in the Marais. Some of the bars were really nice, with good clientele, good music, good themed decor and very nice drinks. Too bad they were really expensive compared to the bars in Milan or the Hague, but you can't have everything.
Sunday I took the RER-train to Versailles. Immediately I got caught up in the Shitloads of tourists streaming towards the palace. That's probably what I get for trying to do this in a weekend in the high season. Good thing I bought my ticket up front from the ticket office at the Louvre. The line for the ticket office in Versailles was amazingly long, so it felt really good to be able to skip the queue and go straight to the palace. Unfortunately, it was really crowded inside. I do not like big crowds, and I like even less to pay to be in one. I've been in my share of palaces by now, so it wasn't that interesting anyway. It wasn't that easy to see anything, with people in the way everywhere, so after an hour or so of being frustrated in the palace, I walked out to the formal gardens. They were nice, in a way, except that they hadn't turned on any of the fountains and they had hidden speakers blaring out loud baroque music everywhere. I found the end effect somewhat cheesy, really theme-park style. "Welcome to Cultureland! We have palaces with nice paintings! We have gardens which play classical music!". I escaped the crowds by taking the train back to Paris, going to visit the industrial park called La Defence. Lots of nice buildings and strange modernistic architecture.
In the afternoon I went by tram to the park called Buttes-Chaumont. This is a very nice park in a fairly central location with lakes, bridges, caves, waterfalls and good views of Paris.
The 14th of July is the French national day, so the night before they have live music performances and dancing in the streets at various locations in Paris. The police had closed off the streets leading to Place de la Bastille, so the whole area was turned into a giant open-air concert with different bands playing various styles of music.
I got up early on the 14th to try to get a good spot for watching the military parade at Champs-Elysees. I was there an hour early, but still I didn't get a very good spot. Lots and lots of people had turned up to see the parade, so it was really crowded. There was also a lot of waiting involved, so overall it wasn't that great an experience, although the overflights were nice. I tried to leave early to try to get a head start out of the crowd, but suddenly everything clogged up and no-one could get anywhere. Then some people started behaving like cattle and started pushing. It was like being at a really crowded rock concert, only with lots of screaming police officers failing to get people to move. It took almost ten minutes for the crowd to move in any direction...
I escaped to the subway and went to Jardin du Luxembourg to get away from the worst crowds. I spent the rest of the day exploring other areas where I had not spent that much time, like Ile de Cite and St. Germain before flying out from Orly to Rotterdam in the evening.
Milan pictures
Genova pictures
Cinque Terre & Portofino pictures
Nice & Aix pictures
Paris pictures
