Saturday's bus problem

Saturday 11th May, continued

After a thorough investigation of the necropolis we strolled back into Tarquinia town. There had not been many people at the burial site but it was even quieter here. It seems that between 1pm and 4pm everyone stops for a (delicious smelling) long lunch and / or a nap (this is one of the things that most appeals to me about living in a Mediterranean country. Everything was shut now - happily apart from the ice-cream shop - it must have been low season as even the bars and restaurants appeared to be on a break. So we refreshed ourselves with a gelato: coffee + pistachio for Matt and cinnamon + orange for me. 

Nature report 3

• Tarquinia has embraced the concept of a park for dogs on one side of the road and a park without them on the other side. I greatly approve of this type of canine apartheid. 
• We saw someone training a duckling (or maybe a gosling) in their front garden. At least this was the most plausible explanation of what they were doing. 
• Amazing lizard spotting today.
  
  Including some big green ones and one with a green body and brown tail. They are very camera shy.
• Like Cannes, Tarquinia is pleasingly free from seagulls (it's not very far from the sea) but it does have a pigeon issue. They seem to enjoy living in nooks in old walls. Fortunately we both avoided getting pooed on (although apparently this is lucky so maybe we weren't so fortunate after all.
• In the three hour shut down the only notable homo-sapien nature we observed was the occasional passage of a Boy Scout or Girl Guide (or whatever the local equivalent is) and an elderly man singing loudly outside a church. I don't think he was drunk, just happy. I think I would sing loudly too if I lived somewhere as lovely as Tarquinia.

We wandered in the town a bit more. It was one of those lovely places with an old building or beautiful view around each corner. I think I got an impression of what Italy would have been like in the 1950s, only now there were more parked cars and fewer mopeds. 

As the afternoon wore on we decided that we should make our way back to the ship. There would have been much worse places to be stuck than Tarquinia but we didn't fancy our chances of catching up with the ship in Corsica. The lady in the tourist information explained that we could get the small bus at 1700 or the big bus at 1620. It was 1615 and for this earlier bus we would have to buy tickets in advance at the tobacconist (they may be advanced with dog division, but not with bus ticket provision), so Matt waited at the bus stop to hold up the bus should it arrive and I dashed off to buy the tickets. By 1650 the bus had not turned up. We mused over the possibilities:

• this was one of the rarest of occasions in Italian public transport and the bus was running ahead of schedule
• the bus driver had overslept during his (or her) nap and/or overeaten (or possibly over drunk) during his (or her) lunch break
• the bus didn't actually exist at all and was merely a racket to make unsuspecting travellers buy tickets for journeys that will never happen.

At 1700 the big bus still hadn't turned up and we decided to cut our touristical Euro losses and get the small bus (that turned up on time) back to the port.

Saturday's necropolis

Saturday, May 11th 2013: continued

On the bus to Tarquinia Matt had pointed out some road signs for a "Necropolis". Since he (and me for that matter) tend to point out every road sign going I had dismissed this as "probably the municipal cemetery". But flicking through my helpful town guide it seemed that it might be something more interesting: an Etruscan necropolis. We located it on the right hand edge of our touristical map but as the touristical map didn't have a scale or any directional markings it wasn't clear whether it really was a 10-15 minute walk away (based on our experience of wandering the town), or whether it had been put schematically here and was actually located at the End of a Very Long Road. (As an aside I would like to applaud the towns where they mark the distance, or even better the estimated walking time, on their touristical signs.)

Fortunately Tarquinia had been gifted a reasonably logical cartographer. The map was to (an unspecified) scale and after walking 20 minutes along a fairly unlikely looking road we came to the UNESCO World Heritage Site. It turns out that this is the largest (known) Etruscan burial site.

There are about 6000 (known) "graves", of which most are "basic" burial mounds, but there are about 200 (known) decorated "sepulchres" (tombs). (Sorry about all the inverted commas.) Of these about 20 are open to the public. They are conserved within little "huts" and you view the subterranean burial chambers through glass / plastic / perspex (or something of that nature) - this is because the humidity of the visitors can damage the ancient wall art.

The sepulchres (no more inverted commas, I promise) date from the 6th to the 2nd centuries BC and I was fascinated to see the evolution of concepts of the after life. In the most ancient of the sepulchres the walls are decorated with scenes of banqueting, dancing, music and hunting. At this time (or so goes the theory) the Etruscans believed that the spirit of the deceased lived on in the place that they were buried.

I would choose 3 of those 4 things to decorate my burial chamber with if that was the case. In the later sepulchres you could see the influence of the Greek Theory of the after-life with images of people being led through doors to the Next World. Some of the later ones also had some erotic scenes, apparently influenced by the cult of Dionysus (whoever he or she was - perhaps I should find out). 

I'm embarrassed to say that I knew nothing about the Etruscans before, I know a little now and might even pay a visit to that section of the British Museum to learn more. The necropolis was most certainly worth parting with a few tourist Euros for, especially when you consider (given the going rate of 50 cents a go) we each had one Euro's worth of toilet usage on our visit. 

Saturday's Italian jaunt

Saturday, May 11th 2013

Today's port was Civitavecchia from where you could take a tour to Rome, or with a little skill in the use of Italian public transport visit under your own steam. Having spent a leisurely week in Rome last October Matt and I had decided before we came on holiday that we would be giving a day trip into the eternal city a miss.

If we had been a bit more organised we would have carefully investigated the alternative touristical options from Civitavecchia. But we were not sufficiently organised - not even to remember to pack our Italy guidebook or to borrow one from the ship's library - and we were unwilling to fork out for the expensive roaming charges for data via our mobiles. So it would just have to be an adventure.

Over breakfast (mostly fresh fruit to atone for last night) we narrowed down the options to Tarquinia, a bit north along the train line, or Ortobella, a bit more north along the train line. This semi-decision was made because:

• They both looked like reasonably sized blobs on the map - even though I have learnt (from meanderings in Cornwall) that this is not always a good strategy for picking locations for a day trip
• I had translated Ortobella as "beautiful garden" which I thought sounded nice.

We used our skills in Italian public transport and identified that we had just missed a train going the way that we wanted and the next one wouldn't be for over an hour. So we decided to investigate the buses. This would require a higher level of skill in the use of Italian public transport but surely there would be something connecting these reasonably sized blobs on the map. I maxed out my skills and found out that there was a bus to Tarquinia in 10 minutes - so that was where we would go. I also found out that I had misread Ortobella on the map - it was actually Orbatella (so may not have been so horticultural or beautiful after all); we could always go on there later if Tarquinia proved touristically inadequate.

But Tarquinia didn't disappoint. We arrived after a pleasant bus trip (not guaranteed with southern European bus drivers), were directed to the tourist information office (this really was a top notch bus driver) and collected a map and town guide.

 

It's a medieval town and was ideal for wandering; we didn't really need the map. We made our (slow) way to the opposite side of the town walls from where we had come in, from where we enjoyed some fantastic views across the Tuscania countryside (not to be confused with Tuscany which I was). There was no need to Go Up Something High today, which was a good job as although Tarquinia is well provisioned with towers none of them were available for touristical climbing.

Friday's gluttony

Friday 10th May, continued

Suitably relieved, we headed off towards the old town. This involved walking through the newer town past numerous designer shops. We gawped in the windows a bit, including at one mobile phone with a price tag of €16500 (that is not a typo).

The possibility of Going Up Something High was not over as there was a useful looking tower in the old town. We meandered the streets towards it and found it was part of the Musée Castre. This was a very random ethnographical (whatever that means) museum, apparently one of the oldest in France. We started off with the tower - this was obviously the main touristical attraction for us. It was with the 109 step (22 metre) climb for the fabulous views over the bay and town.

The museum was pretty good too. It was a welcome break from the now hot sun (I wouldn't be needing my anorak again) and there were some interesting exhibits. I particularly enjoyed the paintings if Cannes in the 19th century and the large display of musical instruments.

I enjoyed speaking a bit of French today, although as always I feel that my inability to correctly conjugate verbs let me down. I did manage to successfully negotiate the taking of a photo for a couple whom I put my conversational skills to use on to discover that they were on holiday from Normandy. My conversational skills were insufficient to be able to explain the difference between Portsmouth and Plymouth - a geographical knowledge impediment that I am becoming bored of explaining to people of my native tongue. I also successfully negotiated the purchase of a sarong for Matt - a red one with tortoises and fish bones that matches his yellow one with seaweed and fish bones.

I'd taken a sneaky peak at the evening's menu and wasn't particularly grabbed by anything so I persuaded Matt to give the buffet a go. The theme was Mexican.

This was a bad idea: 

• Not because I missed the waiter service - it was nice to be a bit more relaxed
• Not because the food was bad - it was yummy and there was plenty of choice for veggies
• Not because the company was bad - Matt and I had a window table for 2 and as usual enjoyed each other’s company (obviously I can't speak for him but he didn't complain and I enjoyed it). Our conversation was more normal: 
• talking about some topics that might not be acceptable with strangers including the practicalities of diving into the sea from high decks - would you reach terminal velocity? Would it hurt? How long would it take? - I was even using a bit of my college maths
• not having to take care to avoid insulting anyone - we could freely reflect upon the characteristics of some of our fellow passengers.

No, it was a bad idea because the buffet led to a dangerous relaxation of table manners. While this had some notable benefits (I do enjoy eating with my fingers when possible) it opened the floodgates of gluttony. We piled our plates high with salads for starters - so much that would be enough for a whole meal.

We followed this with a generous helping of hot mains - although I did avoid the ubiquitous roast potatoes which seem to be available with all meals in the buffet (including breakfast and late night snacks, I recommend this holiday as an option if you're a fan of roast potatoes). This might have been just about acceptable but I was then presented with a delicious-looking array of puddings. How could I choose between dulche de leche flan, churros with chocolate sauce and chilli & pecan chocolate brownies? I couldn't and I didn't. Fortunately I don't like bread and butter pudding (even the Mexican sort?) so a total waistline disaster was averted.

The extra brownie is one I selected for Matt

Saturday's hen

The weekend got off to a good start - I was actually running on time. We were due to head up to Windsor for our friend Becky's hen party. We was me, Vicki (designated driver) and Shelley who we collected from the train station on route. It was a remarkably quick trip up the M3 (for those heading south it was more like a car park). We were not going to my 1st choice of Berkshire attraction (I'm desperate to go to a certain Scandinavian brick based theme park), but to a posh hotel / spa which would be a new experience for me.

We had a good initial catch up in the car. One of my fellows was rather worried about her bikini line, but I doubted that we would be looking. Continuing with the on-time theme we were only the second group to arrive and made ourselves comfortable in the bar chatting to Becky's mum, Mary, and sister, Sarah.

It was drinks all round once everyone had arrived. Most people wisely went for a soft drink. This was wise because:

• it was a super hot day (according to my husband Windsor was the hottest place in the country) 
• the alcohol was super expensive (think over £7 for a standard gin and tonic)

Most people was everyone except Shelley, who is a fan of half a lager. I got one of my five a day in with a sparkling apple juice.

There were 15 of us all together, and Jean-Paul the restaurant manager appeared to be in charge of making sure we were fed. Despite my best efforts to entice him otherwise Jean-Paul was not interested in speaking French to me (he was actually French; he even had some rather Gallic ear hair). 

After lunch (a melted smoked cheese and tomato baguette with too much tomato) we prepared for the spa. There was a bit of a palaver to do with acquiring our dressing gowns (or robes if you're embracing the posh thing) and slippers, but we soon settled into the spa, helped by a glass of champagne. I am not a fan of sauna or steam room or bubbly boily pot at the best of times, let alone on the hottest day of the year in the hottest place in the country. Instead I did a couple of lengths and enjoyed cooling off in the pool before it was time for my mini-pedicure.

It really was mini (file and polish would have been more accurate), but I really enjoyed chatting to the lady who did it. She has recently gone back to college to train as a beautician, after spending over a decade on the stage and screen. She was the lead in a lesser known Andrew Lloyd Webber show for 2 years, and subsequently to that had spent 10 years presenting on television shopping channels. Apparently it is very difficult to be enthusiastic about a kaftan for an hour. I think I came off better than my friend who's mini-pedicure experience (begin your own sci-fi style soundtrack here) seemed more akin to an alien abduction.

Then, after a little time in the relaxation room, it was time to get ready for the evening phase of the hen party. It wasn't unrelaxing but I find it basically impossible to relax whenever that is designated as what you should be doing (random relaxation is much more effective). But there were some fun rocking chairs and a read some interesting stuff about Gibraltar while my nail polish dried.

The instruction that we had from Sarah was to get glammed up, not an activity I am terribly familiar with, although I had recently had some practice on a cruise. With the help of my super chic friend Charlotte, I chose to wear a one shoulder deep fuchsia dress. I even ironed it. Taking advantage of the occasion (rather than any style advantage) I donned my new gold high heels (with toeless tights of course to show off my new deep fuchsia toe nails).

The heat was making me very thirsty so before we headed down to eat I swigged a bottle of fizzy orange juice (possibly another one of my 5 a day). I skipped a pre-eating drink (except for a small glass of champagne that I think was given to us in the mistaken belief that we were wedding guests), but did try a little bit of my friend Helen's gin and tonic. I am usually a gin and tonic fan but this one tasted of face cleaner. Sarah had made us up some lovely hen-party party bags:

• earrings (she even swapped out mine for some with screws rather than hooks)
• bubbles (everyone loves bubbles)
• heart straws (very tasteful compared to previous hen-party straws that I have experienced)
• a badge (even more tasteful)
• decorative sweets (which was very useful as I forgot to pack any jewellery) 

Jean-Paul had arranged for us to have tea outside (dinner on the terrace if you're embracing the posh thing); it may or may not have been cooler than it was inside. But we all just about managed our way through a delicious 3 courses. And we even managed to wangle some bonus vanilla ice-cream to go with the chocolate fondant pudding.

After letting our food and wine go down a bit we bundled into taxis to get to the town centre. The destination was a cocktail bar. The details (for now) are restricted to the hens. Suffice to say a good time was had by all. Can’t wait until the wedding.

Friday's trip

A short hair cut

Thanks to a late night I was reasonably well prepared for my 9am departure to catch a train across south west England. All that I needed to do was eat breakfast, pack one item off the washing line and prepare a picnic for the train. Getting up at 8am gave me plenty of time to stay on schedule. That was until Matt decided that he wanted his hair cut. In fairness, I’ve been saying for a few weeks that he should get a haircut but up until today he’d been more tolerant of it than me. Our usual hairdresser, Katherine, being unavailable, the only course of action was for me to test my hairdressing skills. I was keen to use the kitchen scissors but Matt was insistent that I used his beard trimmer (he doesn’t really have a beard). 20 minutes later Matt was considerably de-haired (more de-haired than had been the original intention, but it was at least even) and I was no longer on schedule. We were both covered in lots of small bits of ginger hair.

I didn’t think that the schedule would permit me a shower to remove the small bits of ginger hair from my person, but in actual fact I made it to the station with plenty of time to spare. I was even able to position myself on the platform in anticipation of my allocated seat. Here I observed some teenage boys indulging in the peculiar practice of spraying deodorant all over themselves. They have clearly not yet learnt about the biology of sweat but I resisted indicating to them the parts of their body that would better benefit from the application of deodorant.

Phase one of my trip to Southampton Central station passed uneventfully. My allocated seat was in the quiet carriage. It wasn't very quiet but I didn't mind. A rather haughty sounding woman did mind and made an unofficial announcement that could everyone please keep the volume down. Which was mostly met with barely disguised sniggers of laughter from the rest of the carriage.

Phase two was so uneventful that I even managed a little snooze. That was until Sherbourne, when a posh couple boarded. At least they seemed posh to me. They had a rather dilapidated shopping trolley from which they extracted their picnic packaged in bags from a high end supermarket before precariously shoving it into the overhead stowage. The woman was pleasingly eccentrically (sorry about the double adverb use) dressed:

• bum-bag - which wasn't removed or ventured into at all
• sunglasses - even though she wasn't in the sun
• sunhat - even though she wasn't in the sun
• headphones - even though she was relentlessly talking the whole time
• elastic band around her wrist

Her picnic seemed to consist of lettuce leaves freshly plucked from a lettuce, which she did not pause in her talking to masticate. I felt rather sorry for the young lady from Jersey who happened to be sat next to them who did remarkably well whilst they argued about how she could best get to Regent Street (I think they thought that she'd never ventured onto public transport before). The posh lady wasn't wrong when she described the countryside through which we were traversing as ravishing though.

My tiffin

It wouldn't affect me, but there was much consternation when it was announced that the train wouldn't be stopping at Clapham Junction - apparently it was too hot. I just had time eat my picnic, which due to the morning's time constraints consisted of the leftovers from the day before's tea (sweet potato, mushroom and spinach curry). I don't know what the posh lady would have to say about this as she was now in full swing about her tea the day before:

• fish pie in which she couldn't find any fish
• meringue which surely wasn't made with free range eggs
• and if they could afford such good wine why couldn't they have organic potatoes?

With one stop to go, the train was ominously stationery. It was hot on the train and I was uncomfortable from all the little bits of ginger hair all over me. Apparently someone had driven into a bridge (apparently this is creatively called bridging) so we would have to take a slight detour. Still, I was only 10 minutes later than scheduled and hadn't kept my dad waiting too long.

Before heading home, dad kindly agreed that we could pop into the shops. It was a successful mini-trip as I bought no more and no less than had been intended (apart from a possibly unnecessary purchase in a large toiletry store to use up a voucher).

Dad's driving was funny, he kept insisting on pointing out various highway regulations both to me and other drivers (imagine a finger pointing at the speed limit sign).

Stag beetle - spotted whilst walking

After catching up with my friend Katie, it was time I made my way down the road to the Waterside Arts Festival event: "Jazz at the Grove". I was to join my parents and all my aunts and uncles (at least all those that I know about), and was to bring my mother-in-law's Yorkshire terrier, Fred, who is temporarily residing with my mum and dad. It was a very pleasant evening for the 1.7mile walk; unfortunately Fred didn't agree and refused to walk any further after less than 0.1miles. This meant that I had to carry him the rest of the way in his special carrying bag. I suppose he can be forgiven as he is 14 years old (which possibly makes him 98 in dog years although I always thought that whole thing was a bit dubious), but I think a few car accidents were only narrowly avoided as people gawped at me while I walked along with him cradled at my bosom - I have found this to be the most comfortable and secure way to carry a small dog. 

Friday's toilet scenario

Friday, May 10^th 2013

It was a good job we gave our feet a rest last night as we spent most of our day in Cannes walking. I loved Cannes and I even got to wear my anorak. We had to take a tender from the ship to the port and I thought that it would be cold / windy. It was actually warm and draught free but I was still pleased to be able to wear my anorak.

In terms of High Things to Go Up, Cannes tempted us with the Super Cannes observatory. However, it was not obvious how far away this was, or how we would reach this and we weren’t really tempted by a possibly time consuming detour to the tourist information to find out; plus it was looking like a bit of a hazy so may not even have been worth the trek even if we had tried. We could see it up a hill; today’s touristical map did at least have a scale but no isobars. It looked like the walk might be about 5 km but there was no obvious pedestrian route marked and with no road names marked either it would be a bit risky.

Instead, we started the morning with a promenade around La Croisette – taking numerous detours to gawp at the super yachts. It really was something to see them in situ, rather than at a boat show. I don’t’ think that I believed that anyone actually bought them before. But here they were. And people were polishing them; they were polishing the insides of cupboards. When I say people I think it must have been “staff” – apparently it costs at least €1 million to run one of these things each year. We enjoyed posing with our favourite Bond Villain-esque vessels.

 

We also amused ourselves by looking in the yacht agents’ windows – a variation on the more common touristical activity of looking in estate agents’ windows (we did that too). We will not be buying a super yacht any time soon (nor a villa on the Côte d’Azur for that matter). Maybe we exuded an air of the luxury yacht type though as a man on the quayside seemed to think that we could do with some luxury transfers – private jet anyone?

Now Matt was getting rather keen to use the toilet. He followed the sign to the sanitaires in the marina, while I perched under a palm tree and wrote a postcard. Next thing I knew my phone was ringing – Matt sounded panicked: the sanitaires had been locked, he’d found another set of loos but these were shut for another half an hour and I was nowhere in sight. Things were clearly getting desperate. I was time I took charge of the situation. I found Matt and offered words of encouragement about the quality of his bladder while we took the scenic route through the rose garden to another WC that I had located on the touristical map.

Nature report 2

• Cannes is pleasingly free of seagulls. There are quite a few pigeons but they are fairly inoffensive pigeons – one was taking a bath.
• I spotted 2 lizards today. I always find this quite exciting, something I think that I have inherited from my dad.
• With less than a week to go until the Cannes Film Festival preparations were in full swing. Notably this involves bolstering the already plentiful palm trees, with the installation of many more on the beach. We saw a demonstration of how this involves cranes and badly driven diggers. I wonder what they do with all the extra palm trees when the festivities are over.
• There were lots of bottle brush plants. Apparently they’re poisonous (I seem to remember my mum warning me of this when I was little, even though I don’t think I had a propensity to eat random plants).
• Based on a highly unscientific study, the Yorkshire terrier appears to be the most popular breed of dog in Cannes

We found the WC to be a hi-tech toilet booth. There were four people in front of us in the queue: 2 friends (they looked local) and a couple (they looked Northern Europeans). It was a slow throughput at the hi-tech toilet booth as between each use it was disinfected, washed and dried. You did however get up to 20 minutes in the hi-tech toilet booth when it was your turn – which would potentially mean a very long wait for Matt.

The hi-tech toilet booth finished its cleansing cycle from the previous visitor and one of the friends went in. For some reason (optimism probably) I thought that the other friend didn’t need to visit the hi-tech toilet booth; but I was wrong. Friend 2 went in after another cleansing cycle. I spent a while pondering who of my friends I would be prepared to share a hi-tech toilet booth with. Quite a few probably – it was a spacious hi-tech toilet booth.

After another cleansing cycle the girl of the Northern European couple went in – we would be next. But no; the boy of the Northern European couple was also going to use the hi-tech toilet booth.

After witnessing a total of 5 cleansing cycles, it was finally our turn to use the hi-tech toilet booth. And a great 50 cents’ worth of hi-tech toilet booth it was too. I must say that there are worse places to queue for a toilet: there were shade and sun options and we saw at least 3 trains go over a bridge just over the road.