A little bit of Culture...

...goes a long way.

View from the Tivoli Gardens

If you like architecture dating back hundreds if not thousands of years, mega big sculpture and five hundred year old paintings, Italy is the place to go. It is everywhere. You can't escape it, even if you try.

I first noticed this on the train from Milan to Venice, only a few hours after touching down at Malpensa airport. I might have been tired, but I noticed that the scenery wasn't greatly different from what I was used to here in rural Tasmania. The trees were just as green, the hills as gently rolling, suburban houses - albeit in the warm browns and yellows I will forever associate with Tuscany - lined unremarkable roads. But then I would see a

monastery clinging to a distant hillside, or spot a country church (complete with bells in the belfry) and I knew I was no longer in Oz, where something is regarded as really old if it dates back to the 19th Century.

I guess it's a matter of scale.

If I might digress a moment. I showed our tour guide Michela and her husband the two booklets on Tasmania that I'd brought with me- and she was entranced by its natural beauty. When she returned the booklets, she told me. 'We've decided. We're coming.'

I told her I'd put the kettle on for them.

As a further digression, Michela was a wonderful guide. She shared her knowledge of Italian history - and there is a lot of it - plus geography and art, with a lot of patience and and a heap of passion. Which is what you want in a guide.

Some of our other guides ranged from extremely humorous (in Pisa) , super cute and charming (in Sorrento) to downright fed up(in Pompeii).

Here's a picture of the cute one, Marco. Well I'm not going to bother with the grumpy one, am I?

Our guide, Marco, on the way to Capri.

But back to Michela. She was our personal guide in Rome and we went to places that all had some artistic or historical (and religious ) significance. Here are just a few:

The Tivoli Gardens. This is full of terraces, fountains and lots of steps. It seemed to be a popular destination for Italian families on a Sunday afternoon. I felt a bit sorry for the folk bringing children in strollers.

The Catacombs. 2000 year old tombs (thankfully empty these days) of the early Christians. There was an underground chapel - and not surprisingly, the acoustics were superb. There was a beautiful fresco of two saints praying together in one tomb. It was very simple and rather touching.

St Peters. The immensity of this place has to be seen to be believed. But everything is to scale - which is why it is such a shock when you walk in. Let me see if I can explain.

What appears to be a normal sized statue of Mary has a cherub at her feet that is over 6 feet tall. Which must make her about 30 feet tall. But the crazy thing is that a 30 foot statue doesn't look out of place in the basilica - because the whole building is in proportion to that.

Check out this photo http://www.flickr.com/photos/79925372@N00/392987253/ It will give you an idea.

Even when we were on our own in Rome, we found the most amazing sights on our own. We'd opted for a hop-on hop-off bus to save our feet.

It was mind blowing to have the the Piazza del Popoli, the Spanish Steps and the Trevi fountain all within one bus stop of each other. Then even better, just a few stops on, we were in the ancient part of Rome and ... bang there was the Collosseum right in front of us. You couldn't miss it. We had lunch in a cute little cafe virtually in its shadow.

See you can't get away from it. In Rome, history is all around you.

The Collosseum. The holes you can see are where the marble cladding was secured to the stone.

The Trevi Fountain. It's completely OTT

The Spanish Steps. No, I wasn't tempted to climb them.

Piazza del Popoli. I loved the symmetry of these paired churches. We saw two men on Segway scooters zipping up and down the road between them. I don't think that Romans are intimidated in the least by the history of their city.

Now for a bit of a whinge. I have to confess that the Sistine chapel left me a bit cold. There were several reasons for that. One was that it was a grey overcast day and the chapel relies largely on natural light to illuminate the ceiling. Since the ceiling is very high, it was difficult to see much detail.

The second reason was that you have to go through the entire Vatican Museum to reach the chapel. Now we were lucky, we'd pre-booked and didn't have to stand in line to get into the museum - and that line was already several hours long at ten o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday. But even so, my back was killing me by the time we'd walked through all of the various exhibits.

I defy anyone to maintain a proper appreciation of someone's life's work, when you're in pain - or to go off topic for a moment, busting to go to the loo.

All I'll say about that though, is that I spent two hours in Venice trying to locate St Pantalon's church which is famous for its painted ceiling, only to find it was closed on a Sunday! I ended up dashing into the Academy of Art - ostensibly to view room after room of medieval Altar pieces - but far more interested in the bathroom at the back of room 21.

I know I appreciated it a lot more after I came out of that room.

But back to the Sistine Chapel.

I could have overlooked my discomfort if I hadn't become totally numb to the opulence of the rooms we had to go through before we reached the chapel. There is only so much culture I can take in in one go.

The final straw was the last of the Raphael rooms. There are four, each more overblown than the one before. This will give you some idea of the magnitude.

http://www.google.com.au/images?hl=en&q=raphael%20room%20vatican%20museum&um=1&ie=UTF-8&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&biw=1024&bih=673

So, while I was standing in that last room, simply boggling, it struck me that this room didn't have a single unadorned inch. Every section of wall, floor or ceiling was either carved, gilded, painted, or mosaic'd. I found it quite overwhelming - and not in a good way.

I actually felt myself go numb.

And so, by the time we finally reached the Sistine chapel doors- where we were reduced to shuffling forward along with 500 or so other visitors and listening to the guards loudly 'sshhing' us, clapping for our attention and hissing loudly 'no photos' - I'd had quite enough.

That said, I was still sufficiently impressed to buy myself a postcard of the ceiling. I mean, you have to, don't you?

Now, culture in Florence was very different. It's a lovely city, but not quite so over the top as Rome. I really liked it, except that I kept on getting lost. I have a permanent reminder of my wanderings, buying a lovely red leather handbag that I stumbled across at a market stall.

I loved my tour of Florence's Uffizi gallery - and our guide there gave us a wonderful run down on the development of Renaissance Art. She was able to show us paintings I'd only ever seen in books. For my money, The Birth of Venus and Primavera by Botticelli were worth the price of admission alone.

I also took a tour that walked the length of the Uffizi's famous Vasari Corridor. It served two functions. One was as an escape route for the Medici family across the river over to the Pitti Palace. But it was also used as a loooong art gallery, and contains a kilometre's worth of self portraits of some of the most famous artists who ever lived. Portraits are still being added to this day.

While I expected to be impressed by Michelangelo's David at the Academia del Arte - and I was, there was another sculpture of his that I thought was even more remarkable, especially considering it is unfinished.

It was quite near David, and I thought it looked like a man of stone trying to pull himself out of the marble. I loved it.

I wish the photo was better, but I took it before I realised that cameras were banned (whoops) and didn't get a chance to get a better one.

Another unexpected highlight was the opportunity to see a collection of Bronzino painting in the Strozzi Palace across town. This was a fixed period exhibition that had been curated from museums around the world.

This is one picture from that collection and I bought a postcard of it. I think it is simply gorgeous - and I had to stop myself from reaching out to touch the fabric of her dress, simply because it looked so real.

Bronzino was the court artist for the Medici family. He was a busy chap - judging from the size of the collection.

I know I've only touched the surface of what is there to see - or even what I managed to take in. I haven't even mentioned the glorious mosaics and the sculptures in the Medici chapel, or the amazing statue of a flayed alive St Bartholomew in the Duomo in Milan.

They might have to wait until next time.

My three top WTFery moments.

It doesn't matter how worldly we think we are when we travel, there will always be things that make our jaws drop.

Here are my top three.

1 Landing in Abu Dhabi

Our Airbus landed in Abu Dhabi (UAE) just before dawn and I was glad to get off the plane after being cooped up in the dry and airless cabin for about six hours. This time there was no air bridge to the terminus, so we were taken out via the the rear exit down the stairs, and stepped straight into a wave of absolute heat and humidity. I swear my knees were buckling - and the sun hadn't even risen yet.

We were quickly ushered onto a flat based bus and once on board, lined up like 80 or so vertical sardines - all strap hanging. (I can safely say that NO ONE wanted to sit at this point) However, the biggest thing I noticed was the powerful air conditioning forcing down a blanket of cold air over us. That was the good bit.

Suddenly, while we're driving from the plane to the terminus, I noticed condensation trickle down the window - on the outside.

Woahhh, now that's not something you see every day.

2 Parking Italian style.

I was on a bus in Milan and this very creative style of parking caught my eye.

Yes you're right. There is angle parking on the grass AND parallel parking together.

And no, I have NO idea how the cars on the grass can possibly get out first.

This is what else I saw in one bus trip: cars parked nose to nose on the same side of the street - that is unless one of those teensy Smart cars is backed in between them.

Double parking occurred pretty much everywhere and angle parking seemed to be up to individual preference of L-R or R-L. It looked like herring bone stitch in some streets. One of the oddest things was two cars parked T- bone style on a small painted traffic island while cars drove around them.

An Aussie parking inspector would have a field day over here. His ticket book would be empty in minutes.

I've reckon if you give the Italian motorist an inch, he'll try to park a car in it.

Having said all that, I think the Smart cars were incredibly cute, as are the Vespas that zip through the traffic.

I would love either, but there is no way I would try to drive in Italy; it is just way too scary for li'l ole me.

3 Italian live TV.

I'm not sure what cracked me up more: the show that was a bizarre cross between 'What's my Line and Deal or No Deal', or the talent show for little kids where the leggy female backup dancers came out prancing and gyrating in numbers that seemed to be in inverse proportion to the talent of the child.

Let me tell you about the second one first. You need to imagine a precocious 5 year old warbling an off-key-version of the old( ancient ) standard 'Cheek to Cheek' in the centre of the stage while an absolute flock of be-feathered dancers cavorted and wriggled behind her.

No wonder the audience applauded like mad. I couldn't watch more than ten minutes of this one. It was far too distracting.

The other show had the fascination of a slow motion train wreck. The premise is that the contestant has to match up a list of 10 professions with a group of 10 random individuals (from the studio audience I suspect) who are standing in a row - police line up style - one at a time and in a some kind of prearranged order.

While the contestant deliberated the match, he or she was encouraged to do so aloud and to examine the matchee's clothing, hands for calluses and or jewellery, arm muscles and/ or shoes or whatever - and to give their reasoning why they think ( for example) that the buff young man from Naples might be the airport luggage handler.

Once they've locked in the answer, the matchee hands over a sealed envelope to the host, and a value in Euros is revealed. I'm guessing that the less obvious the match, the more money it was worth. But I might just be cynical.

So when we found out that the potential baggage handler's envelope contained a very large amount, we knew it was not a good sign.

Because, if the contestant got it wrong, he or she lost everything that had been won to that point and would have rebuild the total from the money left in the pool.

Once that was done we were given the big reveal and Boy, do they milk it for every moment of suspense. The matchee stands in the spotlight and the camera circles him/her for a good minute to the sound of a ticking clock. I didn't dare look away for fear of missing a twitch or a smile or some kind of clue as to the answer. It seems to go on forever and I swear no one is breathing when the matchee finally announces: No, I am not the Baggage Handler.'

Even though I was appalled by its superficiality, I was fascinated by this show. I admit that I really did want to find out what this young studly fellow really did for a living. And guess what? He was the baby sitter. . Who'd have thought?