Rhonda Bracey: At Random

With strong tailwinds, my first flight (Rome to Hong Kong) landed after 10 and a bit hours, more than an hour early. Instead of 8.5 hours layover, I now have 9.5 hours. Oh joy! At least I’m in a comfy lounge (Cathay’s Pier Business lounge near Gate 65), in a very comfy chair with a footrest, and have now showered. In 8 hours I leave on the final flight, which is another 8 hours.

I found out too late that the lounge I was in has a relaxation area where there are bed-type lounges you can sleep on. Must remember for next time I fly Cathay… if I fly Cathay again. I was in business class, but the seat wasn’t a patch on other business class seats I’ve sat on in other airlines. The seat itself was quite hard, which made it difficult to sit in or lie on for long periods. You had to make up your own bed (I’m sure if you’d asked, someone would’ve done it for you, but it certainly wasn’t offered), and only the cabin manager on the return flight to Perth bothered to use my name. There were very limited entertainment offerings (e.g. movies) on the flights to Zurich, but much better on the return flights home from Rome (different month, so likely the offerings had changed).

Total elapsed time from leaving the accommodation in Rome to getting to my sister’s house in Perth will be about 33 hours. Then hopefully a good night’s sleep before the 2-hour drive home on Saturday. It’s times like these I envy the Poms who think nothing of jetting off to Barcelona, say, for the weekend, ‘cos it’s just a couple of hours. From Perth, anywhere out of the state is a minimum of 3+ hours flight, and just to get to Sydney or Melbourne is close to 5 hours from Perth. Bali is quicker for us to get to than Adelaide is! (and a whole lot cheaper than Adelaide too). Yes, I am well aware that these are #FirstWorldProblems.

After last year’s debacle with my feet while travelling, I saw a podiatrist who recommended getting shoes properly fitted and said I’d need wide ones. I got my walking shoes in February and did a whole lot of walking in them for the next few months. Part of that process was downloading a pedometer app to record number of steps etc. I kept it on the whole time we were in Europe, and as at yesterday, we’d walked some 165 km between 29 May when we landed in Zurich and yesterday when I left Rome, some 250,000 steps, averaging 3.7 km/h, for a total time walking of 40 of 45 hours, and more than 11,000 calories burned. No wonder my feet feel like a rest!

Update: After 4 weeks away eating Swiss, Italian and yummy cruise ship food (and drink) I expected to have gained at least 3 kg. Instead, I lost 1.5 kg!!! Must be the 165 km I walked over that time!!!!

Final thoughts after returning home

My 5 ‘can’t live without’ things for travelling in Europe in summer:

• A hat with a chin strap of some sort, to prevent the hat from blowing away in strong wind! A real hat too, not just a visor—you need to keep the sun off your head. My $10 cheapie sure got a workout! But if you forget your hat or don’t want to pack one, all the places where it’s hot have street vendors selling hats, iced water, umbrellas/parasols.
• Linen and cotton clothes. OMG, I now realise why linen is so popular in places like Italy. It breathes and feels good on your skin on really hot days. And it absorbs and dissipates sweat really quickly. Cotton is good too, but linen is so much better. You can buy linen relatively cheaply in places like Italy and Spain. I felt really sorry for those in jeans and/or synthetic clothing in that heat—they’d have been SOOO hot.
• A retractable luggage lock with an ~30 inch (~75 cm) wire. Ideal for trains where you can lock your luggage to luggage racks you can’t see from your seat, or bike racks, or railings near doors if luggage/bike racks are not available. Prevents both opportunistic theft and stops your wheeled cases from rolling about the carriage. Also to lock two suitcases/duffels together to prevent opportunistic theft if you’re sitting in a crowded place (train station, airport general area) with your luggage.
• Silicon wheel covers for suitcase wheels. Yeah, I thought these were a bit of a gimmick, but they saved my suitcase’s wheels from serious damage. We had to wheel our cases across some pretty dodgy terrain (cobblestones, untold stairs, broken pavement, rough paths and roads, up and down train steps), and these not only prevented damage to the wheels but also softened the noise. I’ve now bought 2 more sets for my other suitcase and carry-on too. The cost of replacing wheels on a suitcase is almost the same as buying a new case, so this small investment to save your wheels from the worst damage is worth it. Just check your wheels after going across rough terrain to make sure all the covers are still intact—a couple of mine partially came off the wheels and needed readjusting to fit snugly.
• Suitcase cover!! I have a bright yellow suitcase and my suitcase ‘condom’ stopped the worst of the marks that come from suitcases being handled by airlines, and it certainly stood out in a crowd! Below is a photo of my suitcase with its wheel covers and ‘condom’ on before I left on my trip. The wheel covers are now mostly black and the suitcase cover got well marked and had a few holes by the time I got back, but my suitcase itself—and its wheels—is still in good condition.

Other observations:

• Uber, if available (and it wasn’t available everywhere), is priced higher than taxis in many places; in some places, Uber is actually local taxis and their drivers.
• We used debit cards through our phone wallet apps for almost everything. We’d put the debit cards into the currency and just pay in local currency, avoiding bank transaction fees associated with credit cards. I found I had the least difficulty with the Wise debit card, and it has the biggest range of currencies too.
• We also took cash, though we found that 90% of places were happy to do the ‘tap and go’ thing with our phones. Be aware that for some places/situations (in Italy mostly) you’ll be offered two prices—typically a cheaper price for cash than using a card. We encountered this a few times with taxis in Rome.

After 30 days, my first-ever trip to mainland Europe is almost over. Just a final early morning breakfast coffee in Trastevere, then my nephew carried my suitcase down the wonky steps for me while I hurled my duffel down from the top!

The driver from Welcome Pickups was on time and got me to the airport with plenty of time to spare. My first flight is Rome to Hong Kong and is expected to take 12-13 hours. Then I have a long layover at Hong Kong airport before my 8-hour flight to Perth—I’ll get there late tomorrow night.

Tip for anyone using the lounges at Gate E in Terminal 3 at Rome airport: If your departure gate is E31 or higher make sure you leave sufficient time to get to the boarding gate, which is a LONG way and a short train ride from the British Airways lounge (Cathay doesn’t have its own lounge in Rome; instead it uses the British Airways one).

In other news, my first flight avoided all the hotspots (the US had bombed Iranian nuclear installations just a few days before and Iran had retaliated hitting a US base in Qatar, Israel and Hamas were still at it in Gaza, and the war in Ukraine continued on).

Early morning in Trastevere

leaving Italy

The flight path avoided all the hotspots

What do you do on a stinking hot last day in Rome when you have nothing planned? Why, you get up early when the sun isn’t going to burn you to a crisp and you walk nearly 9,000 steps to and from the Trevi Fountain. Even at 7am, there were a lot of people there, including two wedding parties!

Then you regroup back in the beautifully air-conditioned apartment during the heat of the day (I can now see why Spain, Italy etc. have siestas) where you decide to do a pasta making course starting at 3pm at the Ristorante Tucci in the Piazza Navona. Another 2,000 steps in the heat of the day to get there, only to find that the one portable air-conditioner set to 18 C isn’t making a dent in the heat of a room full of 12 students all about to make fettuccine by hand.

But it was great fun, much easier than I thought it would be (lots of hints and tips), and we got to choose the sauce the chef would use when they cooked our own pasta for us (I chose cacio e pepe). We got to eat the fruits of our labours and we each got a certificate! We were very proud of ourselves. And hot. (In the photos below, I’ve tried to capture the main steps so I have a record of what we did.)

My sister and niece decided to walk even further at 5pm in the heat to see a Michelangelo sculpture near the Colosseum, while my nephew and I skedaddled back to the apartment! No dinner tonight after eating such a big meal in the late afternoon, so we just finished off the goodies in the apartment, such as the fresh fruit, yoghurt and chocolates we’d bought along the way.

We all leave Rome tomorrow morning. I’m returning to Australia, while my family will go on to Lake Garda for a few days, then my niece returns, then my sister and nephew head to London for a few more days before heading home. It’s been an amazing trip, and the 3 days in Rome with family has been fabulous (unfortunately, my other nephew couldn’t join us).

Trevi Fountain, early June morning

A small well of 100 g of 00 flour + 1 egg at room temperature

Use a fork to combine the egg and flour. Should have the consistency of scrambled eggs and NOT be sticky—if sticky, add a little more flour

Roll the dough into a ball for about 30 seconds

Roll out the dough until it covers the board in a sort-of square/oblong. Add flour to the board beforehand and each time you turn over the pasta (as necessary) so it doesn’t stick to the board or the rolling pin

Take the bottom edge of the rolled pasta dough and roll towards the centre; repeat with the bottom edge. Trim the rough ends.

Cut crosswise into even widths you want. About 1 cm width for fettucine, wider for tagliatelle, narrower for linguine

Pick up the cut rolls of pasta by passing the back of the knife under them and picking it up. The pasta will hang evenly over the back of the knife,

Lay the pasta out after you’ve unrolled it using the back of the knife.

Pick up the pasta at the centre of the lengths, then twirl it a little to form a ‘nest’. This is one serve for one person.

My pasta after the chef had cooked it and added the cacio e pepe sauce. It was DELICIOUS, but that 100 g serving was too much for me to eat on such a hot afternoon. In the background, my niece’s pasta with a pesto sauce.

I can’t remember much about this morning, except we walked a lot and it was HOT. My photos show we went to the Piazza Navona, Campo Di Fiore, Pantheon, Spanish Steps, etc. and we ate gelato. I do know we knocked out another 16,000 steps and sweltered in the hot sun. There are very few street trees in Rome (unlike Barcelona), so add extra degrees to the forecast temperature to account for the heat reflecting off the concrete and other hard surfaces that are everywhere. We found a nice quiet little place to have lunch in a side street, and our feet enjoyed the break, while our bodies loved the ice-cold water and fresh salad and fruit.

Then it was off to the two planned things for today—firstly, the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. Even though we had timed entry tickets for 2:45pm and they kept the crowds moving well, there was NO shade and it was unbelievably hot standing in the sun for nearly an hour. Once inside, it was cooler, but there was an awful lot of walking to do to get through it. And it was like IKEA in that everyone moved in one direction past all sorts of religious art, sculptures and artefacts on walls and ceilings and in cabinets, until finally we reached the Sistine Chapel, where you can’t take ANY photos. On a cooler day and with fresh feet and fewer people, I might have stopped to take in the artwork, but to be honest, we just wanted to get through it and out. Yes, it was magnificent, yes it was overwhelming, but with the heat and the crowds I just couldn’t appreciate it as it should be appreciated. Also, I’m not a fan of religious institutions holding so much wealth and paying no taxes! So, tick it off the bucket list…

The next planned thing was the Fiats at 6:30pm! We were really looking forward to this, and we weren’t disappointed. I’d discovered and booked this 2-hour tour some months earlier (https://www.romaroundtours.com/explore-rome), and today was the day we got to ride in some 1970s Fiat 500 Cabriolets. What an experience! Our drivers were great, and the cars were amazing. They’ve been converted to electric, but that didn’t diminish the experience at all—in fact it probably enhanced it because there was no engine noise. And the 6:30pm timeslot I’d chosen was perfect for that time of the year—the worst of the harsh heat was gone from the day and the air was balmy as we meandered around Rome’s streets as the sun was starting to set. We went to places and saw things we wouldn’t have seen in any other tour, and even stopped at a fountain high on a hill to sample some limoncello the drivers had brought with them. Because there were 4 of us, we had 2 cars with English-speaking drivers. It wasn’t cheap, but it was one of those experiences we won’t forget for  a long time and will talk about in family gatherings for many years. A true family bonding experience. One of the best things was seeing the ear-to-ear grin on my nephew’s face for the entire time!! He’s a bit of a car fan, but I don’t think he’d ever experienced being driven around in an old Fiat before.

The drivers dropped us at a place where we’d booked a table at a rooftop bar to see the sunset, and see the sunset over Rome we did—along with their exorbitant prices for drinks and nibbles! Oh well, we’d only do this once.

I wonder how many people took pictures of the aubergines/eggplants before they added this sign! (Campo Di Fiore)

Look at the size of that mortadella, and it was about a metre long too (Campo Di Fiore)

One of the many painted ceilings in the Vatican Museum

Our Fiats! My nephew and I were in the yellow one—he was in the front next to the driver and I was squashed into the back (there’s not a lot of room!). My sister and niece travelled in the back of the white one.

Our cute little Fiat!

Standing in the back of the Fiat

Rome at night from the rooftop bar

And with that, our 14-day cruise of the western Mediterranean was all over.

We disembarked the ship in Civitavecchia just after 8am, collected our luggage and piled into the car we’d booked that took us to Rome. There we met up with two of my sister’s three kids at the accommodation in the Trastevere area near the Tiber River that her son had hurriedly booked late yesterday while waiting at baggage claim.

And then the walking started…. first to the Colosseum where we found out that we couldn’t buy tickets immediately (the first available were at 3pm, in the heat of the day… and it was HOT), then to some backstreets to find somewhere to eat, then later back to the Colosseum.

We caught an air-conditioned cab back to the apartment, where the forethought of my sister to turn on the air conditioning before we left, meant that the house was lovely and cool. We wandered around the Trastevere area for a while in the early evening, then grabbed a bite to eat at a nearby restaurant.

Nearly 16,000 steps in the heat was enough!

Three other big ships also docking early in the morning at Civitavecchia; the one on the right is the Queen Victoria, which also left Civitavecchia the same day and time we did

Hidden behind this graffiti and up a very steep, dark, and wonky set of concrete steps was our lovely apartment. Never judge a book by its cover!

Typical street in Trastevere in the daytime. At night, this was filled with people on tables and chairs sitting outside restaurants and cafes that were hidden behind steel roller doors during the day

Our apartment was a street away from the Tiber

At night, the booths lining the Tiber containing shops, bars, restaurants and cafes came alive with light and hundreds of people — such an ordinary sight during the day, when everything was closed

The Colosseum

Inside the Colosseum

A piazza in the Trastevere area of Rome, filled with cafes, bars and restaurants, and LOTS of people

Sadly, today was the last full day of our wonderful cruise. We’ve met some lovely people who have become friends, even if just for short time. The seas have been calm, the weather warm to bloody hot, and the places we’ve been have all been memorable for all sorts of reasons. Best thing, though, was that my sister has really enjoyed her first-ever cruise and we didn’t have a single cross word between us, which is not bad considering we haven’t shared premises for any length of time since we were in our late teens! We’ve decided to do this again…

But now for today’s port: Porto Cervo, on the Costa Smeralda at the north-eastern tip of Sardinia. We’d booked a shore excursion only a couple of days ago (we had on-board credit we needed to spend), which was an all-day (7+hour) sailing boat journey to the Maddalena islands, including time for swimming etc., plus food and alcohol. We didn’t book until we were sure we could cancel for no penalty if the weather was inclement or the swell was too big—yes, we could cancel up to 24 hours beforehand with no penalty. But when we were in Livorno, we decided to cancel, not for weather reasons, but because we’d be all day in the hot sun, on a small boat, with potentially a group of people we may not like and who might have had too much alcohol. It was 7 hours in the hot sun, though, that was the prime reason, much as we wanted to swim in the beautiful waters here. Also, we had to pack—on a cruise ship, they want your luggage in the corridor outside your room the night before disembarkation (by midnight for us), and we had to get everything back into our suitcases and duffels (including all the new stuff we’d bought), and leave enough in our carry-on luggage for the night and early the next day.

Back to Porto Cervo: This was a tendering port so we took the lifeboat in to shore, and were glad we’d cancelled the sailing boat trip as the swell was about a metre. I’m not sure what I was expecting—perhaps a fishing town with a long history—but that certainly wasn’t what we encountered. This is a modern town full of high-end retail outlets (it’s probably too common to call them shops… think Pucci, Ralph Lauren, Sotheby’s etc.) all arranged tastefully in such a way that you didn’t feel like it was mostly shops. At least, what we saw of the town.

The marina was full of big yachts, which weren’t quite as big as those at St Tropez and Monte Carlo. Everything was expensive, even an orange juice. In Ajaccio in a cafe overlooking the beach, I paid EU5 for a large freshly squeezed orange juice (and nowhere in Italy have we paid more than EU7). In an outside restaurant in Porto Cervo with no view, they charged me EU10 for a *tiny* glass of orange juice, and told us in no uncertain terms that they were a restaurant and expected us to buy food, not just have a cooling drink on a hot day. The snooty waiter snatched our menus, cutlery and napkins off the table with a very disgusted flourish when we said we wouldn’t be eating! He didn’t quite tell us to leave, but I think it was close. We may have been saved by the fact that we were in the midst of talking to an American couple seated at a table very close to us, who’d ordered a heap of food.

Back to that gorgeous water… We’d hoped to find a nearby public beach that didn’t cost an arm and leg to get to or to rent umbrellas etc. at (some private beach clubs charge EU700 per day for a sun lounger and an umbrella and some food and drink!!). We spotted a likely candidate right near the marina so climbed over the rocks to a tiny sandy beach and dunked ourselves into the Mediterranean again. The water was crystal clear, had mostly a sandy bottom, and we could even see some little fish swimming around. But our swim was short-lived as someone came down the marina jetty and shouted at us loudly in Italian, presumably to tell us to get out of the water (there were NO yachts on that side of the marina jetty). By then, we’d almost finished our little dip, so to prevent an international incident we got out. There were no signs of any kind to tell us we couldn’t swim there. No matter. We’d cooled off and ticked another part of the Med off the list.

A cautionary tale regarding Booking.com: While we were in Porto Cervo, my sister got a call from her son who was at baggage claim at Rome airport. He’d gone online to check the address for the accommodation we’d booked back in February/March, only to find out that the booking had been CANCELLED. He’s a quick thinker and an experienced traveller, so he’d looked for another option that would take 4 people in 4 beds for 4 nights, starting tonight, near the heart of Rome—and found a place! There were numerous calls between my nephew and sister trying to figure out what was going on and why it had been cancelled, and me trying to message the people I’d been in contact with back when the booking was made (they didn’t respond for hours). Meantime, we’re trying to check out small photos of the likely accommodation on a phone in the bright sunlight (thank goodness we didn’t do that shore excursion as we may have had no signal there), eventually just telling him to trust his judgement and book it. It ended up being a really nice apartment (thought the stairs to it were killers!) and was cheaper than the original we’d booked and was in an area known for its restaurants. It was a win-win. Later that evening, we figured out what had gone wrong and why it was cancelled. And it’s to do with how vendors on Booking.com don’t seem to be updated with email address and credit card details after a booking has been made and if the client changes either or both these details before they get to the accommodation. In essence:

• Back in February/March my sister made the Rome booking under a Gmail address that was part of her Booking.com profile; she didn’t realise this was the address used as she signed up with them a long time ago. It’s an address she basically never checks… (and she made that booking because her son was arriving a day before us, so he needed to be the main name on the booking, though this had little to do with what went wrong [I’d made all the other bookings]).
• The booking wasn’t an instant payment (pre-paid) one where the money comes out of the credit card immediately.
• Some time after making the booking, her bank issued her a replacement credit card with a new number and/or expiry date, so she checked her profile on Booking.com and changed her credit card details to the new ones, AND noticed that her email address was the old Gmail one, so she changed that to her primary email address.
• But for some reason, all communications to her about THIS booking went to her old Gmail address (I had the same thing happen to me for one of my bookings—the emails after making the booking then changing my email address, continued to go to the old address, which fortunately I had placed a ‘forward’ on to come to my main email address).
• AND when Booking.com tried to take the payment for the Rome accommodation 2 weeks beforehand, as they said they would, they were using the old credit card details, which meant the payment never went through.
• Booking.com sent her a couple of emails to her old Gmail address telling her to contact them re payment, but she never got those emails as they weren’t forwarded to her primary email address, and Booking.com didn’t use her current email address in her profile. (We found the emails when she used my tablet to log in to her Gmail address—there they were!)
• So they cancelled the booking. I’ve been in contact with Booking.com about this practice, but they’ve never responded to my messages. Be warned!

The journey so far (Barcelona to Rome leg)

Porto Cervo

Porto Cervo

Our little (illegal?) swimming spot

2 suitcases, so much stuff!

Passionfruit martinis at our last music trivia game

Livorno is the Italian port closest to Florence, but because we’d been to Florence a couple of weeks ago, it wasn’t on our agenda for the day. In fact, I stayed on board and had a slow day while my sister went ashore to check out the town and the shops… and contribute to the Italian economy… again. It was pretty quiet on the ship as I think most people went to Pisa or Florence.

For the second night in a row our team (2 Scots, 2 Poms and 2 Aussies) tied for first place in the music trivia quiz, but got beaten in the dance-off (we’d have preferred a tie-break question!). We’ve won at least twice at music or general trivia over the past 2 weeks, and got some ship-branded prizes, such as sun visors, coffee ‘keep’ cups etc. My sister was very pleased with her sun visor and wore it often!

Port of Livorno, Italy

Watching the world go by from a sun lounge under the shade at the Conservatory pool

What a lovely place! The dock is about a street away from the town centre, there’s a beach right in town (yep, we went swimming and yes, it was reasonably cold, but very refreshing), it has good shopping and a very long pedestrian-only street full of delightful small shops, and there didn’t seem to be a lot of tourists except those of us from the ship. Ajaccio was the birthplace of Napoleon, but we didn’t feel the need to visit the historic places that celebrated him.

You know how some places just speak to you and you say in your head ‘I could live here’? Well, Ajaccio was one of those places for me. After the high levels of glitz and glamour seen in St Tropez and Monte Carlo, it was refreshing to come to a place that wasn’t so focused on wealth or tourism.

After wandering about town for most of the morning, we walked back to the ship for a relaxing afternoon by the pool.

The journey from Barcelona so far

Ajaccio city centre is on the right, the town beach is on the other side of those buildings

One lone figure in the Mediterranean at the town beach. There were more, and we added another two, but it certainly wasn’t crowded even though it was another hot day. The water was refreshingly cold!

Freshly squeezed orange juice is everywhere in the southern/western Mediterranean and it’s DELICIOUS. This large glass cost EU5 in a cafe right near the beach

A GORGEOUS yellow Vespa! (yellow wasp)

The very long pedestrian-only area, which had hundreds of small shops and cafes