Category Archives: city

city, engineering, Europe, travel

What have the Romans ever done for us?

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The aqueduct.

With my sling off, physio started and a few days left to use up my annual leave allowance before the end of the leave year, it was a great opportunity to finally get to Rome – it’s been top of my list for some time.

Didn’t see a whole heap Thursday night after the plane & train in to the city centre – just enough to find my hotel & a late bowl of pasta. First priority, after breakfast of course, was to get out & see that Rome icon, the Colisseum. Like many cities around this part of the world, it’s really easy to walk between all the main attractions & Rome is no different. I got through the gates early enough that it wasn’t too busy & I could gaze at the vastness & wonder at all the ancient engineering in relative peace.

Right next door is the Forum, which was the centre of Roman public life – there are all sorts of ruins of temples, palaces & such like. By now it was getting busy and also proper hot – well hot compared to what I’ve been used to. With the sun streaming down & temperatures touching 30ºC, I was starting to swelter overdressed in jeans. But it was time to walk a bit to try & find some lunch out of the touristy area.

So over the Tiber I went & wandered aimlessly through narrow streets before popping in to a small store. While contemplating all the cheeses & cold meats on display I noticed a small sign over a staircase pointing to a cafeteria up the stairs.  Lo & behold there was a small cafe up there with a large rooftop courtyard – excellent.

More walking & I was back near the Forum checking out the museums & statues around Capitolini, before heading up a huge staircase & around Foro di Triani.

Typical dinner while I’m out exploring cities is to get on the Metro & head out of the city centre & get off at any stop that I feel like & wander around aimlessly until I find a restaurant that looks likely.  This served me well as I had some great meals in little restaurants surrounded by crowds of loud & excited Italians. While I remember, there were very few British accents around, most of the native English speakers I heard were Americans & a few Australians.

Heading in to the Metro stop just around the corner from my hotel – Repubblica

After the heat of Friday & all that walking, I was proper exhausted so started a little more slowly on Saturday with a wander down to Trevi Fountain – which is well impressive, but not very fountainy. Rather some elaborate waterfalls.

Not a great picture, but it’s one of the few I have of me in Rome – so you’ll have to tolerate it

Not far from Trevi is the Pantheon, which quickly became my favourite sight in Rome.  It started life nearly 2000 years ago as a Roman temple, before eventually being taken over by the Church. With large Corinthian columns out front it starts out pretty impressively, but then you wander in & see the huge dome that is both 43 metres across & high. It’s astoundingly large considering how old it is – it’s still the largest dome ever built with unreinforced concrete.  Then you see the big hole in the top & the engineering becomes more incredible – the geometric pattern on the ceiling was neat too as the sun slowly moved around as it shone through the oculus.

More wandering to find food got me fed, into a castle (Castel Sant Angelo) with good views, popping in to Vatican City & then over the river again up a decent hill into a big park with more views back over the city – before realising my legs were about to fall off again, so a bus home to rest before dinner was a good idea.  That evening I was well off the beaten track until I crossed the Tiber again & found that bridge with all the padlocks on some of the railings – there were thousands & some of the metalwork (more likely the welds) had failed.

Sunday morning I avoided free day at the Vatican museums due to crowds & took a long bus ride south to visit the catacombs.  Dad’s got much better photos from forty years ago as he was allowed to take photos & there will still many bones down there. Still, it was interesting wandering a small length of the miles of tunnels where various tombs have been sitting for centuries.

For some reason, mostly just curiosity as to what other parts of the city look like, I thought it was a good idea to walk all the back in to town.  I came across a fascinating grocery store, a huge park, some sort of fun run (an oxymoron if there ever was one) & what I thought was ruins of a huge old castle. Intrigued I went in, and found out this massive complex was once baths. Incredible that they bothered to have 9000 men building these over six years.

More wanderings took me to the Spanish Steps (not far from hotel), which were alive with colour & people.

Monday was Vatican day, I spent most of the day in the smallest country in the world.  With May 1 (the following day) being a public holiday, the queues were very long – but worth it.  A completely insane collection of art – this is just part of the similarly decorated hundreds of metres to walk through just to get in to the Sistine Chapel.  Which of course is something else besides, but no photos again.

More hours spent queuing to get in to St Peter’s Basilica & somehow I ended up queuing to go up the dome as well. It was sometime before I realised this, so I figured I may as well pay my five euros and climb the 551 stairs to the top.  That was well worth it as first you got to the bottom of the dome inside & could look down at the people below & marvel at the intricacies of the dome paintings & mosaics.

With the ascent of a much tighter spiral staircase the steady stream of people led me in between the two layers of the dome as we gradually bent our necks further & further to keep from bruising our heads. The views all around were well worth the climb.

Yes, the camera is horizontal – it is a dome after all

Down to St Peter’s Square & beyond to the Tiber

Looking up to the dome

I still had time to return at various times to Piazza Navona, the Pantheon & Trevi Fountain around packing up, enjoying more of the local cuisine & getting to the airport. Only downside to the long weekend was the three and a half hour delay to my flight home – I’ve been a little slow at work since then, but a three day week isn’t too hard to survive tired.

Some more of the photos I took are here.

city, family, history, UK

Bristol Stroll

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It was a surprisingly easy two hour drive up to Bristol last night. I’m staying with third cousins here for two nights as tomorrow I’m meeting up with friends and finally heading out for a ski this winter.

With a proper chilly start to the day, I was well chufffed to see a brilliant blue sky.  After a lazy morning including sleeping in, entertaining the kids, drinking tea and eating copious amounts of coffee cake, behind us – we headed out for me to be shown around Bristol.

Driving past the Downs (strangely on the top of the hill) I heard of the city’s profiting from the slave trade, which is reflected in such placenames as White Lady Road & Black Boy Hill. Down to underneath the famous Clifton Suspension Bridge we were following the Avon up to the old docks.

I was intrigued that there was such a thing as a free parking lot so close to town. But there was and soon the kids were in the buggy and the manic dog was running in circles as we wandered into the centre of town taking our time to feed ducks that weren’t skating on the ice. As I got sidetracked by old cranes and trains on the dockside and there were plenty of people also out enjoying the sunshine, it was a little while before we finally sat down for lunch.

The sun was sinking as we emerged for the return trip, which was quite chilly as we strolled at a Dotty (two year old) pace back to the car, curiously bumping into Ollie’s brother and his family heading the other direction. Now we are back at home and I’m sat in front of a roaring fire with tea and more cake watching The Princess Bride, all is well.

(Annoyingly, my shoulder operation has been pushed back a month.)



city, family, friends, London, UK

London trips

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For the first time in my life, I’ve finally been able to start biking to work. But a five kilometre round trip is not all that much & is especially helped by it being a lot flatter than it seems in the car – which is quite the reverse of what I was expecting. So it may be closing in on the longest day of the year, but if it’s not raining & I get up early enough to get organised, a ride to work (even if it just one or two degrees above freezing – thanks Canada for not making me avoid the “cold”) is a nice little start to the day.

Last weekend was a trip up to London for Levi & Marki’s Christmas party. Always good catching up with them & there was plenty of food too. Also pretty fun catching up with a buddy from high school who I hadn’t seen about twelve years – I thought I’d got away from Canadians telling me to watch Trailerpark Boys, but it turns out Jeff is a bit of a fan too. There was no playing football on the deck with an offcut from the woodwork shop, but then the deck at the apartment is a little small & had more important duties as the beer fridge. Somehow I managed to walk out (just managed to walk onto the last train too, thus avoiding my first ever night-bus) with a huge ham – apparently I was the most worthy cause as Levi & Marki weren’t going to get the chance to eat it with travelling on the cards.

Around Sidcup on the weekend was pretty relaxing, on the way to visit Ray & Jill on Saturday morning Trish & I paid a visit to Rudolph’s buddies & their spindly looking antlers.  I’m sure they would still do a bit of damage.

Even after a big sleep in, Sunday was looking pretty grey so Trish & I decided to head out to another little Kentish village – Westerham – to check out Quebec House. After a nice lunch in one of those great English pubs that look like they’re doing a commendable impression of a drunk trying to stand up, we strolled through the village to check out the house. It was the birthplace of General Wolfe – who was apparently the first English military figure to be a popular hero. The name of the house comes from the name of the victorious battle that won him his fame & took his life. All very Nelsonesque – except Wolfe pre-dated him. I’d learnt a little about the battle that saw the British defeat the French in the war for control of Quebec City & Canada when I was at Buckler’s Hard a couple of weeks ago – some of the ships built there sailed to Quebec before the battle. Always interested to get a bit more Canadian history, the museum above the coachhouse had great displays & was very informative. The house was pretty dark inside, but had some interesting period pieces – muskets are pretty heavy it turns out.

I was back in London three days later for yet another appointment about my bung shoulder. So I’ll get keyhole surgery sometime next year – I asked for after-February so I can go skiing at least once this winter. As it’s been three months to get this far, I’m hoping that’s a safe request. I’ll be out of action for a while (six weeks in a sling) with no driving & definitely not biking – but it’ll be nice to get it fixed up & hopefully avoid the agony of the last dislocation repeating. So 2012 doesn’t look like it’ll be so active – but perhaps I’ll finally get around to seeing some more of Europe, which I think was the whole idea of leaving NZ two & a half years ago. Oops.

bikes, Canada, city, family, friends, hiking, MTB, national park, roadtrip, travel, USA, vehicles

Back to Canmore – Roadtrip Complete

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To finish off the three months of driving I decided to drive all the way back from Vancouver to Canmore in the middle of the long weekend. The logic there being that Jasper would be a zoo on a sunny holiday weekend & I’d be better off checking it out a little later when there were less people around.

So Saturday morning I set off on a wonderfully sunny drive east across BC. The traffic was pretty good & BC was beautifully forested – it really is a large province when you drive across the bottom in one day. After Kamloops I was back on roads I’d driven before & there was a half-hour wait near Shuswap – but I had the Kindle out so I wasn’t too fussed. Over Rogers Pass & coming into Golden there was an ominous big cloud of black smoke billowing into the sky. I was near the front of a queue for almost an hour as some poor family watched their RV incinerate. The rest of the drive was uneventful & I was soon driving below familiar peaks – just they had a lot less snow (almost none) on them than I remember. It was a little odd getting closer to Canmore – being away for three months & doing so many other things must have lessened the blow of leaving such a great place as I wasn’t too concerned that I’ll be gone in three weeks.

So that was it really, just under 22000 km, 87 days, 13 states, two provinces, 45 MTB rides totalling a thousand kilometres, at least 15 National Parks & 5 National Monuments, only 2600 photos & 435 gallons of gas. What a great trip! We were blessed by the weather – notably it never got really hot, as it did the last time I visited Utah, Nevada, Arizona & California in 2009.  Highlights are hard to list as there were so many. But I’ll try anyway:

A separate list for the riding highlights, which is even harder as I rode so much quality singletrack.

That’s that – thanks again Valerie for coming along for the ride & sharing the experience (& financing a lot of it too!).  I’m in Canmore until mid-August before flying back to London to catch the last of the English summer.  Mum’s coming across to England for the last few months of the year, so it’ll be great to see her & plenty of other friends & family in the UK.  From then on, I only have vague ideas as to what I’m going to do with myself… But riding better figure in there somehow.