Category Archives: city

city, food, friends, NZ

Auckland jet-lag recovery

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After a solid twenty-four hours of being on Dreamliners (only remarkable by the amount I dozed), I was back in NZ & it was hot and sunny. I’d planned a few days in Auckland to try & recover from the exhausting trip and the horrible cold I’d been fighting for a week, and to spend time with good friends.

So that was pretty much what I did – although regular sleep patterns did take a while to resume, not helped by being playfully attacked in the middle of the night by Monkey. Unfortunately, Monkey, a very lovely cat, met his demise later in the week coming off second best against a car – nothing to do with him keeping me awake I must add.

Thanks to all those who took the time to see me, or fed me, or both.

Rangitoto Island from Mount Eden.

Slight sugar overload at Little & Friday.

Edison enjoyed it at least.

The rest of the morning was spent on the beach & hills of Devonport.

The pohutukawas are flowering early this year – hopefully the sign of a good summer to come.

Before long my short stay in Auckland was over & I was on one of these black planes winging my way south to be reunited with my family.

city, Europe, friends, travel

Stockholm weekend

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Way back when I was in Italy for a month somehow I ended up booking flights to Stockholm for the weekend just past – as Bea was going to exhibit at a trade-show & invited me along. At twenty pounds each way, it wasn’t too much of a big deal if I couldn’t or decided not to go. This time last week I was still undecided, but ended up booking accommodation & therefore I was going. Flying from Stansted also provided a good opportunity to continue the bike-touring farewells to extended family – this time with not quite as much riding.

I set off across London aiming further west than necessary so as to connect to National Cycle Route 1 alongside the Lea. Within long I was under the Thames & riding along the Greenway – a very straight raised cycleway/footpath. I was pleased to discover I was riding on top of Victorian industrial history – the North Outfall Sewer from the 1860s. After visiting Crossness a few years ago I recognised Abbey Mills Pumping Station pretty easily – also an impressive building considering its designed use.

It was a perfect winter’s day for cycling – still & crisp.

Eventually I had to leave the river & cut back east to Carol & Barry’s. First I found this little village:

And then I found the Matching church a couple of miles away, the possibility of bad puns is obvious.

I made it before dark and was warmly welcomed and plied with vast amounts of food – a sure way to make a cyclist happy after fifty-odd miles. Conveniently, the airport is only a short-hop on a local bus away; I had plenty of time to get stuck into War & Peace again. This weekend has been my only experience of the much-maligned Ryan Air – but when a return trip to Stockholm for about the same price I’ve paid for a eighty-minute off-peak train journey in southern England, one really shouldn’t complain too much.

By the time I was on the coach into Stockholm, the sun was already starting to set – this was going to take a little getting used to. After meeting Bea & her friends, then meeting my airbnb host & settling into the vast rooms I’d somehow got for a very reasonable price (in a lovely period apartment block) I was back out again. To my surprise we (me & the Italians) ended up taking the metro some distance out of the centre and before I knew it I was in an extensive indoor-climbing gym watching a Swedish bouldering competition with a couple of hundred Swedish climbing enthusiasts; I am still unsure how that happened.

Saturday was the first day of the trade-show, so I excused myself from providing Italian-English translation of dubious quality and went to have a proper look around the city. Walking across town the morning was absolutely miserable as cars clattered past with spiked tyres on roads free of ice & snow – dense cloud all around, cold and just plain bleak. I was beginning to regret the decision to go on one last Euro weekend trip before my return to summer next week. Thankfully, I went to the Vasa Museum, was thoroughly impressed and my enthusiasm for seeing new places returned.

The Vasa story is similar to the Mary Rose in that it was a warship launched to much fanfare (in this case, in 1628) and then promptly sunk on its maiden voyage while crowds watched, before being salvaged in more modern times. The Vasa sunk in little more than a breeze (it was too narrow for its height & its high centre of gravity) less than a mile into its first outing in Stockholm harbour before it was brought up 333 years later in 1961. Due to the brackish water & subsequent absence of shipworm to hasten its decay, it’s in remarkable shape at over ninety-five percent intact. At almost seventy metres long and twelve metres across it is a very impressive sight – & looks strangely familiar as the Black Pearl from the Pirates of the Caribbean film series was heavily influenced by it. I easily spent close to three hours in the museum, it was fantastic & the highlight of what I saw in Stockholm, before considering braving the cold again.

Many of the carvings were still discernible – lions on the underside of the gun hatches to intimidate the passersby/enemy.

In a better mood, I found things I thought it was worth taking photos of.

The apartment block that was home for the weekend.

With the trade-show finishing around eight, I popped in & managed not to sample too much wine & grappa before we headed out for dinner with yet more Italians. I expected to hear a bit of Swedish, naturally, over the weekend – but I think I heard mostly Italian spoken; which is a bit of fun trying to work out what is being said, but my vocabulary is still too limited so mostly I had no idea!

Sunday was, to my delight, a bit warmer & a lot brighter. It was a pretty easy day with a late brunch followed by a visit to Skansen – a large historic village with old buildings from all over Sweden that aims to give a sense of how people lived this far north over centuries past. It was nice being outside leisurely wandering around learning a bit; there was also a small wildlife park which provided some entertainment – but I’ve been spoilt by East Africa too many times to be captivated by such displays.

The sun even came out, except we weren’t really standing in its light.

Walking back past the Vasa museum, these replica masts show how tall the ship was.

Once the sun had set the rest of the day was spent among excellent company and conversation (some of which I could understand) in various bars. So that was pretty much my last little Euro trip for who-knows-how-long – it didn’t start fantastically, but I came around and really enjoyed it. I’d very much like to see Stockholm during long summer days – it must be quite something.

Apparently I missed a Sunday of horrendous rain back in England – but Monday’s sunset was worth seeing.

Now that I’m back home, I just have to pack my life up into a few boxes and bags, clean my bike thoroughly for the NZ border and say last farewells. Should be manageable.

bikepacking, bikes, city, Europe, GPS, history, travel

A Strasbourgian Birthday

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I’ve a hour or so up my sleeve while I wait for a train to Basel – yes, a train. But I’ve been convinced that the cycling from Strasbourg to the Basel/Mulhouse area is none too exciting and while pleasant, the ride from Wissembourg to Strasbourg was enough of the flat Rhine valley to see. From there, I think I’ll skirt the French-Swiss border through the Jura range – if I can handle that & whatever the weather does – and somehow get over/through the Alps to Aosta in NW Italy.

As mentioned, Saturday’s ride into Strasbourg was not too thrilling – pretty flat (only a hundred metres of climbing in over ninety kilometres) as I paralleled the Rhine upstream. A lot of it was road too, with not many dedicated cycle routes to be had. It rained quite a bit, but nowhere as bad as the torrents that fell from the sky in Belgium. As I was sitting eating my lunch, through another shower, I saw a couple of Italian flags flying past on the back of touring bikes. Eventually I caught up to Giorgio & Nora sheltering under a shop awning from another shower. From Umbria, they were a week into their honeymoon cycle-touring from Amsterdam back towards Italy – I think they were sick of the same weather that I was.

While we mostly conversed in English as we shared the ride into Strasbourg, it was fun to try out what Italian I can remember. Just as we approached the city, there was a cycle-path off the road and this one was most definitely riding along the top of the Maginot line – it was raised like a stop-bank for the river, but every couple of hundred metres there was a concrete bunker/pill-box. I bid my Italian cycling buddies arrivederci as we neared their campground and I my first warmshowers.org experience (like couch-surfing, but for cycle-tourists).

Adrien greeted me warmly, we managed to get my bike in the elevator up to the sixth floor (29” wheels are almost a bit much for small European elevators) and I even got a loaned a pair of house shoes (slippers) for my stay. Thankfully, Adrien graciously let me stay an extra night to what I initially proposed – this meant that I could have my birthday completely off the bike – and cooked me dinner and made tea. Like a lot of border town/cities around here – Strasbourg has at different times been German & French.

More TPHS history classes here: Germany lost Alsace (the region of which Strasbourg is the largest city) and neighbouring Lorraine back to France after Versailles, I’m unsure how many times before the area has changed hands. So there is a big German influence in the city’s buildings and language. In fact, Adrien is a primary school teacher and he shares two classes of six to seven year olds with another teacher – he teaches in German, while the other teacher teaches in French (I think I’ve got that correct). But Adrien is from Brittany, so not a native German speaker – but then Europeans do so much better at learning languages than Kiwis.

I slept well on a proper mattress, slept-in & missed birthday calls from family back home, returned said calls, slowly got organised and headed into the city for a leisurely look around – snacking regularly on various baked goodies. A climb up the cathedral (also called Notre Dame) tower was the most strenuous my day got – but 330-odd stairs take a little effort. As it was Sunday, there were only really tourists around but the city gradually woke up and was nice to walk around looking at the buildings and canals. I sat writing postcards, finally, with a beer looking up at the cathedral.

I did enjoy looking at all the steep roofs from the cathedral tower.

The view from Adrien’s apartment

Upon my return Adrien & his mate had returned from a couple of hours of road riding to the west towards the Vosges. I had suggested that I take him out for dinner as thanks and also for my brithday – but he was keen to cook crepes and somehow with the help of his ex-flatmate, it turned into a dinner party of nine. We rearranged the kitchen and living area to try and hold nine people and then Adrien dragged out his crepe hot-plate, for want of a better word. Bretons take their crepes seriously – this hot-plate was a 30th birthday present and it was hefty, weighing in at eighteen kilograms! That’s getting up there with my loaded bike. A vast amount of batter was made up, with buckwheat flour – this is best I’m told and gradually people started arriving.

Over a few hours the crepe hot-plate was in constant use and over good conversation (although I was lost whenever it strayed from English, which was often) and three bottles of champagne a most memorable birthday was rounded off. Somehow during the course of the evening my named morphed to Brian – to which there is only one answer. “I’m not Brian!” – of course that is slightly wrong with the negative, but it’s always surreal to me to be discussing Monty Python with people from foreign-speaking countries, for some reason.

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Adrien with the tools of the trade

By the time I ran a few errands this morning (another kilogram shed from my luggage and rear bag structure now more secure), it was getting close to noon – Adrien has definitely gone out of his way to accommodate me. What a great stay and a nice break from the bike (only two weeks in), thanks Adrien and au revoir.

city, Europe, family, food, hiking, travel

A family week for a Chianti wedding

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The main impetus for a month of family visiting me from the Southern Hemisphere at this particular time was that my second-cousin (that is, my mother’s cousin’s daughter) Catherine and her fiancé Chris were getting married in Tuscany after a lot of planning. As well as the parents of the bride, & Mum and Adele, also along for the week in Chianti from our side of the family were two cousins, Trish (from most of my previous adventures in & around London) and Keith, and my aunt Valerie from Sydney (who’d I’d last seen on the our big west-USA roadtrip three years ago). Sorting out all the flights, accommodation, rental car etc. between such far-flung people was not particularly easy – but it all came together in the end, with different people sorting various things out.

Many of the wedding guests stayed in the same building, four separate apartments, for the week with others joining us later in the week staying closer to the castle. I was excited to be back in Italy yet again as I really enjoyed the week when my Kiwi cousin got married nearby six years ago and also since then I’ve learnt a little bit of Italian at work. Plus Tuscany is beautiful and the food and red wine excellent. At least this time, being six weeks earlier in the year, was more moderate in temperature – mid-twenties is much better than high-thirties.

With the wedding later in the week we had a few days to amuse ourselves. While I still had some enthusiasm for driving a large people-mover on windy & slow Tuscan roads we did a couple of day trips to Siena and San Gimignano. The weather wasn’t as good mid-week, but by then I was keen to explore the pretty hill-top villages that one could see from Castello di Meleto – Adele was happy to oblige and come along for some big walks exploring the local hills, tracks and restaurants.

Home for the week

Looking down to the castle

And out over the Chianti hills – much hillier and more wooded than around San Gimignano, where we stayed last time

Siena – while eating the most expensive, but not necessarily the best, gelato of the week

Siena Duomo again

Back looking at the towers in San Gimignano – where Mum, Adele & I somehow managed to bump into our fourth-cousin (we share the same great-great-great-great grandparents, I think) from NZ & her fiancé completely unexpectedly

The ground around where we were staying (that’s the villa at top-left) was so rocky only grapes or olives were any good for cultivating

I’d had my eye caught by the large walled village right across the other side of the valley – as it wasn’t on many maps, I was intrigued. To walk off lunch & the early wine-tasting Adele & I set off in that direction happy to explore small lanes. Perhaps the road we chose was steeper than we bargained for, but we were enjoying ourselves. We did get to the village and unlike the previous ones we’d been to, it was pretty much deserted with a church and single cafe seeming the only public buildings. A couple of lost bikepackers rode in, so that was encouraging (that there were bikepackers in the area, not that they were lost); we had more ice cream in the sun.

Buoyed by the success of Tuesday’s exploring we set Wednesday aside for a more ambitious route – thanks to the big map boards in Gaiole-in-Chianti central car park, we had plenty to choose from. These well defined routes went some way to explaining why there seemed to be so many people randomly walking and mountain-biking through the estate during our stay.

We’d reached our objective, Barbischio (another village we’d seen across the valley on the previous day’s walk), by lunchtime. Perhaps spurred on by the wine and the grappa/limoncello, it was decided it was a good idea to walk up another big hill to a small ruined keep that had been taunting me like a French knight. It was a good idea, but our chosen route took us to the top of the wrong hill – leaving the keep to “taunt us a second time”. Still, can’t complain about six hour walking around with great company in the sun spotting deer, wild boar, snakes and multitudes of lizards and admiring the landscape.

Half this tower had fallen down, so someone had built their house inside the shell

Like a few other complexes we’d seen around, these four or so new houses were all but finished, and completely deserted

The morning of the wedding (four o’clock service) I could stand the taunting of the keep no more, so Mum, Valerie, Adele & I drove up there (having worked out how to get there). It was pretty ruined, so we had fun pretending we were like the Famous Five, or some such, exploring it. The views back down to Gaiole & beyond were worth it too.

We popped into another small town, Radda-in-Chianti for a little wander, a quick bite and more gelato – I made the mistake, not to be repeated, of not getting lemon as one of the three scoops. With what was supposed to be plenty of time, we returned home to eat & prepare for the wedding; that is, until Adele found the first of her five flights home starting the next day had been cancelled due to strike action. So cue a couple of hours of stress trying to find a nearby flight that would get Adele to Heathrow after the wedding, but before her intercontinental journey was to start. Somehow we both managed to sort that out and still get to the wedding scrubbed up, all will be well when the travel insurance stumps up.

Earlier concerns over the weather for the outside service proved unfounded and it was good in such a beautiful setting. Now is when I find that I really did leave all photography of pretty much everything wedding-related to those with better cameras and ability – all I have is this pre-shot of the strings. Shocking. Still, I’ll have to go off my memory of a simple & elegant service, with some nice readings and a very beautiful happy couple (that was mostly Catherine, but Chris scrubbed up pretty well too).

So much food, again. Canapés & cocktails on the lawn while the photos were being taken; dinner and speeches in the castle; and finally cake-cutting out in the garden as the night drew in. Great night.

Adele managed to get all packed up the morning after the night before and we, Mum & Valerie too, were off to drop her at Pisa airport. It was supposed to be the relatively close Florence airport, but flight rearrangement meant a lot more driving – but we got to see the tower again. With goodbyes, lunch, final Italian gelati for a while & the sightseeing done we took a rather roundabout route home via Lucca as I forgot there was a difference between the autostrada and highway between Florence & Pisa. Nevermind, we got to see the huge thunderstorm pummelling Chianti as we drove towards it.

That was about the week really – a fantastic one spent with family in a stunning setting with plenty of top-notch food & red wine and just enough exercise to offset it and stop me going slightly more crazy.