I'm a very lucky person, I know, but I sometimes have a holiday, and when I do I like it to be an adventure. I'm an adventurer, a traveller, but not a tourist. I don't particularly like tourists, my problem with them is that they are always where I want to go, and usually they manage to ddo it cheaper.
For instance I usually look on the map and decide where I want to go to first. This is almost inevitably a visit to a site of National or International Importance. I get there, I'm jostled, shoulder to shoulder with trippers. Oh grief, that sounds so snobbish. What I mean to say is that there a lot of people who have holidays, have a limited time to have them before getting back to work, so they go on a coach tour or similar to see the sights. I did it once. Five countries in nine days. Privately I hated it, but officially I loved it because it first introduced me to Margaret, the redoubtable Mrs S., who has now been my "other half" for more than forty-one years.
Anyway, I decide where I want to go, get sniffy, (is it surprising when at Versailles I once saw a Japanese man wearing a suit with gold stripes. Close examination of the gold stripes showed that they were formed by a repeating sequence of letters. The sequence was ENTAXASAHIPENTAXASAHIP, which puzzled me as much then as much as it puzzles me now. A whole suit with stripes of gold letters). So as I say, after I've seen this amazing building or whatever, I just wander the streets and watch the locals come and go. Sometimes I attempt to chat to them, then I'll find a local eatery, have another walk in the afternoon and go back to the hotel, look at my map, and find I've missed a world heritage sight by a single block. And I am seldom disappointed about that.
I am the man who has been to Paris but not been up the Eiffel Tower; Rome without touring the Coliseum, Venice, without going round St Mark's Cathedral; Barcelona without seeing La Sagrada Familia; and Florence without going to the Uffizi. I am 71 in a few days, and I have to realise that my chances of "doing Europe" many more times are rapidly decreasing. In fact this could be conceivably my last time to visit family, friends and places that I have known since childhood.
So I've planned my itinerary to see parts of Europe which I either love, or think I'll love. In 2012 I went round many of Italy's gardens. This time I'm heading for the art galleries and concert halls. And I'm travelling by train to places that in some cases I couldn't go to, like Berlin and Prague.
I'm setting off by the Red Arrow from Rome to Florence, and by the Silver Arrow to Venice. Then I'm travelling by one of the last night trains that used to criss-cross Europe, by catching the 9pm Venice to Vienna via Salzburg train, although I shall hopefully be fast asleep when we reach there at 3.30 in the morning. (I went to Salzburg about ten years ago, and refused to visit anything to do with Mozart, although I accidentally went to the Nonne Nunnery where Julie Andrews was a novice.
From Vienna I clickety click to Prague and from there I clickety clack to Berlin, before taking the high speed train to Hamburg, which is one of the most wonderful destinations which noone knows about. Then on to Amsterdam to smell the smoke, and Paris on the Thalys, a train which only takes just over three hours for the entire journey! Lastly, after reliving some memories in Paris, it will be off to London by Eurostar, and start the tour of relations and friends. At last, totally exhausted, I come home to Sydney, the best destination of them all.
Meanwhile, if I'm going to chat to the locals, I'm going to have to brush up my Italian, start from scratch with Czech (how hard can a language be with five accents?), German, Dutch and French.
So from me it's Ciao, Chus, Ahoy, Chus, ?, and au'voir
John
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