Oh, and

Neko Case Blacklisted

Reprise

GAH – Forgot about

The Shins Chutes Too Narrow

Top Ten of 00s

Elliott Smith Figure 8
Devendra Banhart Rejoicing in the Hands
Bloc Party Silent Alarm
Interpol Antics
Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds Abbatoir Blues / Lyre of Orpheus
Outkast The Love Below
Jamie Lidell Multiply
Cat Power You Are Free
Mark Lanegan Field Songs
Nada Surf Let Go

Porto 14 July 2009

So, our apartment luck ran out in Porto, where we arrived from Pisa on 13 July – fourth floor. Now with more heavy luggage than ever.

It were all Florence & Tuscany’s fault. We adored Florence. We stayed in a fantastic place called Le Tre Stanze – a palazzo building just behind the Duomo.

We had the Junior Suite – one single room and a double room, with a bathroom. In actuality, the rooms were huge.

We shared a kitchen with the rest of the guests and Patrick, the Swiss-Italian owner and manager, who said the building had been in his family for about 60 years. Apparently Palazzos were going cheap back then, being so big and so costly to maintain.

Anyway – it was glorious staying there.

We felt quite regal. The first few moments sitting in our room made us feel like we might be in a painting.

After the tightly packed art schedule we had in Venice, we had only one gallery per day – Uffizi then Accademia the day after – to fit in, and we whipped round those in about an hour each.

Renaissance, Renaissance, Medici, Vasari, blah blah blah. In some ways I wish I had brushed up on my Renaissance history so that I was a bit more excited by the vast swathes of Giotto, Cimabue, Michaelangelo, Donatello, Da Vinci, Brunelleschi et al.

When I did actually read about the Orsanmichele building, with the important sculptures commissioned for 14^th century artisan guilds, it was amazing. Instead we sat opposite it eating very good €2.50 rolls with ham, pork, cheese, tomato etc every lunchtime, before heading off for an afternoon of shopping.

We sort of needed to relax with idle consumerism after the heat, logistical stresses and intellectual demands of Venice. Sunday scored a new dress. And I somehow acquired a handbag and sunglasses…

We also visited the Florence market. Everything in Italy was tomatoes, zucchini and fennel. We were not complaining.

Picked up a car from Florence airport and drove 45 minutes into the Tuscan countryside to a place called Barberino Val D’Elsa close to Castellina in Chianti. AKA, Chiantishire, as it is usually populated by half of the home counties on holidays.

Indeed it is very touristy, but equally, very gorgeous.

We stayed in one of Federica’s apartments at Agrifuturismo. It was so pretty.

Not too sure about S’s cot though.

We overlooked a beautiful vista.

S played with an extremely tame cat.

Our plan here was to eat – we had two restaurants located in Panzano in Chianti, namely Mac Dario and Solociccia we wanted to visit. They are run by a family butcher.

Mac Dario is the burger joint.

SJ felt great satisfaction at raising the burger stakes.

For our final lunch together before SJ flew back to Melbourne, we had lunch at Solociccia. Along with maybe another 6 tables full of happy, hungry patrons.

It was a revelrous afternoon of beautiful meat dishes and surprisingly delicious and memorable veg accompaniments.

We weren’t too sure about the fried meats, but the menu picked up to a stupendous finale of braised beef, meltingly rich and delicious. Was too busy eating to take a photo, sorry!

And our other consumption continued to be… shopping.

It’s actually quite difficult to shop when you have a baby while yr on tour. We’ve not done any shopping (hardly) at all. I went to a baby clothing sale in London, and we bought some pans & knives in Paris. But apart from that, literally nothing. So, it might have gone to our heads a bit. But can we be blamed for the fact that the Italians have this concept called the Outlet?

You know, what with their leather goods and clothing manufacturing industries. Anyway. We somehow found our way to the Prada Outlet (called Space) and The Mall – an entire Outlet shopping centre for major designer brands – Gucci, Fendi, Marni, Pucci, Burberry, Balenciaga, Yohji Yamamoto…

So, it just so happened that we went to The Mall during sale time. Outlet + sale = massive bargains!

Well, relatively speaking. Apologies to S for her crappy future education – we spent all our money on shoes and jackets.

Is it appalling that shopping can be classed as leisure, pleasure and relaxation. Or excitement? I can’t deny I had a little thrill as we approached The Mall, with its promise of designer label goods at low, low prices.

Aside from shopping and eating, we managed a swift side trip to Siena.

After depositing SJ at Pisa airport (among the world’s most rubbish airports, btw), we made our way into the town to see if we could find the Leaning Tower. Thanks to the power of the Tom Tom sat nav, we did.

Glad we didn’t make a specific trip to Pisa just to see it, but it’s um, very nice. The dome was actually lovely, but no one talks about the dome, do they?

So – Porto. We had to pay a €50 luggage fine at pissing Pisa airport as Ryanair decided to give us a hard time, so that was aggravating. By the time we hauled all of our luggage up four flights of stairs, we were properly travel weary. After feeding S and putting her in bed, we slumped onto the sofa with beer & crisps and watched a DVD.

The next day, we managed to walk a circuit across the town, play in the park and then gratefully go back to our apartment.

Packing, unpacking, repacking, washing, acquiring food, coffee, the makings of baby’s dinner… after 2 months of this routine, we were about ready to collapse. Instead, we hauled our luggage to the train station and headed for Lisbon…

Venice

Actually, this is the view from our apartment in Rabac, Croatia. Lovely, isn’t it?

And this is dinner – some cevapcici, a tomato salad, beans & blitva (i think that’s what the greens are called) and fried potatoes.

Love this series of photographs of S taken by my brother in Croatia. He’s an emerging artist, you know.

she’s looking at photos of our trip. Very thoughtful.

sweet girl.

Venice was quite gruelling. It was extremely humid. Just plain hot.

We only had two full days there, and it slowly dawned on us that there was an awful lot of art to see. For SJ especially, he felt a lot of pressure to see as much as possible. We were happy with seeing both Biennale sites, Giardini and Arsenale, which fortunately were both only a couple of vaporetto stops from our apartment.We loved the Miranda July sculpture garden.

My little girl.

My wriggling girl.

They just met 5 mins ago.

It was actually amazing to be there with SJ who is an actual artist, and who knows about contemporary art. So amazing to have conversations / arguments about things that aren’t to do with babies or domestic arrangements. Really felt as though I had stepped outside of myself for at least a little while, on occasion, during this trip. I even feel half-motivated to do some study again, as I have realised that indeed, the mind is a terrible thing to waste.

We abandoned Peggy Guggenheim for another time, as we’ve been before, and instead went to the new Pinault collection http://www.artinfo.com/galleryguide/26534/13300/121516/franois-pinault-foundation-punta-della-dogana/exhibition/mapping-the-studio-artists-from-the-franois-pinault-collection/

The Chapman Brothers’ ‘Fucking Hell’ was extraordinary.

Our other favourite was the Nordic/Danish stand at the Biennale. It appealed to the conceptual artist and design aficionado, and the baby.

We argued a lot about the Shaun Gladwell work at the Australian stand. That was fun.

There was a lot of traipsing about – up and down bridges, along canals, sweltering on the vaporetto. S got a terrible heat rash, although she wasn’t upset by it. Just looked unpleasant. Although the vaporetto churns along the canal, giving the idea that it might be nice and breezy, in fact, it’s not at all. There’s no breeze. I saw pools of perspiration gathering in the bags underneath passengers’ eyes many times. Nobody gave up their precious seat, not for young or old.

Still. Venice is undeniably glorious. But maybe leave the baby at home next time…?

Venice 3 July 2009

A full day of traveling. My non-more-manly cousin B drove us at breakneck speed (we clocked him texting while driving at 160km) from Istria by car to Trieste in the far north of Italy.

It is always sad to say good bye to the family here as I always wonder – how long before we will be able to come back? My dad is 75 this year, and this will probably be his last trip. Although he always says that and two years later, he’s back again. As it seems, are we. S has been very charming and practised saying everyone’s name and chased the cat and played with the ball til we were all ready for bed.

She has been waking up a bit in the night – I think it gets a bit hot with all three of us in the same room – so we’ve had somewhat rough sleeps the past few nights. Her favourite trick is to lie horizontal across the bed between us, so that we are on either side and about to fall off the edge. Little minx.

Our last day ended with a swim in the sea during a thunder and lightening storm. Charles later broke into (well, entered through a broken door) an abandoned 1960s modernist hotel up on the Rabac hill called Hotel Fortuna. According to cousin B, it has been bought by Germans. Dashed C’s plan to move to Istria and spend 3 years renovating it.

From Trieste a train to Venice. If you ever need to use the facilities at Trieste train station – be warned ladies – it is a pissoir. I mean, the station now has a SPAR chain supermarket, but the conveniences are still very raw, as they were 9 years ago! Still, it’s good to keep it er, real, once in a while I suppose. We bought first class tickets on the train (€8 more expensive) that afforded us the luxury of air conditioning. A blessing, as it’s molto humid here. That, and seething with Americans.

From the station, a vaporetto down to the far end of the Grande Canal and onto our blissful ground floor (no stairs! Ha! Take that, 3rd floor apartments in Paris and Rabac) apartment with a little outdoor courtyard. S had her bath al fresco in a tiny tub.

I pushed my way through the voluminous crowds to the market place at Rialto where I found one cheese shop and one veg stall open at 5pm on a Friday afternoon. There is no way a sane person would want to take a temperamental child into that humid, crowded, stair-riddled, cobblestone-addled, bridge-befuddled Venetian maze. I think our plan is to go to specific places – one of which is the Biennale tomorrow, which is all ourdoorsy sort of. I’d also like to go to the Peggy Guggenheim Museum again. And that should be plenty as we are leaving on Monday for Florence.

How do you say ‘cream’ in Croatian?

We decided to make carbonara with the local Istrian prsut,

but my initial attempt to purchase cream from the supermarket failed. I’d bought sour milk. Who knew it was a local delicacy? So I went back and bought all of the seemingly available options.

One of them was right. Can you guess?