The Shins Chutes Too Narrow

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…

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…?

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.

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?

S has been a hit with her Croatian family – two great aunts, a great uncle, second and third cousins – walking and chattering and she impressed everyone by wolfing down a fish soup.

We are all feeling revived and loving sitting out on the balcony enjoying the view and the air and sun.

C now wants to move to an apartment 12th century stone village in the countryside. Only €400 per month! We went to the Labin food market this morning – OMG, the local produce, cheeses and meats (and rakia) are just sublime.

Although C has not given up his London campaign “But if we lived in London, we could visit Croatia all the time” etc – but he has thought the better of insisting that ‘life will be over, forever’ if we live in Melbourne for one second longer. Of course, it would be (sort of) nice to live in London and have a nanny and three bedrooms and a garden and a car etc – but somewhat unrealistic. And I will definitely go mad if we live in a dark, tiny, airless flat on the world’s busiest road in east London. Do I really want S to grow up as a Londoner? But imagine if she could learn another language (French! Croatian!) and actually be able to use it regularly… argh! It hurts my head thinking about this, still, getting on for three years after we moved back to Melbourne….

Michael Jackson? The last time we three were in Croatia together, Hurricane Katrina kept us glued to the television (that and MTV’s Pimp My Ride – the ultimate holiday trash viewing). This time, it’s Michael Jackson’s conspiracy-riddled, untimely death. I think I have heard the 911 tape about 50 times, and seen the ‘Thriller’ film clip (all 20 mins of it) at least 5 times – we have no direct internet (the horror!) at our lovely apartment here in Rabac on the coast of Istria, with a balcony overlooking a gorgeous blue bay and terracotta roofs with an occasional storm rolling across the green hills – just satellite TV which is largely German programs. Our only source of English is that overflowing garbage channel, CNN.  Brain definitely rotting.

Hoping to get to swim in the next few days before we head to Venice on Friday. More stupidity on my behalf (Bridges! Stairs! Cobblestone pavements! Er, boats!). Did I forget we were travelling with a baby? Also feeling very revved up about Florence – the guide book is making me plan my dotage as a Florentine…

Especially as we all got London madness and existed in a kind of frenzy of trying to be out amongst it all and see people before we left.

There was a Swedish  Midsummer dinner, a gorgeous bbq in the garden of our friend A’s wonderful house in Hackney

lunch at the Rochelle School Canteen, visits to the Tate, the Royal Academy and the Dover Street Market, where we could only afford to look.

C went especially dotty and insisted we not get on the plane back to Melbourne and instead move into some shoebox on the Hackney Road. And I also managed to whinge for a good three days about the Portugal leg of our trip as I have ended up changing my flight to come back to London five days early, so that C and J can ‘work on a project’ without the distraction of wives or children. Hmmm.

Anyway – to return to glorious Paris.

Future travellers please note: Paris is highly inconvenient for those who cannot walk. Cobblestones, hills, stairs, vast tracts of underground Metro corridors, all connected by stairs. Montmartre? No, not the delightful, park-filled neighbourhood I had somehow re-imagined it in my mind – just stairs.

Steep hills. And cobblestones.

We were shattered by the end of each day. Um, whose bright idea was it to go to Pere Lachaise cemetery? ALL cobblestones and acute staircases, apart from being the size of several stadiums. We just about found the two main famous interns – Oscar Wilde and Jim Morrison

– but I was sad not to find Isadora Duncan or Gertrude Stein. We nearly found Max Ernst, but lost patience and concentration. I mean – it was beautiful. But poor S – her teeth were rattling in her head as we pushed her over miles of  bouncy pathways. Fortunately she thinks bouncing is quite funny, but even she got tired after awhile.

I have totally given up cooking in the evening. And Paris kitchens are miniscule.

We just ate & drank our bodyweights in bread and cheese and wine while in Paris. Happily we achieved one lunch at a recommended restaurant, Le Chateaubriand.

Just about managed to keep S occupied with a steady supply of pea pods before she got quite bored by being in the same spot for 45 minutes.

The Pompidou continues to kick arse as my favourite modern art gallery. Not only was the feature exhibition on one of my favourite artists, Alexander Calder (I love his mobiles, but had never seen any of his amazing wire sculptures of people), the main collection had been re-hung to display the work of female artists, which was fascinating and fantastically bold.

After that, we managed to get rid of some pesky Euros weighing us down at the ancient E Dehillerin cookware store.

The highlight of this day was when S charmed a shop attendant into giving her for free (!) her first pair of Parisian sneakers – a ‘California yellow’ pair of tiny Asics trainers. At €50 (nearly $100), I laughed when she pointed to them and after I tried them on her (perfect fit), handed them back to the man at the counter.

When SJ came out of the shop with the pair of red Nikes he purchased, there was a tiny box in his hand – the yellow trainers for S. “She is so cute!” the shop man protested. “I want her first pair of shoes to come from my shop in Paris!” Seriously – have you ever heard of anything so outrageous. A charmed life indeed.

I think they go well with the pretty summer outfit I bought her from the Parisian baby shop, Bonpoint, non?

>Okay, flight. Bring snacks for N. She will probably not eat aeroplane food. I managed with a banana, an avocado, lots of rice crackers and other biscuits (she didn’t eat many of those) and a lot of grapes. S also ate a bit of bread roll and fruit from our meals, and a small amount of one of the aeroplane’s ‘post-weaning meal’. But whatever N’s favourite foods are, take them with you assuming she will not eat anything else. Snacks pass time and also soothe a cranky baby!

Other things: we had a few different new toys and books she had not seen before which had varying degrees of success – a plastic mobile phone from fisher price, a sticker book, some animal figurines,  and we had our laptops and Muppets DVD, which was perfect when she really, really got hysterical. That happened a couple of times. We had a midnight flight, which I think was good in some ways. It took her a couple of hours to settle down, but eventually she was so tired, she fell asleep – but because she didn’t fit in the bassinette, she would ONLY sleep on C. N should fit in bassinette with any luck, so hopefully you’ll be able to get some sleep yourself.

The first 7 hour flight we prob got 2-3 hours sleep, the second leg, S slept a lot more – but it was bloody agonising – 13 hours. I was utterly delirious when we arrived. It took a good week-10 days to get S back into reasonable sleeping patterns. She was waking at 4am and up for the day for awhile there  – probably as it is summer time and the suns is bright by then – but we were going at bed at 8.30pm…!

However, there was one upside, which is that S would need a nap at about 10.30am after her 4am wake ups, and so she started falling asleep in the stroller (we bought a crappy maclaren on eBay UK) – so that’s been great – she will fall asleep while we’re out and we don’t have to fit in around cot-sleeps during the day.

The main problem on the flight is boredom. You have to eke out the entertainment, dole out snacks sparingly, sing songs, use the in-seat entertainment remote controller as a distraction for as long as possible… The upside, as you might know, is the bonus leg room you get in the bassinette seating rows : )