Wednesday 29 May 2013

If it’s Sunday it must be Venice; Italy: May 2013

Four good friends - Venice




It was Joel and Paula’s idea.  Let’s meet up in Italy for a short break.  Sounds great, I said.  We can fly direct from Newark to Milan, they said.  Milan: are you sure?  Well, while we are there we can visit the lakes; and Verona; and the coast… and how about Venice while we’re at it?

So Ian and I hopped on a plane to Milan late in the evening.  J and P had arrived a day earlier and had already ‘done’ Milan and Lake Como.  We only had time for a late night drink.  We had rented a car for the next day.  The rental office was somewhere in the vast stone pile that is Milan’s Central Station and it took a while to find it.  But pretty soon we were off and heading for Verona, straight down the autostrada, the Alps unrolling on the left as we sped past the endless lorries.  Verona markets itself as the city of Juliet; ‘If you love someone bring them to Verona.’  But peel away the tourist stuff and a very respectable and attractive city emerges.  Layer upon layer: a Roman core with its huge arena, being prepared for the summer opera season; and a large number of prosperous medieval and renaissance villas.  The winged lion of St Mark, on a pillar in the main square, marks it out as a city state under the thumb of Venice at the height of its power.  We route marched J + P for miles around the centre, so much so that their footwear gave way!

Next day Ian and I took it easy in Milan, while J + P were up for a 6:30 start – a roundtrip to the hidden coves along Italy’s north-west coast.  Milan has a very prosperous feeling to it, especially within the old medieval town.  Dolce e Gabbana and Versace shops on every corner.  The cathedral, royal palace and its huge square – all, it seems, recently magnificently restored – show the self confidence of this city.  The northern Gothic style of the duomo sets it apart from Florence, Rome and the south.  There is a sense that now and always, Milan has looked for its inspiration across the Alps rather than to the peninsula; just as there is something almost oriental and eastward looking about Venice’s San Marco.  We spent a pleasant, sunny day wandering the streets, and later at the Castello Sforzesco built on a huge scale and with an extensive park, attractive in early summer sunshine.  Joel and Paula, not content with a 12 hour coach tour, were looking for some evening action.  We found a very traditional restaurant with a garden, where we had a relaxing meal; then tried to get into the main square where there was a free concert – but it was completely packed out, so we retreated to the hotel for a nightcap after a circuitous metro ride. 

So – Sunday, and time for Venice!  We went by train, a comfortable two hour journey.  The arrival at Venice is one of the best.  Over the causeway, the vast lagoon stretching out, dotted with islands, and with the leaning spires of the city coming into focus ahead.  Then straight out of the station onto the start of the Grand Canal and into a water taxi, which whisks through the back canals between ochre stuccoed palaces, then out onto the wide, glittering stretch of water that separates off the island of Giudecca.  Ahead, the hotel that Joel has kindly booked us – the Stucky, a very tasteful conversion of a brick factory building.  This is probably the best city hotel I have ever stayed in.  The rooms are huge and with views across to the whole sweep of the main island, including the bell tower of San Marco, and beyond, on this exceptionally sunny and clear day, the wall of the Alps far off on the horizon.  An afternoon, an evening and a morning only: but we make the most of it, visiting not just the major tourist haunts around San Marco, but also the quieter streets around the Arsenale and the Via Giuseppe Garibaldi, which still has local shops and a real feel. We took the public water bus all the way up the Grand Canal then looping through the docks back to the hotel.  We are again lucky to find a hidden garden restaurant, in the little piazza by La Fenice, and tuck into some great Italian food, which is somehow always better in Italy!

We achieved a lot in a few days, and thanks so much to the indefatigable Paula and Joel for suggesting it and providing such good company and plenty of New Jersey humour! 

Songkhran soaking - Chiang Mai, April 2013

Calm before the storm: at Wat Doi Suthep
 After a few months back in London and initially enjoying lots of theatre and concerts, and even the snow, I found that the fag end of winter was dragging on and on, deep into April.  Lashing rain, bone-chilling gales… 

So thoughts returned to the embracing warmth of SE Asia once again.  And if thoughts, then why not deeds?  Idly searching the likes of opodo and lastminute.com one day, I found that flights to Chiang Mai could be had surprisingly cheaply.  Having survived the Loi Krathongfestivities, and realizing that Songkhran was on the way…

Songkhran: the Thais’ new year; and though they also celebrate the western and Chinese equivalents, this is the biggest celebration in the calendar.  The citizens of Chiang Mai are recognized throughout Thailand as the best partiers in a partying nation, and this is their high point.  So it was obvious what I had to do.  And I did.

In no time I was whisked from grey, drizzly Heathrow at a fridge-like 4 degC, and found myself standing in a warm sunset glow at Chiang Mai, in the high 30s, with a distant view of the local mountains, blue silhouettes against a red afterglow.  Welcome once more to the Land of Smiles: certainly there was a big grin on my face!

I was welcomed into the little B+B by the Thai-Brit couple that run it, and felt immediately at home.  For the festival I made my base at a nearby bar on one of the main streets, a tiny but very friendly place, where they were very keen to initiate me into the mysteries of the festival.  I later met the owner of the bar, who turned out to be an American transsexual with, it seemed, a beautiful local girlfriend (a real woman as far as I could work out).   Only in Thailand!  One of the bar staff, Sak, took me under his wing and determined I was going to get the most out of the new year.  Early one morning, he took me up the mountain on the back of his underpowered motorbike (I had to get off and walk the last bit!) to the temple of Doi Suthep, which is one of the most important religious sites in the country.  On this, the first day of the holiday, it was packed with local people coming to pay their respects.  We bought candles and incense then walked three times around the central stupa, its solid gold cladding dazzling in the hazy early morning light against a Gaugin-blue sky.  Then we knelt as an ancient tattooed monk in his tangerine bright robe blessed us and flicked water across us. 

This is the origin of the water festival, a respectful and religiously based gesture.  In the past, people would pour a small libation from a cup over your shoulder to wish you good luck.  Little did I know how this had metamorphosed over the years.  Though perhaps I should have guessed, given my Loi Krathong experience, where a calm tradition of floating candles on the river had turned into a mad firework throwing event across the whole city. 

So back to the city streets, and things were already kicking off at the bar.  Sak took me walking round the full perimeter of the moat of the ancient city, and the streets were filled with stalls and pick up trucks. Not a water festival – a water throwing festival!  The stallholders were not so interested in selling as dragging buckets of warm brownish water from the moat and flinging it at every passer by – especially the farang!*  The crammed beds of the pick ups were full of giggling kids with monster water pistols – and no feeble western types: think Kalashnikovs of the water spraying world – which they constantly refilled from barrels of ice water.  So you could simultaneously be getting a freezing face full from the left and a warm drenching from the right, over and over again.  All delivered with mischievous smiles and cheers!  I was completely soaked within seconds, but still it kept coming.  Then as we headed back towards the bar, the gods decided to join in.  With a huge echoing crack of thunder, an unseasonable monsoon-style deluge fell from the huge black clouds that suddenly appeared over the city, drenching everyone yet again. 

Two more days of this!  One evening I made the mistake of asking Sak to take me on his bike to a restaurant on the far side of the city, thinking things would have calmed down later in the evening.  We had to run the gauntlet of a thousand grinning kids and again arrived soaked.  This wouldn’t work in London, but in temperatures in the high 30s (90s F) it was good fun; and I ended the three days with a rictus grin.  Battered but very happy I retired to the bar and ordered a stiff gin and tonic.

*foreigners