Not Forgiven or Forgotten

It's been a while hasn't it? No updates. Your sitting at home thinking geez, they must really like Milan because they have been there for ages. Well we haven't, we moved on and I haven't told you about it. Did that sting a little? It was meant to. The reason I haven't told you is not because I am fundamentally lazy and have an innaiint ability not to finish anything I start but because you cheated on me.

That's right I've caught you all out. Don't play coy with me, you know how you cheated on me. Facebook. Did you think I wouldn't find out? I expected more from you. Maybe some patience, but NO you don't get an update in a couple of days and it's onto Facebook to check on Mel's page. You do it once or twice and then soon enough this page is like your safety partner. You know that person who you don't really like but in the middle of a dry spell it's better than nothing. Well that's how it is. Now all you do is check Facebook, look at the pictures and then one day when you can't get onto Youtube (it still exists not that you would know because you're wasting so much time on Facebook) you'll come here looking for entertainment. I hope when you eventually read this (say Jan 2008 when social networking sites are banned in the workplace) you'll feel dirty.

That's how it is and that is how I was going to leave it. A dirty note on the bedside table saying I know you cheated, I am leaving with the cat and the hibiscus to stay at my parents for a while, hopefully you do the right thing and leave while I'm gone. (When I get a metaphor I really like to work it, sometimes so much so i back myself into a corner and can't get out of it!) But here's the thing, it's my birthday in a couple of days and instead of "growing up and getting over myself" as Melissah has suggested, I am just going to accept your apology and will forgive you at a later date when you make it up to me fully or never forgive you and use it as leverage to win every argument we have in the future. That is until you do something worse and I can use that. Here endeth the metaphor, normal blogging continues below.

So we just left Romania, there's been a few places between Milan and here but I thought I should mention one of my favourite activities before we move on. We left Romania for good and we had an odd amount of Lei left in our possession, enough Lei to not want to carry it around but not nearly enough to exchange for the next currency. So what do you do? Well I go to the nearest snack shop and spend as much as I can on useless local food. Melissah got a pack of cheesy puffs that weren't so cheesy and I got probably the greatest snack food on the planet. It is up there to rival BBQ Shapes for my favourite snack of all time. A bag of bruschetta type bread flavoured with garlic. Oh Happy Days. These are the adventures you have when spending the last of your currency. (I wouldn't do this with the pound though, I would return home with 10 quid and try and buy Tasmania.) Before Romania there was Italy, in fact much before Romania there was Italy. I've written about Milan haven't I ? (Shows how long this has been! Shame on you!). (Mels note: actually I wrote about Milan, which makes it a good 2 months since Al wrote anything!!) Well after Milan we went to

Florence

Florence - Otherwise known as Davids House

Then Rome

Roma - Nero Fiddled while Rome was built in a day..

then Naples

PICTURE MISSING

then back to Florence

Florence - Otherwise known as Davids House

...then we left Italy. Simple really. I could catch this blog up by just listing places and linking the albums. But I am not going to make it easy on you. I don't think I've ever made it easy for you. I want to tell you about all the things we did in Italy, about the food and the COFFEE. About the queues to get in everywhere, the disappointment of most art and the pleasure at seeing people removed from a room because they took a photo when they weren't supposed to (a bonus for those of us that follow the rules!). Unfortunately due to the fact I am connected to the internet while I am writing makes it hard to tell you about all the things I liked because I happen to be reading about the upcoming Federal Election at home and it reminds me of the things I don't like.. For example (this list could be quite long)

I was going to tell you all about Rome and how I saw the Pope, but he just reminds me about John and his Letters to the Exclusive Brethren (sounds like a book of the New Testament) and our very own moral crusaders Family (def. - A Man and woman legally married not any other combination i.e. Man and Man, Woman and Woman, Man and Donkey) First. Or how I saw the leaning tower of Pisa but it just reminded me of a massive penis and it takes no stretch as to what ironically named group of people (you could call them a Party even) it reminded me of. As an apolitical side Pisa drove me nuts. Why what could possibly make you angry in Pisa? Stupid people pretending to hold the bloody thing up or push it over. What an annoying bunch of wankers they were (also reminded me of the Ironically Named Party). Seriously though have you ever seen anything more stupid than a bus load of tourists standing 50m in front of a tower (that should have been ripped down) pretending to hold it up? It's not funny, I don't want to see your photos. Do you know when it was funny? Once when someone 100 years ago took a box brownie camera to Pisa and had some bird with a parasol pretend to hold it up. Why was it funny then? Because it was original. I'll say this once and in capitals "YOU ARE NOT FUNNY. IT IS NOT ORIGINAL. NO ONE WNATS TO SEE IT". Cop that bitches. We went to Florence which was brilliant but every second person was American which wasn't so bad then but thinking back now it just reminds me of one person (you can see how this going to play out can't you). I have more references but in this day and age (what with my popularity and all) with media monitors and the likes I probably cant print them. Some of you are thinking thank God, some of you are disappointed and the rest of you are trying to work out whether I just ran out of segues. Looking at our journey through Italy it does parallel a series of events quite well, children overboard, interest rate rises, AWA's, War in Iraq, my foot blowing up to the size of my thigh and the withholding of information to the press. Quite an impressive resume to have for just three weeks through Italy.

Avignon comes next, we travelled 14 hours from Florence to Avignon and from there it was to be a relatively simple journey to Barcelona. Unfortunately as it is with all travel things are not that simple. We have no photographs of Avignon or Pompeii or Naples. You must be wondering why? Why? Well because some fucker (I have toned this language down somewhat but cannot bring myself to censor it completely) stole one of our day packs with the camera in it. Thus when we arrived in Avignon we had lost Melissah's purse, ipod, reading glasses, sunglasses, camera, postcards (written with stamps)) and documents (not important ones but still copies of our passport, insurance and suite measurements. you know inside pant length and the likes). But worse than all of that we had to rely on the French to help us. This didn't start so bad (but deteriorated quickly), the French policeman who helped us to file a report was helpful and sympathetic and nice. He learnt English 30 years ago, but tried his heart out even went as far as to point at different colour binders on his shelf to get the right colours. He tried and he didn't make us feel like we were ignorant tourists. We almost had a little hope, until he said in flat English "Your bag. It will NOT turn up". Way to crush that optimism. Aside from that we left there thinking this isn't going to be so bad. We are going to get through this nicely. We had been told that sometimes bags can get left on the trains by those who take them (without the valuable stuff in them obviously) so we should contact lost and found in Paris to see if anything had turned up (mainly Mel's reading glasses, I mean what are the chances of a thief knowing someone with same wonky eyes as Melissah). Easy enough, we asked the man at the train station (with the I speak English badge on) can he contact lost and found. The simple answer (and only English word and it wasn't even English was) "No". So we rang ourselves, there was an answering machine with a message. Undestanbly it was in French, so we went to another worker at the train station. Could he tell us what the message says, we don't speak French. His response was not "Sure, I am here to help as it says in my job description to provide assistance to paying customers of French rail" as would be normal. His response was "You are in France we speak French" . Still doesn't tell me what's on the answering machine dickhead. At this point I have decided to learn French fluently in the vein hope that when I am back in Australia someone asks me for help in French and I clearly understand what they want I can say "You are in Australia, learn to speak English" and walk away knowing that I have exacted my revenge. When we finally worked out what was happening instead of that nice easy train ride to Spain from Avignon it was Spain via Paris. Look on a map it's not ideal.

As a note, the postcards turned up. The thief posted them. Didn't send the memory stick with the photos on it though.