Viva Paris McDonalds

For they have given me internet.

Free Wifi access has been hard to find, and apart from 'NETGEAR' somewhere near the paris youth hostel where we are staying this has been it.

OK.. where to begin.

After I left you last time I set off for the Monza town center. Monza was breifly thre capital of italy, and the town center was a pretty neat mix of old and new stuff.

I only really made it to the outside of the buildings there, the place was shut to the public, but the grounds were open. They are aparently one of the largrest parks in europe. The do seem to have made up with volume a little for finishing. It kind of reminded me of masterton's park... but Massive.

I'll see if I can put a photo of the palace up when I get a real PC to post from.

The next day we set off to venice by train. The countryside is pretty densely populated, kind of like 10 acre block country, just.. actual farmers (with awesome farmhouses) insteaad of toy ones.

Venice was a tourist town, like rotorua or queenstown. It was only ever really designed for foot traffic to start with, so the whole thig is a maze, made worse by the cris-crossing canals that give you dead ends left right and center.

We got lost, got found, and took a tour of the dogue's palace. Everyone can mock my lack of historic knowlage now, but it turns out that venice was an almost democracy, with a new dogue voted in every few years.

I have a bunch of photos, but wasn't allowed to take them of some of the cooler stuff in the palace (someone was crazy enough to build what looked like a 12 barrell rotary musket)


Have made it to Paris last night.. It's much nicer than milan in terms of parks and such. I don't get what makes it the city of love, but aparently plenty of other people do. I've never seen so many people kissing in one day. I spent most of today in the Louvre.

The place is massive, and you *need* the maps and so on. There was so much awsome stuff in there I can't begin to go through it all.. but screw the mona lisa, there is the worlds first written (well carved) laws.. on 2 meters of stone. All poloticians should be made to hand carve any laws they want to pass before they can ome into law :)

We went past the eiffel tower, but the 200meter que made me think twice about actually going up the thing. Too many people.

Welcome to Italy

People demanded updates

So now I give them to you.

The Flight Over

The flight over was.. well unsuprisingly... long.

Singapore Airport

The stop at singapore was pretty neat. Singapore airport is massive. The security guards carry SMGs. I didn't check what sort... spending too much time staring at such things may have got me more attention that I really desired from somone with a SMG.

The heat in singapore is pretty impressive and I only stepped out of the aircon twice. Once into a swimming pool, that I fully recomend paying the entrance for should you end up at singapore airport for any time.

I felt very colonial there.. being a white man, swimming with all these singaporian people being the staff.

Frankfurt airport

Frankfurt airport was pretty cool too. Different though. Less... image centric, more practical, efficient. I liked it.

The greatest thing about frankfurt airport was the smoking areas. You came accross them from time to time. Each one was a little glass box that had about 10 people in it. It was sort of like some sort of futureistic prison or zoo exibit. "Roll up, roll up see the endangered species 'smoker'" ran through my head a few times.

Italy

I'm currently in Italy where mother is meeting the head of one of her high level research thingies(technical term)

We are in Lissone which is a short train ride from Milan (which is called Milano in Italian, so I'll keep refering to it as Milano as I consider the people who live in a place have the 'correct' name)

Lissone


View Larger Map


The train system is pretty slick once you get the hang of it.. however it's a bit of a puzzle to get it sorted with only guesses as to what the signs say.. we've only had trouble with one conductor so far, and they were very nice about it seeing as we are definaty obvious noobs.

Yesterday we went and visited the Duomo.. one of the largest gothic cathedrals

The Duomo


View Larger Map>


It's truly massive, but the scary thing is the colossal detail involved. Allow me to demonstrate with photos

This is the Cathedral door.. you can see the size of the thing from the people in the photo. It's black metal while the rest is white marble. I cannot fault them for color choice

You can see here the entire door has a series of scenes on it (I'm pretty sure they tell the life story of big J.. most stuff does)

And here is one of the scenes... up close.. insanity I tell you.. there is no way you can look at the detail on these on anything but one or two of the scenes, because they are too far away near the top of the doors.

The entire thing is carved out of marble and granite blocks, and the inside is just huge. (no cameras allowed on the inside). It reminded me of the Mines of moria in The fellowship of the ring. Huge columns that rise up to.. a roof you have to presume.

We paid our money and took a trip to the roof as well.. I'll just include a couple of photos because you must be getting bored by now.

This is some of the detail you can see from on the roof.. each of the figures on top of the spires is about life size..






















I better call it a day right there.. We also visted an art gallery that had some insane paintings in it.. most of them were more than a story high. Massive detail.

Will post more next time I get access to 'real' internet

-Glen