Moma Rosa

An excellent choice of venue to celebrate the Big Fella's 60th.  Complimentary prosecco to get us in the mood. A couple of entrees including a tasting plate which turns out to be about four plates of tasty treats. Probably enough to sate our appetites but by now we are in celebration mode and they give us plenty of time to have the tucker settle before mains are served.

And what mains we enjoyed. Tony had the lamb chops, Eva had some spaghetti, Anne had sea bass and I enjoyed a nice piece of steak with little potatoes and some lices of fennel, zucchini and such.

Marina Bay Sands

After ascending 56 floors to take the view from the observation deck, we were exposed to the heat and the glare. Took dome shots and left before we expired.

Neither of us could see ourselves in the infinity pool.

Back on terra firma, we wandered around the shopping precinct and have settled down to a bagel with smoked salmon, a cup of English breakfast  and an iced coffee. $SGD 23.90.

All the name brands are here. Just a shame that there aren't too many shoppers.

In flight fun and games

Watched the Superman movie, Man of Steel, followed by World War Z, The Lone Ranger and then Heat with Sandra Bullock.

Needless to say, we didn't get a lot of sleep.

Big Booking Bugger Up

The penny dropped sometime after I read the flight details. It is not really possible to spend Friday night at the hotel in Singapore and be able to land at Tullamarine on 7:20AM Saturday morning. 

Milan: the grand tour

Tuesday 1st October

To celebrate Tony's birthday in style, we joined the tour bus to see the highlights of this magnificent city. So far we have seen the multiplex cinema (and a Turkish KFC store: KOC).

Leaves are dead or dieing on the trees in the park but the flowers are still in bloom.

Just passed the statue voted the ugliest in the city. No argument there. A tower block based on the Castle Sforcese wins ugliest building among countless contenders.

Passed the Duomo and La Scala (again) and journeyed down Via Manzoni which has the Milanese fashion houses.

Just swapped buses and heading towards Piazzale Cadorna. Location of 'Needle, thread and knot', a sculpture representing the importance of the fashion industry to the city.

Viewed remnants of the canal system that connected to the river. The city's port was the country's 13th most important during its heyday.

Got off the bus around one o'clock and wandered up Via Garibaldi looking for a place to have lunch. Struck gold.

Brunello Osteria

Tuesday 1st October

Well done, Tony! What a choice for your birthday lunch. No pizza on the menu tells you something. No shit food here.

Voted the best Ostaria in Milan/Italy/the world we are unsure, but certainly impressed by the big glass award that took pride of place next to the wine rack.

Took a punt on the Brunello lunch for €14. Certainly backed a winner. Spiral pasta in a simple leek, butter and pepper sauce. Chicken with walnuts and home made chips for mains. Tiramisu for dessert.  A glass of the Girlan 448 and Rosso e Montalcino. Complimentary grappa with our coffee.

Eva had a tuna salad and the Birthday Boy and Anne had spaghetti. All good.

We shared a plate of cheese and jam also.

Eva and I checked out bus departure times for Malpensa and then waddled home to rest up for dinner.

Ristorante Xier: Smorgy's for the Milanese

Monday night (30th Sept) and Tony turns 60 Aussie Time.

Opposite the three star Hotel Florida, Ristorante Xier aims to please all comers with its array of food on offer in this all-you-can-eat barn.

While it is billed as an Italian Chinese buffet, this overlooks the presence of the sushi train, the grilled beef section and the chocolate fountain.

Choose the ingredients, stick a peg with your table number on the side of the plate along with a colour-coded peg that indicates the sauce it is to be cooked in and hand it to one of the chefs. When cooked,  your meal will be hand delivered to the table.

At €20 per person,  this is very good value. Providing we don't get food poisoning.

The wine was also exceptional value at €4 per half litre. Not saying that it was vintage.  Just that it was cheap.

En route to Milan

Monday (30/9) morning awoke dull and cloudy with the threat of more rain. It was a finely-timed operation but we managed to drop off the girls and the luggage at the station, return and pay for the hire car and still get back to the station in time to catch the 9:40 for Milan.

And boy, wasn't it a flash train! Turns out it wasn't a regional train like the one we caught to get to Stresa. This was a Euro City coming from Switzerland.  And with traditional Swiss efficiency,  the conductor wanted to see our reservations. What reservations, we politely replied. This is a typical Italian... regional... err....

Seventy-two euro later we are sitting in the first class seats that are bottoms have grown accustomed to. And you do tend to get a better class of foreigner in these carriages. Unless there is a group of Americans in the carriage.

En route to Baveno

We left our apartment for the last time and caught the vaporetto to the station with time enough to get some brekky. Tony was not impressed with the process that one had to follow to procure nourishment so ended up with naught.

Our train trip was uneventful except for the lengthy delay caused by a fatal accident further up the line. It gave us an opportunity to get a coffee and a snack from a self-serve kiosk on the platform and strike up a conversation with the American couple sitting opposite us.

A couple from Boston, they were well-mannered, quiet and polite. I asked to see their passports.

We arrived late to Milan Centrale and missed our connection to Stresa. I sussed out that we could get a regional train that was leaving in three minutes and we made a dash for it that would have done Von Ryan proud.

Tour de Lido

The Gold Coast has its strip of golden sand and crashing waves. Venice's Lido, the narrow spit of land that forms the lagoon that protects the island city from the pounding waves of the Adriatic Sea, is like chalk to cheese in comparison.

It was good to see a motor vehicle again and we celebrated by hiring a quad bike for an hour and ripping up and back along 6 kilometres of the main road. Let me explain in these days of efriendly greeniness, the quad bike in question was a pedal powered pushy built for four pedallers.

It was ironic that after the ride, their was only one of us who had raised a sweat. Needless to say, no one sat next to me on the ferry back home.

An insight into the efficiency of Italian bureaucracy was gained in our attempt to purchase stamps for postcards. Not one of the three staff could serve us unless we selected the correct ticket type from the machine that generated them. When Eva finally got the stamps (€2.50 to send a card to Australia), the one euro stamp variety had no gum and would not stick. The assistant gave her a glue stick, which was useful for the two cards we had written but less so for the two cards we were going to purchase later in the trip. The assistant would not refund the money on the two unused stamps that wouldn't stick. I'm still unsure whether it was because she knew that the stamps were useless, or because of the lengthy process that would no doubt be involved as part of the refund process and the counselling that she would need to undertake as part of the retraining program her superiors would consider necessary for her.

Enjoyed a nice pizza and campari and soda for lunch. Enjoyed a nice shower and change of socks pre-dinner.

Canals of Venice

And so it came to pass, after putting off the inevitable during two previous visits to La Serenissima, Eva and Glenn, romantics that they are, squandered the children's inheritance on a ride on a gondola.

But what a beautiful ride it was.

Departing from the mooring adjacent to San Marco, we entered the canal system and passed under the Bridge of Sighs.  Aaah. Pierro was a third generation gondolier, working under his grandfather's licence,  much the same way taxi drivers do it in Melbourne. And for much the same reason, there will never be a light rail service to Venice airport, either.

We were one of the first cabs off the rank, to maintain the metaphor, and so did not have to contend with the bloody tourists that choke the narrow waterways with their gondola rides and ridiculous posturing and condescending waves to the masses who were gathering in numbers on the bridges that we pased under. I expect that images of Eva and I will end up in countless photo albums and tumblr blogs,  given that our regal-like waves, sunnies and affected posturing could pass us off as celebrities to those less affluent who watched our voyage in envy. Poor saps.

On our passage d'amour, we had to contend with the refuse boats that collect the rubbish that is generated by the good folk of this fair island city and the other numerous service craft that keep the place functioning as the world's largest floating restaurant and souvenir shop.

Pierro showed us Marco Polo's house (he wasn't home) and a flood level mark on one of the buildings. He guided his craft with the skill of a jet boat driver, narrowly missing the corners of buildings as we wended our way around the waterways. Unlike a jet boatdriver, he was unable to put us in one of those 360 degree spins that gets Eva going crazy. This was, after all, a graceful tour of romance, not some puerile adrenolin-pumping joy ride. That was to come later.