Marvellous Florence

After the Chaucer congress I'm taking another two days' holiday, and have just returned to Rome from Florence. The first night, Jeffrey and I arrived around 5, checked in, then regrouped at 7.00. Our hotel was gorgeous; and I lucked out with an enormous and serene room on the third floor and my own little balcony looking down into the courtyard and its terracotta rooftiles.

Armed with a map, and about twenty recommendations for restaurants, we found our way to the Mozzarella bar I remembered from September, in the pillared courtyard of an old bank. We started with a glass of prosecco and a liberal serve of antipasti. Mozzarella was promised, but never appeared on the self-service bar, so we had another look at the menu and ordered up a degustazione of five different mozzarelle, on a huge platter of greens and cherry tomatoes. They ranged from delicate to smoked, and there was also a ricotta style. But the highlight was a bowl of creamy mozzarella burrata, which I have discovered is my favourite thing to eat in the whole world. I ate it in Siena (and am waiting for Tom's photo), and it is creamy, with a tendency to form slight threads — I've seen it described as stracciatella, too. It is so soft they pile it on the plate, where it looks like a meringue about to go into the oven, or into a bowl, or even twist a little knot into the top. Sigh. Such sweet creamy goodness.

This was supposed to be a pre-dinner treat, but we were unable to contemplate eating any more, so we just walked and walked, across the Arno, along its banks, then back across the Ponte Vecchio. During the day, it just looks like a bunch of jewelery shops: at night, it's clear that they are more like little market stands, though locked up with ancient wooden panels and heavy black metal clasps: an odd mix of transient and secure. The half-moon shone over the water, as we found our way to the Palazzo Vecchio. Curiously it was open, so we wandered through its vast hall and endless suites of rooms upstairs, out into upstairs loggias with wonderful views of the city and beautiful breezes. Many of the rooms had their windows open - perhaps to clear out the air after the day's heavy traffic - and there was hardly anyone there. We found the little studiolo where Machiavelli used to work; and marvelled at the choice of the rape of the Sabine women as decoration for the rooms for the Medici's waiting women.

Emerging into the piazza della signoria, it was time for a midnight gelati: I had amaretto and pink grapefruit.

Well, you know: we work pretty hard. It was good to have a holiday. And there was more to come the next day. But that's for another post.

Holiday photos

We took heaps of photos on the Great North-East Victorian Bike Ride: these will give an idea of the celestial blue skies; the sumptuous meals; and the historical immersion into the 1870s we accomplished in five days.

The bike paths are built over disused train lines. Occasionally, they have built bike-oriented rest stops in the shape of old trains.


Mostly the paths are through open country, but sometimes the bush has closed over the tracks, and this is when it was most beautiful.



Sometimes the path went alongside farmlands, and we stopped once to feed long juicy grass to horses. All you St Louisians will recognise my St Louis Cardinals World Series Champions 2006 t-shirt. Go Cards!


We saw other animals, too, though they were often too quick to be photographed: a little lizard; an Aesopian crow flying off with a big wedge of cheese in its mouth; and two snakes. One was black with a red belly, slithering serenely across the path; another mottled one that Joel rode over, and that then reared up as we passed by, shuddering.

As we came into Bright, we saw this irresistible sign:


And at Beechworth, the buildings are made of silver white granite that goes golden as it ages.

Here is Ned Kelly's death mask in the Burke Museum at Beechworth:


And from the sublime to the ridiculous:


And here is the magnificent breakfast Joel ate at the old Butter factory at Myrtleford at the beginning of our last day's riding.


You would think it would keep him going; and so it did: all the way to Everton, where he had a meat pie for morning tea.

Recipe for holiday happiness

Three people. Three bikes. Six panniers.

A three hour train trip to Wangaratta, then a rush of instant happiness as we collected our bikes and rode away from the station, with no accommodation booked, and no sense of how far we'd be able to ride. I think this was the freest I've ever felt on a holiday. I love my creature comforts as much as (if not more than) the next woman, but I've just unpacked my panniers and realised how much I liked living out of them. Next time, I'm going to take even fewer clothes.

We did just under 250 kilometres in five and a half days, mostly along the Rail Trails east of Wangaratta. The disused train lines have been ripped up and replaced with bitumen bike paths through King Valley and the Ovens River, around the wine and food paradise of Milawa, the historic goldfields town of Beechworth, and as far as Bright, base camp for Alpine skiing. Because these were train lines built by hand and horse, slopes were only mild, though I struggled very slowly up the long slow gradual climb to Beechworth on the second day, and sometimes riding west into the wind was tough, too, especially the 60 kilometres we rode yesterday from Myrtleford to Wangaratta. Joel found the wind tough, too, but he rode like a warrior-poet (sorry: please excuse Braveheart reference) the whole way.

We spent one night in an ordinary motel, a night in the family chapel of the old priory at Beechworth, two nights in an enormous and very run-down family apartment above the bar of a pub in Myrtleford, then a night in a grand "town-house" of a motel in Wangaratta.

We slept in, ate enormous breakfasts, and bought muffins, fruit, cheese and focaccias to eat on the road, and would typically arrive at the next town mid-afternoon, and sleep or read till it was time to go out for dinner. A local pub; a fancy restaurant in the old bank at Beechworth; a typical goldfields-town Chinese meal; an Italian pizza place; a motel restaurant with home-made gnocchi.

My head was filled, most of the trip, with thoughts and stories of Ned Kelly. We didn't get to Glenrowan, site of the famous last siege: I'm saving that up for a separate trip. But I did a Kelly walking tour of Beechworth, and collected lots of stories that wove in and out of my reading of Peter Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang. This was the second time I had read it, and I found it totally compelling this time.

This is my favourite Kelly story at the moment: on his voyage back from Glenrowan to Beechworth for the initial hearing before he was sent to Melbourne to be tried and hanged, he had been wounded many times in the arms and legs, and could not walk, so he was lain on a pallet and brought back by train. My walking tour paused at the corner where he would have been brought up from the station and turned past the Imperial Hotel where Aaron Sherritt's wife stood watching (Kelly, lying on his pallet, is said to have doffed his hat to the widow of the gang member-turned police informant he had killed). Apparently the dray was followed by lots of kids running and pretending to shoot at Kelly with their hands pointed like guns. And he returned fire, in similar fashion. So there are scores of people now who report their grandparents were shot at by Kelly. This seems to me such a wonderful moment of self-consciousness: Kelly performing his own theatrical last return.

More to come, and much more to read on Kelly; some photos to post, too. But for now, time to prepare for my trip to Wollongong tomorrow for a postgraduate seminar: "Early Europe in Contemporary Media: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Film, Television, Computer Games and Internet Studies". I'll be up at dawn for an 8.00 flight. Brr..

Back from the desert, where it was hot and red during the day, and quiet and black at night. A few highlights...

The first night a hot desert wind blew till 5.00 am. We had camped in our little hired campervan, with Joel in a tent pitched close to the sliding door. We had parked just off road, halfway between Alice Springs and Uluru, and I struggled with all kinds of fears and anxieties as it got darker and darker, and there was no one in sight. The sky was full of clouds and the moon struggled to be seen. Joel and I both slept badly, as the hot wind howled through the open doors of the van, and the badly assembled tent. Day dawned crisp and still, though.

Second night we watched the sun set over Uluru, having walked a little at its base in the afternoon. Even though there were lots of tourists, it was still breathtakingly quiet and beautiful. As the great rock turned red in the sunset, a thin, pale, watery moon rose just to the left. We camped in the only place you are allowed to, for miles around, at the Yulara resort. Girls in the bathroom with hair curlers and straighteners, re-charging phone and camera batteries.

Third night we watched the sun set at Kata Tjuta (the Olgas), after a wonderful hike through the Valley of the Winds. No moon, until we were on our way to our next (off-road) campsite. Then it rose, bright orange through the red dust of the desert.

The fourth night the moon modestly rose later, allowing the full spectrum of stars and planets and satellites to appear. We were staying at Kings' Canyon (a huge campsite), so it wasn't until several nights later, at Trephina Gorge in the East Macdonall ranges (thanks to Elsewhere for this tip), that we were in pitch blackness at 10.00 p.m. to see the stars in all their glory and glamour. We were in a tiny campsite (one other family; and a pit toilet), and so we could turn out all the lights, and see nothing but what you could see by starlight. The Milky Way streaming moodily across the great canopy of stars, a shooting star catching my eye, and stars right down to the horizon - at your feet, as someone said to me today. It's like being in a huge snowdome; the glass hung all over with stars.

In the end, we spent very little time in Alice Springs, and while I thought I would be hanging out for hotels and lavish campsites, I found I treasured best those nights when it was just us, the stars, and the Scrabble box. We sang and talked in the car, told stories and worked on jokes with each other. I read Andrew McGahan's White Earth, the perfect choice of a gothic Australian narrative about land use and land ownership: thoroughly recommended. I then started on Alexis Wright's Carpentaria. I'm struggling a bit, but the man in the restaurant at Alice Springs (The Lane) said it was worth persevering with, so I will.

We got back on Friday night: the house is still covered in dust, though the end is in sight; and the best news when I opened up the email.... We got our ARC grant! It's hard to give a sense of just what a wonderful thing this is. They awarded money to only 21% of applications this year, and though they cut our budget down, we can still do most of the things we want. I'll write about this in more detail soon (it's in part what this blog is supposed to be about), but just wanted to clock in. Will find a few photos, too.