Two Little Travellers

Mid-winter mini camping trip

It’s been six months since we did a camping trip. Bitti and I were ready to get out in the tent again. Our friends had suggested going to Woodhouse Activity Centre months back so we had this one locked in for a while. Camping in July was not immediately appealing to me. I get very cold, most winters I end up with chilblains on my fingers even without outdoor living; furthermore, splashing about in the mud and rain just isn’t my bag. But, Woodhouse has a lot of fun and novel activities so I thought Bitti would enjoy it. See what I do!

I had last been at Woodhouse as a teenager. My friend had her birthday party there. Her mum made us baked potatoes in the fire with chilli con carne (back when I ate meat), clearly a memorable meal! We did Challenge Hill, played some sort of murder in the dark game in the pine forest, and ate too much chocolate. I recall it being bloody cold and nothing had changed on that front 20-odd years later.

My friends, the same ones who did the Mambray Creek trip with us, had offered to organise all the food and send me a bill, which I happily agreed to. This enabled me to pack up the car in about 40 minutes on Friday afternoon before heading off. Woodhouse is only about 30 minutes from home so it wasn’t long before I was out in a muddy field setting up the tent. There was a little bit of rain during set up, but that soon stopped and we had no more for the rest of the weekend. Perfect!

Bitti wanted to go off exploring immediately and became quite impatient as I annoyingly insisted on setting up the text and our bedding before dark. Once that was achieved we set off up the hill where we could see a maze made from tall fencing. Bitti and E (5) spent a long time getting lost and found again in the maze, which featured 2 levels, 2 sets of stairs, a slippery dip and a slide pole. From there the girls saw a rabbit warren of concrete tunnels, an ‘elephants graveyard’ of pipes to crawl through, and then discovered the tower climb and rope swing. They could see more obstacles further on and were deadset on doing everything right then and there until I explained we were all going to go through Challenge Hill the next day.

Image of tents set up in a green field, tall gun trees stand at the edges of frame. — The campsite

Tea was served and Bitti barely ate a thing, leaving her cranky as. But somehow she managed to find space for a few marshmallows over the fire after tea … It quickly grew cold once the sun was down so the kids were bundled off to bed after they’d had a chance to run around the dark paddock with torches. There were only about 8 other groups set up nearby, which left a lot of space around us for the kids to make noise and run around. Bitti finally dropped off at about 9 pm and I went straight to sleep too. I felt like I woke up about 20 times throughout the night, between Bitti’s wild dreams and people going out to the toilet and back next door, but somehow cobbled together enough sleep to feel awake by 7 am.

On Saturday we had a big breakfast before getting ready to tackle Challenge Hill. It’s an obstacle course ranging up and down a steep hill nearby. There are about 25 obstacles in total, each on testing strength or balance of some kind. The kids loved every minute of it, except perhaps in brief moments of panic atop a high wall or inside the ‘mousetrap’ (an enclosed curling tunnel made from corrugated iron, very narrow, very dark and only one way in and out). One of the dads went straight into it with the kids, getting muddy and squeezing through the old tyres and climbing everything.

Bitti on one of many Challenge Hill obstacles

The final obstacle is a 4-rope swing across a gushing creek. Bitti was keen to give it a go but the group agreed we’d come back just before we went home on Sunday so that wet clothes could be taken off and bodies warmed in the car. After a quick snack stop back at camp we headed to the Tube Slide. This didn’t exist when I came here last and it was pretty fun! You grab a tyre tube wrapped in a jacket that has a hard plastic bottom, drag it up a steep hill, then get in and ride it down one of two downhill courses. Bitti was extremely impressed with this activity. Not only did she walk up that very steep hill without complaint, repeatedly, but she even pulled her own tube up once. Usually I can’t get her to walk up a slight incline without dealing with a barrage of complaints about worn out legs and sore hips (is Bitti 7 or 77? Hard to tell).

After lunch we headed to a set of rock climbing blocks on the hill above our campsite. Bitti and her friends climbed up, while I tried not to freak out about them sliding off and hitting the group. The rest of the afternoon we all pottered around, the kids going into the maze again and coming up with various games to play. Dinner was baked potatoes, which were wrapped in aluminium foil and put into the fire and actually turned out perfectly cooked in time for the adults’ tea. The kids were all starving, even Bitti ate a bowl of pasta and then half a baked potato on top. A pedometer on E (8) showed he’d walked 30,000 steps, an indication of all their activity levels. While gathered around the campfire to finish off the marshmallows someone pointed out that the international space station was going to fly past soon. There was a bit of cloud, but we were able to see it plainly and Bitti shouted out a few messages to the astronauts.

The kids all went to sleep very quickly that night, even Bitti was asleep by 8.30 pm, which is unheard of. The adults were able to come back around the campfire for a last toasting (and smoking) before bed. The night wasn’t as chilly as the previous and I didn’t need to spend an hour defrosting my toes before I could sleep. The only disruption this time was the terrifying scream of a local bird, no one knew what kind. It sounded like a cat being strangled, very pleasant.

Sunday was our final day so we packed up the tents after breakfast. Another run through the Tube Slide, climbing wall and after lunch the kids went down to try the rope swing across the creek. They watched a few adults have a go, all except one went into the water before making it across. In the end Bitti, decided not to attempt a full crossing but did want to swing out on the first rope to ‘see’. She did that, and then all the kids took off their shoes and waded into the creek further down where there was a shallow entry and on the opposite bank a rock climbing wall with rope to climb out with.

Once the creek crossing was done and the kids were all shivering and soggy we packed them up and left. End of trip!

Woodhouse Activity Centre was great fun for the kids, in slightly warmer weather I would have enjoyed it more. But then again, in better weather it would have been more crowded, especially the tube slide. We have no further camping trips planned at this stage, but I have now booked tickets to New Zealand for September-October and for a weekend in Brisbane in December. Let’s see if COVID-19 will allow it.

Summer holiday camping

Bitti and I headed to Port Vincent for a camping break before the school year starts. In my adult life I have never been west of Port Wakefield before so this was new territory for me. My friend, R, invited me to join her and her three kids, sharing a powered tent site. R’s friends would also be coming along, 2 related families. This amounted to 6 adults and 8 children all up. Outnumbered.

Summer has been mild in South Australia this year, but this weekend was set to be hot. I packed all the beach gear and made provisions for being hot as hell all day and night. This included purchasing my first esky! Previously I had borrowed my mum’s, or relied upon my friend’s portable fridge. Being new to esky packing I googled for advice and discovered that I should have frozen 2L bottles of salted water at least 2 weeks ago. Oops! Oh well, too late for that so I did my best and found 1L bottles, salted and froze them overnight.

Port Vincent is about a 2.5-hour drive from Adelaide, or FOREVER if you’re 7. Yes, Bitti has had a birthday since we last blogged! She’s now bigger and sassier than ever. Another purchase for this trip was a two-way radio set, as inspired by our friends on the last trip to Mambray Creek. So Bitti and I can now communicate while she roams the campground. Relief from worrying for me and more freedom for her. The next upgrade I will be making is to add roof racks to my car. With the boot fully laden Bitti’s now 20 inch bike simply wouldn’t fit and, because the frame’s small, nor would it fit on the current strap-on rack I have for the rear of the car. The Saris Bones had been an excellent piece of equipment for me when I was driving Bitti to childcare and then parking and riding to work. But it seems now I am transporting 2 bikes we need to upgrade the technical gear.

We set off at about midday on Friday, I had downloaded Harry Potter and The Philosopher’s Stone so we listened to Stephen Fry read what I have read at least 6 times. Bitti’s favourite parts always involve the Dursleys so she was happy to sit back and enjoy Dudley having a pig’s tail bestowed upon him.

We had a break in Ardrossan, a place I have heard of often but have never visited, and grabbed lunch at the bakery. Bitti spent 29 minutes swinging on the longest monkey bar we had ever seen while I checked out the crystal clear view across the aquamarine water of the Spencer Gulf. R texted me that she was resting at Pine Point lookout so we bundled into the car to catch them. Then, before Bitti could wind up into a mania about how far it was, we had zoomed through the last 15 minutes to Port Vincent.

View of Spencer Gulf from the playground in Ardrossan

The foreshore caravan park is pretty small, but our tent site was generous, although with little shade. We checked in at 3 pm and set to work getting the tents up and organised. Somehow it was 5 pm before we knew it! Between us we had 3 gas stoves set up in a little camp kitchen so it was straight into dinner prep to feed the kids. R’s friends had arrived by then and set up their camp over the road, not visible from where we were but close enough that the older kids could go back and forth without us. Neither Bitti nor I knew the rest of our camping party so I expected Bitti to spend the first half of the trip being reticent and clinging to me. She surprised me though and immediately took to the eldest girl, G, and they were soon marching around the park with G’s younger cousins and C’s younger siblings in tow. I think she was encouraged by being very comfortable with C, who is an extremely friendly and reassuringly confident kid.

After dinner I took Bitti and her friend C down to the beach. We checked out pelicans and placed our gear amongst some rocks so the kids could go off into the very shallow water to play with an inflatable boat I nearly expired blowing up. After romping around in the water for a while, me a tug boat to them, we turned to see the rocks we’d stashed our gear near completely under water! Bitti pelted back through the shallows to rescue my bag, which contained the brand-new radios! Luckily I had put my phone in my pocket so everything was salvageable. Lesson learned! The tide comes in FAST.

Playing pirates as our towels became soaked

The kids stayed up playing and we put them down at around 9 pm. I had to read a chapter of Harry Potter so it was more like 10 pm when Bitti finally nodded off. R and I stayed up talking longer than we should have, so in the end I got only a few hours’ sleep. But the first night is always a write-off. Despite being quite close the amenities block the caravan park was fairly serene after lights out. I could hear a man on the site behind us snoring, and occasionally some raucous laughter drifted across on the wind. The real blessing was that as soon as the sun went down it cooled off considerably. So we were not enduring a hot night at all, in fact we had complained it was chilly and I had sat up in my sleeping bag to keep warm.

All in all, a very promising start to our holiday! The next day held more beach action and a tie-dye workshop at 12 noon, then a free BBQ for the meat eaters.

Camping, finally!

Now that Rona cases have subsided, we are free to travel domestically (well, still not to Vic, soz guys, and possibly never again to WA). It was the very first long weekend after winter when we (I) packed the car set off for Mambray Creek in the Mount Remarkable National Park. This was the camping trip we had planned for new years 2019–20 originally, that was cancelled due to the bushfires and rescheduled for Easter 2020, which was in turn deferred by the pandemic.

Third time’s the charm and we made it without incident. Although the lead up was pretty stressful and I ended up heading off for a ‘relaxing’ weekend despite not having quite completed a uni assignment that was due on the Monday … haha, I’ll just do that after unpacking the car on Monday night. Plenty of time *sweats profusely*. During the drive Bitti fulfilled every stereotype about travelling with children and announced she was BORED 10 minutes in and proceeded to feign disgust with all the views from the car window, I countered with the stereotypical parent thing and feigned excitement at seeing cows and sheep in paddocks, to no avail.

Upon our arrival to the campground, the remarkable fluidity with which Bitti switched from complaining about car boredom to fly over-abundance was exceeded only by its predictability. Admittedly, they were quite irritating. I forgot to bring the mallet so had found a likely rock nearby and used that to hammer the pegs into the rock hard earth, all the while being peppered with endless whiny commentary on the flies and, of course, the flies themselves. Normally I wouldn’t have bothered with ALL the pegs, but there was wind and rain forecast for the weekend and I didn’t want to have to leave my tent for any midnight repairs.

Once our temporary abode was secure I had a chance to look around a little. The campsite was beautiful. Massive river red gums, or as my friend was eager to point out, ‘the widow makers’, surrounded us. I tried NOT to dwell on the relevant tragedy from Seven Little Australians or the amount of wind we expected over the weekend. The sites were all unpowered, but the shower block and sink for washing dishes with hot water was quite near us, very handy with the kids. On the northern side of our site was the creek. Clearly running lower on water than it can, but still with a steady trickle flowing through an array of rocks ideal for step stoning.

The best thing about this trip was that my friend had made all the food preparations so I didn’t have to do any cooking! Actually, even better was not having to think about what to bring and somehow fit in doing the shopping before we left. Such a relief. We are all vego and they cook yummy food, and my not being the chef produced a marked reduction in complaining from Bitti about what was on offer—one of the benefits of eating with others perhaps.

Bitti always takes time to warm up to ‘new’ people. We have been camping with this family before, and had actually seen them just a few weeks earlier for a play. But it still took a bit of time for Bitti to go off exploring with the other two kids. They had walkie talkies, which I thought was a great novelty and an inspired idea for keeping track of the little devils. Except of course it relied upon them actually responding when you called them! Oh, and not leaving the walkie talkie lying in a tree hollow somewhere … What I am really in the market for is a way to insert a GPS tracker under Bitti’s skin. She has a knack for placing herself just out of my eyeline, although fairly close by, and not answering when I call so I think she’s gone completely.

The first night is always a bit of a shit show when we go camping. Bitti gets unsettled and has crazy dreams. When she was smaller she used to wake screaming a lot even at home, and this would become worse when we travelled. Let me tell you, a small child becoming hysterical at 1 am in what was a perfectly serene campsite is acutely vivifying. She would be impossible to settle until I had fully woken her up, any attempt to comfort her would set her off thrashing in her sleeping bag.

This doesn’t happen any more, thankfully, but she does still wake several times and need to have a conversation about mad things that are quite vivid to her but nonsensical. Between that disturbance and my own adjustment to the different sounds of the campsite, there wasn’t much sleep achieved. Nevertheless, on Saturday we awoke at 6 am bright-eyed and ready to tackle the day …

Back on the books

Uni is back! Semester two started recently and after a blissful four weeks of being blissfully unmolested by looming assignment deadlines I was back to feeling very happy about my decision to return to study. How things change! At the end of semester one I was considering stopping study after a struggle balancing study under COVID-19 isolation with my job.

Semester one began with three weeks of being a 100% carer to Bitti, so I lost my normal Saturdays off to catch up on reading and the painful business of getting an assignment straight in my mind. I can do this after work, but Saturday is a better day for it because I can use the morning, my best brain time, and am not already fatigued by work and sitting at the computer for 9 hours. Undeniably, even just having one night off a week and the daylight hours on Saturday makes a big difference to my energy levels as a I tackle the remainder of the week with Bitti. Add to that the stress of dealing with the reason why Bitti was with me fulltime and COVID-19 coming to a head and I really wasn’t focusing on uni study as much as I needed to early on. That left me playing catch up later in the semester, and spending less time refining assignments than was wise. Nevertheless, I stumbled through and manged to stick the landing with strong exam results. I need to get better at not expecting too much from myself anyway…

I have this propensity for piling goals on my plate, then figuring out how to manage it all later. So while COVID-19 was brewing, while I was setting up to work from home, and while facing a new semester of uni that was proving more difficult than expected, I decided it would be a great time to get started on my kitchen update. Because of course. It definitely was a good time in one sense, because I could get tradies around to provide quotes easily, I was home all the week days and they were all desperate for work. There was some sense in it, but it was also a sneaky procrastination move because I was spending the time I should have been studying researching benchtop materials and stalking appliances online to compare prices. Naughty. But look, the kitchen is now almost complete and I LOVE it. The dishwasher is saving me so much time cleaning up so definitely worth the investment.

OK, getting off track. Maybe a reno update another post? So, after four weeks off and having time to just chill, paint the house, clean up Bitti’s feral bedroom finally, and actually on the last Saturday sit on the couch and think, ‘I have nothing I need to do’, I am feeling VERY refreshed. It helps that COVID-19 isolation has been lifted for my state, so life is feeling back to normal. I have had coffee with friends I didn’t see for a while and the pressure of not knowing when things will get better is lifted. Although of course still not entirely abated, Victoria is under full lockdown again right now and who knows when I’ll be able to get on a plane again?

So, with this fresh vigour I am facing Semester 2 and the two final subjects that will close out my second undergraduate degree: Doing Research in Psychology: Advanced and Health and Lifespan Development. The cool thing about these two being undertaken together is that they both are focused on critical analysis of research findings and writing in the academic style. DRIP last year was all about learning how to run statistical analyses, choosing which one is appropriate and interpreting and reporting the results. Hands on, using R Studio and working with sample datasets. This year DRIP veers into more application territory, looking at others’ results and figuring out if they are to be trusted or not. Week 1 the lecturer has proven herself to be very passionate and excited about this subject, touching on the reporting errors and biases that researchers demonstrate (mostly unconsciously) and how to pick that up when looking at reported results in an article.

So what am I going ot do differently this semester? First, I am actually watching the lectures as they come out, one each night, and do the weekly exercises well before they are due. I have written out a schedule and will stick to it! I have popped in some socialising days on the weekends after assignments are due so I don’t feel I am on this 4-month stretch of hermit-like sacrifice. Christmas hits really soon after Semester 2 exams so I am starting to stock up on presents now, rather than having to do that in a rush after I’m done with testing. Bitti’s present is already up in the high cupboard. Shhhhh. I am NOT doing any more renos (except maybe the garden because if I miss spring I can’t plant until autumn next year, and I might have accidentally told Bitti that I would put a monkey bar set in for her … ). I have cancelled all the streaming service subscriptions so I cannot be tempted to binge anything. I can’t do much about iView and SBS on Demand, but but deleting them from my phone is a good start. Also, I am aiming to complete the assignments early so I can move to the next assignment.

Let’s see how all that goes, aye! Feeling very smug about my plans now. The review of what actually happens will prove amusing.

What to do when travel is shut down?

I wanted to keep up the travel blog but suffice to say COVID-19 has put a crimp on that! So I am just going to reframe the whole concept of ‘travel’ as life’s journey. This year Bitti and I were all set for a camping trip to the Flinders Ranges around the new year, that was postponed due to the bushfires. Easter came and we had to postpone the camping trip again due to the intrastate travel lock down. That trip is now pencilled in for the October long weekend. Fingers crossed SA remains healthy we can make it because it’s been over a year now since our last camping holiday.

I also cancelled a couple of other planned holidays. One to Brisbane to see my new nephew, born right before Christmas. The other to Wellington, NZ to hang out with my friend before her July due date. With Queensland still on lock down and Victorian cases growing I doubt I’ll be able to re-book either of those trips any time soon. Sadly, it seems all the babies might be toddlers before I get a chance to smoosh them, and the chance to help out new parents will have passed by. I know there are worse things happening, but it feels like once-in-a-lifetime experiences have been lost and it’s just a real shame 😦

Aside from lamenting these losses, I am grateful that this period has been kind to us. I have worked from home, but the work has still been there. My employer has been amazing, doing all the right things to look after the staff. School has remained open for Bitti so she’s been continuing to attend, enabling me to work unhindered. The biggest challenge has been keeping up with uni work. I found that working at my kitchen table all day and then going back there again after Bitti was in bed was tough. I like the physical separation of working in the office, studying in the library and relaxing at home, it helps keep my mind organised.

I was a bit slack early on in the semester. That created stress when assignments were due, and more again during exam preparation. It didn’t help that it was hard going with some quite dry material delivered by lecturers who suddenly found themselves recording from their lounge rooms, and a lack of interest in the topics on my part. However, I got through it and exams are blessedly over. Doing the exam from home was an interesting experience. I have not done an open book exam before! I am not expecting excellent grades this time, but I am trying not to dwell on it. Semester 2 will offer a chance to redeem myself, and promises a more interesting ride content-wise. Getting back into stats and health & lifespan development.

I have been feeling less motivated about uni because I have started a new job that is just the kind of job I hoped I would get after study. So having found myself already at the goal, I’m wondering if there’s any point continuing, especially given how time-poor and stressed it makes me. I concluded that I should finish the undergrad degree since it’s only one more semester, then apply for Honours and see how I feel after a rest over summer. Honours means another two years of part-time study, but it would provide me more options afterwards in both the clinical and research pathways. By the end of 2022 I may be ready for a change from this role that is now new.

Bitti continues to talk a lot about ‘the black kitty’ from Tuscany. She is adamant that our next holiday must be back to Italy to see her. I have been torn between warning her that the black kitten may not be there any more, and keeping her hopeful about her furry friend. She has accepted that the kitten won’t remember her (‘because I don’t remember anything from when I was a baby’), but still wants to go back for another play and cuddle. I wonder when we will even be able to consider international travel again? Still, that means I can concentrate time and money elsewhere. The house has benefitted already from this; I have a kitchen refresh ongoing and a garden update planned.

The end :-(

We returned home over the weekend. Long haul flights are a special kind of bullshit and I don’t feel much like reliving the discomfort and tedium of it all except to say that Bitti was very well behaved and aeroplane food is the pits. We flew with Qatar and had a 14-hour stopover in Doha, which we spent in their Al Mahar transit lounge. Although it has a 6-hour time limit no one came to kick us out so we ate all their food and had a sleep on their hard little chairs (although they do also say sleeping is banned).

Today my dad asked Bitti if she enjoyed Italy. She said, ‘no’. So really feeling great about my decision to spend thousands taking her to Europe. It is her style to downplay everything though and I know she is happy with parts of the trip. Things that seem to be a standout for her are the Tuscany kitten, spaghetti al pomodoro, croissants for breakfast, the variety of ‘bommy knockers’ (door knockers), the cat cafe in Milan, chasing pigeon flocks and collecting their likely diseased feathers. I know she did not enjoy Rome, walking in the ‘hot’ weather, travelling around on the regional trains or my unreasonable insistence that she put on shoes and have her hair brushed. She did get better at walking, perhaps due to the cooler weather in the north.

I’m really pleased that travelling with our friends worked out well, it would have been terrible if we’d not got along! I’d love to return to Italy one day with a grown up Bitti or with another adult so we could do all the walking we wanted, go out in the evenings and sleep in. Or alone! Then I could get a lot of reading done. This was my first holiday where I didn’t read a thing. For our next holiday together, we’ll go back to camping with other kids, it’s better for Bitti to have some people her own age to play with. Whatever the drawbacks, it was still great to spend some quality time with my daughter and experience Italy first-hand.

It’s a strange country really, the Italians can be very warm and friendly but also extremely rude. Having Bitti along certainly helped with getting a smile out of people. We noticed a huge change in how we were received in shops and restaurants when she was with us compared to adults alone. If you give any sense that you’re a pushover they will ignore you and have trouble fulfilling the simplest requests, but start your interaction with a bit of attitude and suddenly they’re on the ball.

The food was what most people said would be amazing, and it was for the most part. We had some delightful pasta dishes and I especially enjoyed not having to plan a meal, cook or clean for three weeks. Bliss! But towards the end I was getting a little sick of the same old menus, and craving some vegetables. I even tried a coffee while I was there! Had a few cappuccinos to start my day when I was feeling very flat. It tastes absolutely foul but certainly perks one up! If I drank more than half of it there was a pretty uncomfortable feeling in my chest though. Not sure how people go about drinking three or more of these per day! It’s not something I’ll bring into my real life.

Overall, the trip was a big success and I’m glad we did it. Although it wasn’t restful, it was still a break from the scheduled machine that is my normal life. I have a lot of uni work to do to catch up, that was the biggest difficulty of taking the time off. Next time I’ll know I have uni though and can plan the dates accordingly. Now I’m off to get my stupid cat out of a tree he’s climbed without considering the descent. Did I miss him? Hmmm

Final destination: Milan

The blogging has fallen a little behind our actual progress. Writing this from my own lounge room, surrounded by the detritus of our suitcase while Bitti sleeps like it’s not nearly 11 am. Milan was our last stop. We spent two nights there in a pretty dodgy hotel near the central station. We rode the subway around, but I also got a hop-on hop-off bus ticket. That turned out to be a bit of waste of money as Milanese traffic is mad and the bus spent more time parked than moving around the city.

We spent a lot of time in front of the Duomo so Bitti could chase pigeons around. Ugh, there were so many of those disgusting little buggers. There were hawkers handing out corn so tourists could lure these birds to land on their arms for photographs. Foul.

We wandered down some pretty fancy shopping malls where all the fashion names hang out. People really do just spend thousands on a handbag. On the last day Bitti took me into a clearance shop and picked out a jacket for me, this ended up being my trip souvenir. She has very strident opinions about what I should be wearing, and never fails to mention that I should keep my garments so she can wear them when I’m dead. So I now have a this leopard print reversible puffer jacket. It is actually super soft and I am always cold so I couldn’t object based on practicality.

We spent a lot of time in the Parco Sempione looking for a good walking stick. There was a fairly decent playground there, Bitti made me film her doing a few ‘ninja warrior’ runs through it, getting annoyed when some toddlers slowed her down. That park smelt amazing, not sure what flowers they’ve planted in there but they were very fragrant. The botanic aromas combined with a very competent busker playing piano made it a very relaxing morning.

From there we hopped on a bus and hit up some shopping areas, but didn’t really find anything we were looking for. Regretted not buying some glass in Venice. We caught the subway from there back to Duomo to try and go inside it. One good thing in Italy is children are free until a later age than in Australia. Many times I’ve not had to pay for her, or even if I had to according to the rules the ticket seller has just said, ‘she’s four, isn’t she?’, with a wink. Milan subway was the first place I’d travelled where you actually needed to buy a ticket in order to gain entry, they had the usual subway gates; insert your ticket, collect it as you walk through the gates. I’d been putting Bitti in front of me and walking through as if we were one person, since she didn’t have her own ticket. Until this stop, where Bitti ran ahead through the gate and then the gate closed on top of me while I was trying to follow her. It really bloody hurt! I now have a large triangle shaped bruise under a cut on my upper arm. Then a station worker came out of nowhere and told me off in Italian, lol.

In our last couple of days I noticed that Bitti had become excellent at touristing. Unlike in Rome, where she had complained bitterly about walking, in Milan she was quite content with the amount of walking, even choosing to go by foot instead taking the bus in some cases. She has done a great job really, considering that she had no little friends to play with (adults are SO boring) and we moved around a lot for someone who likes consistency and routine. As I guessed, by the time I started talking about going home she was saying she wanted to stay on holiday forever.

One down side to her increased comfort was her desire to ‘explore’ more. This meant walking off without me. She is so confident in her ability to find her way back to me, she’d be like, ‘ok mum you finish your lunch/dinner, I’m just going to be over there’, and point to a spot 500 metres away with a road and 200 people between us. Yeah, nah. But she did like when I let her ask for the cheque in restaurants or pay for things. She was even more interested in taking the change though!

A few things that we did that kept her occupied:

Played ‘would you rather?’
Checked door knockers to see if they were real or not (i.e. did they knock or were they just decorative)
Eye spy
Spotted cats
Let her take photos
Count things
Play Tin Tin

She also did have the iPad and watched a bit of Tin Tin on there when the journeys became too dull to bear. But since we were in Europe she had to watch it in French so I feel it was educational.

It’s a whopper!

I’m too tired to remember what else happened recently! Our general impression of Italy is as varied as the pasta offerings, I tried to briefly capture the vibe in each location by imagining them as work colleagues:

Rome—has a lot of smokos, desk in perpetual chaos but somehow knows where everything is, can’t keep their own life in order but provides excellent external customer service.

Florence—swans in late with a coffee, dresses in timeless styles, low key knows everything about pop culture but can also quote Shakespeare.

Tuscany—makes a big deal out of their packed lunch made from homegrown produce, does everything they’re expected to without question because tradition, unflappable, tolerates work drinks but would rather go home to watch a reality cooking show with the cat.

Cinque Terre—knows everyone and hears all the gossip first, replies all to all emails, has one thousand FaceBook friends and invited 300 people to their ‘small’ wedding, never takes leave and ignores problems until they go away.

Bellagio on Como—beautiful and knows it, their work is always immaculate and delivered on time, person they’re most inspired by in an Instagram influencer.

Bergamo—Over enthusiastic about tech for a non-IT professional, doesn’t have kids but ‘furbabies’ and will talk about them for too long every time, first one to endorse a suggestion by others, cries when there’s confrontation.

Venice—Used to be a hard worker but now cruises on their reputation, dresses in mostly op-shopped clothing, smells slightly odd, never reads an email but is so charming no one takes offence.

Milan—Aloof and cool with everyone except when the boss is around, commonly wears fluoro and patterns that pose a seizure risk to colleagues, does excellent work and is very reliable, never cries.

Sculpture in front of Milan Central Station

Venezia: not at all like in The Tourist (don’t watch that, btw)

The train ride to Venice from Bergamo was a little fraught. It was a 3.5-hour journey with two six-minute transfers between busy regional trains. Italian rail seems to love keeping platform options open, we had found that often platofrm numbers weren’t announced until minutes before the scheduled departure time. But this time we got caught with a change in platform. We arrived super early for our first train, saw it schedule for platform 5 so set up camp there. Five minutes before it’s due to leave I’m thinking, there’s no one else on this platform, what is happening? I look over and see the same destination is on the platform 3 noticeboard. Grabbed the bags and we ran down the stairs and back up the other (now with TWO cases), much to the amusement of the station workers. The train was packed to the gills so I had to stay wit the cases in front of the door while Bitti took the one spare seat in the carriage.

Later in the journey a seat near the doors became free so I sat there, keeping an eye on our bags. Near the end of that leg as the doors opened at a station an older man walked up to my bags, looking a little too purposeful. He went to pick up the black case so I jumped up and intercepted him. He looked confused, looking around as if he had left his own bag that looked like mine there and it had disappeared. He then proceeded to walk up and down, in and out of our carriage for the next ten minutes, still ‘searching’. Another passenger had seen me stop him and he was watching this guy too, also bewildered. In the end my bags were safe and he didn’t try anything else, but it did make me nervous how he kept circling back. Eventually we made it to Venezia Mestre and to our immaculate Air BnB run by a Korean-Italian couple.

So look, I may not have been doing my Italy research in the right places. Our travel group was inspired to watch The Gladiator after visiting Rome, R and A watched Under the Tuscan Sun the night before heading to Tuscany, and I based all my expectations for Florence on A Room with a View. Venice did not escape the unwise media pre-gaming, and perhaps was the worst of all as I actually went so far as to fuck up my whole Netflix algorithm by watching The Tourist.

I love Ang more than is probably healthy given that she and I have never met, but I did struggle to watch over an hour of her heavily eye-lined face strutting around in highly impractical heels, and the slow speed boat chase scene was just too much to bear. I assign Johnny Depp to the category of person ‘looks like he smells awful’, and this film did little to dispel that impression. What with the objectionable goatee and inexplicably puffy cheeks combined with frizzy hair that rather too closely resembles my own untameable vacation mess, it was all so far from sexy that I could hardly recall the meaning of the word. However, having now visited Venice I did recognise some of the views, so that was something. I did not notice Angelina walking through any industrial zones or ship building yards though, which is how Bitti and I entered the city.

We stayed on the mainland, to save about $34,999. A 15-minute bus ride took us into Venice proper, and we did that the first night we arrived. This was probably a mistake as it wasn’t the best experience. We walked about five minutes from the bus stop, found a restaurant that wasn’t too fancy and ordered the worst meal of our trip so far. Tortellini with a cream sauce. It didn’t light me on fire and I ate about four of the pastas before giving up. Bitti ate a hot dog and had the far better end of it.

We got gelato on the way back to the bus, and that turned out to be so bad I actually threw mine in the bin. I have never met an ice cream I couldn’t finish before! Bitti capped off the night by expressing her disappointment at the water street city, saying there should not be footpaths, why aren’t we in a boat, this is NOT what I was promised!!!

Sunset was a good distraction from the meal

After a big sleep and a nice breakfast in the Korean-Italian style we tried against the next day. This was much more successful. I stupidly bought a day pass for the taxi bus. Turned out you can really just get on board without buying a ticket, no one is checking. We fought our way through the crowds to board the first boat and end up bobbing around downstairs for as many stops as I could near before my stomach turned. We alighted at an abandoned dock and headed down some very narrow, alarmingly empty, graffiti-strewn backstreets.

My map told us we were close to the Peggy Guggenheim museum, my instincts told me we were one wrong turn away from death. Bitti was delighted. She has been obsessed with Tin Tin for a while now, and this was yet another chance for her to act out an episode. I alternately play Snowy and Captain Haddock. The captain is best because he’s always drunk. Just as Tin Tin was about climb over a wall to escape yet another naughty man, we ran into the museum … to find it closed on Tuesdays.

Never mind, Bitti was enthused now. We stumbled around more streets for another hour. Wandering into churches, crossing countless bridges and occasionally coming across a little cafe or series of artisans’ shops. I feel we went to places many tourists don’t by walking around this way. But eventually I did try to steer us to the bigger landmarks. We had a lovely lunch in a small piazza with yet another statue of a man in the centre. They all have statues of men in them. I have no idea who all these men are, but clearly they thought themselves very important. To be honest the statues are the start of it, if you possess a trouser snake and haven’t built a castle, bridge or railway station in honour of yourself (ostensibly to the people of [insert town name]), did you really even exist?

We eventually made it to Piazza San Marco which had a very impressive Basilica and Campanile. Bitti actually wanted to go inside something for once! So we lined up for about 20 minutes to get up the top of the bell tower. It is 99 metres high and was absolutely terrifying for me. She loved it though, trying to climb up on the stone edge to get a better look. We then tried to enter the Basilica at my insistence, but even though I managed to cajole her into it, I was turned away at the entrance for having a bag with me 😦

The next pit stop for me was the Rialto bridge. We took a rather circuitous route there, I swear we walked past the same shops several times. I was surprised to find a McDonalds and other chain stores there. For some reason I thought they would try to preserve the old-worldiness of the place. We saw a lot of fabulous blown glass art and jewellery. I wished we could have bought something but I am confident it would have been smashed before we left Italy.

We stayed until dusk, I had a terrific lasagne in a cute little back street restaurant. Then we caught a water bus back to the land bus. This time the trip was a bit nicer, we had a stunning view of the grand canal at sunset; Bitti was hanging over the side of the boat imagining she was in a gondala (I had said no to an 80 Euro per person ride).

I originally had no plan to stop at Venice, but when it was decided that Bitti would come on the trip I added it as a novelty for her. But we both enjoyed our day in the end. Yes, it was extremely expensive, yes it was filled to the brim with annoying tourists (we saw a few ‘stop the cruise ships’ signs hanging off balconies), but it still holds enough charm to overlook those drawbacks.

Bergamo: dogs and all the pastries

I risked my breakfast by deciding to take the ferry direct from Bellagio to Lecco rather than adding an extra train leg from Varenna. I have’t been able to tolerate boats since a scuba diving decompression stop disaster a decade ago. I even get motion sick on the bus home from work! But Bitti and I made it without any illness. The ferry was almost empty so we had some great seats from which to appreciate the lakeside ports under intermittently grey skies.

In Lecco I realised I had forgotten to download the map, so we stalked a couple who seemed to be on a mission to onward travel. Unfortunately they were two grown adults each carrying a normal amount of baggage each, whilst we were one partially grown adult and one adult weighed down by stupid amounts of luggage (including a bag of feathers, sticks and a large box whose disposal would apparently mean the end of the world). After Bitti stopped to have a panic attack about having left her feather in the hotel room we lost our guides. After standing around for a while cursing the invention of toys, feathers and sticks I noticed a lot of foot traffic was coming from the direction of one corner, so we headed there. Aha, a train track!

The train ride to Bergamo was happily uneventful. Now were not on the usual tourist trail all our fellow travellers seemed to be locals. Lots of teenagers in particular on that ride. We had a 12-minute walk to our B&B according to Google Maps, and one minute into this walk we realised our suitcase had a broken wheel. Explains the squeaky noise we’d been hearing lately! I tried to turn the case so it was leading with a healthy wheel, but the bung wheel just got worse until it was completely split open and the whole case was steering like an average supermarket shopping trolley. Bugger.

We had a little B&B in central Bergamo booked and found it was one of two rooms that a family kept. The breakfast was served in their own dining room because the patio was covered in scaffolding for external window repair work. That was a shame because the patio had a wonderful view of the sunset in the evenings. But their dining rooms was filled with books, the walls covered in art, and the very high ceiling had frescos painted on it, with elaborate cornices to top it off. The host told us his son was studying art at uni in Venice, and the family’s artistic flair was evident in our room and bathroom too, both decorated extremely tastefully.

Our big day in Bergamo was spent in the Citta Alta, up the funicular to the old town. On the way we heard a marching band and went down to have a look. There was some sort of memorial parade going on, as well as a produce fair. Bitti got to do some crafting, which she has been missing every day, and made a paper eggplant. I was noticing that Bergamo was different to other places we’d been so far. The locals are very well dressed, the city is more modern with glass buildings, wider streets and greener spaces. Also, there are a lot more cyclists here, and people walking dogs with children.

There was a HUGE lineup to ride up to Citta Alta, but Bitti bore with it quite well, taking my camera to shoot a series of close ups of people’s feet, bags and her favourite subject: ‘smoke pipes’. The old town is very cute. Long narrow main street with lots of very inviting shops selling clothes, books, art and PASTRIES. So many pastries. We had a bit of a dessert crawl along there, stopping to share a cake at each place. There were a few art shows along the way so we stopped in to browse. Bitti has been really interested in the paintings we find on this trip, I know nothing to tell her about them of course! But she always spends a long time examining them and deciding which is her favourite. She’s desperate for me to buy one, but the idea of lugging a large canvas around with me doesn’t appeal.

The churches, chapels and cathedrals continue to amaze me, and bore Bitti. Some of them appear so plain on the outside, but inside are incredibly extravagant. You just wonder how they got away with exhibiting such wealth in a period when most were so far from well-to-do. But I guess things are the same now, possibly there’s more to distract us from disparity of wealth now.

At the top of the main street Bitti found a playground by accident. It was a good one too! Although she’s been desperate for other kids to play with, she is also too shy to get a game going with strangers, especially when they don’t speak English. We stayed there for a while before heading home again, the long way. Once Bitti has decided it’s time to go home we have to just go. But I tend to take her on a somewhat circuitous route that passes by all the things I wanted to see. ‘Oh yes, this is the way home!’ I’m not lying.

I think our conclusion is that Bergamo is the city of dogs. Every second person seemed to have one on a leash, even in the tourist spots. It’s also a very clean city, compared to what we’ve seen. And they seem much more organised here as well, the public transport was very easy to find and work out, there is even WIFI all over the place so tourists can scan QR codes to get more info about what they’re looking at. Although I found I could not connect …

I was a little sad to leave so soon, but Bitti was itching to get on to Venice, or ‘the water city’ as she’s been calling it. So the next day we packed our new suitcase and headed off for a long train journey that included two transfers. But we didn’t leave our old, broken suitcase behind did we? Oh nO! We brought that with us because someone couldn’t bear to part with it. So now Bitti has her own suitcase that she ALONE is responsible for dragging around. It has nought but a dirty bunny and a collection of sticks in it, but she’s been milking a lot of sympathy from strangers over it. Especially on the staircases.

I feel I should look up the Italian word for ’empty’ and stick it on the side so I don’t look like a monster forcing my poor child to haul a suitcase large enough for her to live in.

Fancy facade commissioned by rich bloke of yesteryear

Beautiful Bellagio

Our accommodation is right next to the Melzi Villa Gardens. Melzi was a super rich dude (there’s a lot of those around) who was into trees and stuff. The villa is right on the waterfront and is now surrounded by a wonderful garden with trees from all over the word, ponds, statues and very sloping lawns zig zagged with stone paths. There is even a cave. In short, a paradise for small children with wild imaginations. It took Bitti and I an hour to walk it the first time we went through. Happily, our room key gave us free entry as this was a good short cut into town.

Bellagio is a whole other level of tourism. The lakeside town is absolutely pristine, chock with flowers and lawns, and clearly set up to extract as much money as possible from wealthy visitors. There were many shops selling expensive jewellery, leather goods, shoes and art. The cobblestone streets had a lot less rubbish than we’ve become accustomed to, although Bitti still noticed the occasional ‘smoke pipe’. One thing that stood out was the number of dogs! Everyone seemed to have one on a leash. Bitti wanted to pat all of them, but when I did ask if she could she was rarely brave enough to actually touch the dog,

R and A went their own way here, staying in a place up high on the hill. We ran into them the next day as we ate lunch at an extremely overpriced lakeside restaurant. We agreed to meet up for coffee the next day before their ferry took them away for good. Bitti and I went up the hill into Bellagio check out some shops. She found a toy she wanted, I agreed she could have it if she walked ‘nicely’ for that day and the next. There has been quite a bit of bribery this holiday, hopefully she will forget all about it when we return to normal life!

We went into a jewellery and leather goods shop for a closer look at some butterfly rings Bitti liked. In there with us was a group of very well dressed American women with thick southern accents. They were talking to the shop keeper near the entrance when suddenly a physical fight broke out amongst a few of them with pushing and shoving and a bit of shouting in Italian. I wasn’t really paying attention so it was quite confusing, but in a moment a couple of younger women had been thrown out into the street and the door slammed shut behind them. The shop keeper said, ‘she was steal from you!’, pointing at one of the women’s bags.

Bitti had been over in the middle of it, she came running over to me asking what was going on. The American group went bananas, they loved it so much. It was a bit like being in the hair salon with Dolly and Sally. The shopkeeper was on a high, reliving the whole thing, while the women were speculating whether the thieves were gypsies (lol, and we’re the Famous Five?). It was all very exciting and gave Bitti something to think about. She decided she didn’t want the girls to be caught or go to jail because they seemed nice.

It was a bit of a shock because although everyone says to be so careful in Europe, we really hadn’t seen any evidence of pick pockets in operation anywhere. So this was a good reminder to keep the bags zipped up and close by. Although, I suspect any discerning thief will target obviously fancy women like those in the shop before they come looking in my decrepit bag.

It was tempting to go out on the ferry to another town, but everyone says Bellagio is the best and all Bitti wanted was to find a playground anyway. So that’s what we did. The second day we had a quick and regretful final breakfast with A and R before they left FOREVER. Then we hopped on a little tourist ‘train’ that drives all over the little peninsula Bellagio sits on. We got off at San Giovanni, a little fishing hamlet, because we saw a large playground. Bitti played there for about two hours with some other travellers’ kids, one from South Africa, one from the USA.

Bitti has been a little frustrated travelling with me because I’m not so great at playing all the imaginary games she loves. She misses her friends 😦

We caught the train back to Bellagio and got Bitti her special toy, a set of animals you can draw on. Then it for one final dinner, a huge pizza that neither of us could finish and a salad for me because I am really desperate for some veggies after a couple of weeks of pasta and pastries and breads. Italian food is delicious, but it’s a big change for me when I’m used to eating mostly veggies and beans. My gut is struggling a little. Bitti went wild and ordered a spaghetti alla carbonara instead of al pomodoro. Didn’t like it as much!

That night we had a fight about the blankets she had used to set up a zoo by suspending them between the couches and the bed. I wanted to use them to block the street light coming through the pathetic curtains. She wanted her zoo to remain untouched. In the end i said I wouldn’t touch them, then as soon as she went to bed I put the blankets up on the windows, hahaahahaaa.

Next, we go by ferry to Lecco, then train direct to Bergamo.