Venice Italy October 2006

From Bologna, took a train to Venice. A nice gentleman (a tout) took us to a hotel near Rialto Bridge to stay. quite a lovely and teeny-weeny room with attached bathroom and cheap too. no cars in venice except one ferrarri inside the ferrarri shop, manned by schumacher himself. houses here are scary as most sunk into water during high tide. even the walkway is flooded, so there have raised platform which they put out during high tide. venice transport is mainly ferry or walking or gondola (for tourists only-lah). a lot of nice church, san marco, can hear classical orchestra. a lot of shops selling murano glasses. took a ferry to murano island to watch two chaps blow glasses and make pranching horse, the logo of ferrari. pissing here using public toilet is expensive, euro 1 per piss. should have pissed into the canal. bugger!

Bologna, Italy October 2006

took a train from rome termini station to bologna. in rome, went to vatican museum, st peter catheral etc to checkup some michelangelo's masterpieces, colosseum, constantine gate and a lot of ancient places, like Parthenon and fountain.
expensive hotel room at hotel roma at bologna, euro 130 per nite.
saw the balcony of juliet as in romeo and juliet but not so sure whether the one in the photo is the correct one. one of a distant friend, lucio cecchinello, a ex-GP125 racer and now, team manager for MotoGP came from Bologna (he used to have Casey Stoner as his rider in GP250, the young aussie who is now leading the points in MotoGP race this year, 2007. btw, there is a leaning tower in bologna too, maybe, built by the same architect of leaning tower of pisa. the pizza is delicious too and the chinese restaurant's owner daughter (chinese) spoke italian to me and i know nil on this language except 'gracias' and 'mamma mia'. look at the photo with the building that has a Dato Ali, didn't know Malaysian has ventured into bologna too, a Dato Ali, the building looks ancient, need to checkup when the sultans started giving dato titles out (Dato is one-level lower similar as Sir/OBE title given out by Queen Elizabeth but at times, I heard can be purchased using moolah like RM 100K onwards).

Rome Italy - 19 Oct 2006

Was in Rome, Italy followed by Bologna and then Venice for almost a week. did not book any hotels before we flown there, so my wife and I just walked around to hunt down our stays when we arrived at the sites. quite adventurous but a bir risky and at times, costly as we found up when we stayed in Bologna Roma Hotel which cost a bomb, Euro 130 per nite.

Actually, flight from London was canceled due to heavy fog and ended up flying to Parma and then took a train down to Rome. Found up a lot of Bangladeshi in Rome, as the hotel room we stayed is run by a Bangladeshi and souvenirs shops are manned by Bangladeshi.
Even, the Italian restaurant we ate dinner in Venice, I saw the chef was Bangladeshi. Somehow, the wealthy countries rely a lot on cheap labour to work in some of the labor-intensive sectors. That's biz. life, I guess.

UK-Leeds castle and Church of Canterbury 16-Oct-06

Went with wife and younger sis's family to Leeds Castle, UK (claimed to be one of the most beautiful castle in the world) and Church of Canterbury. Had fowl's thigh for lunch.