Saturday, August 25, 2007

Back to Milan, which is Italy, but isn't really Italian

So after my last rant about flakey mates, all turned out well in the end. Rob didn't make it down to Italy in the end, so I had a great weekend down in Sicily. Most of the time I spent enjoying the choice hospitality of Sicilians. Apparently they regard guests as "sacred" and I can agree with that. We stayed with Pepe, who lives not far from Palermo. On the way out to his place we drove past a memorial on a hill, which read "No Mafia". It was on the place where the Mafia remotely detonated a bomb that was placed under the road. The bomb exploded as the judge, who was prosecuting the mafia at the time, drove past. It left a massive crater in the road. Making mafia jokes in Italy, and especially Sicily, gets a nervous laugh. As in "what a plonker, you're not funny". It's up there with making potato jokes in Ireland and Nazi jokes in Germany. That's why you need to go somewhere else before elicit a laugh.

I got to do a dive out there too, which was just by chance. Scopello is about 90 minutes drive west of the capital and is really just a rocky strip of land that people come to and go swimming. (If anyone can tell me how to take google earth view in to a URL that would be handy). There are a few beaches like this:



As you can see, the water is super nice and you can wallow in it for hours of entertainment. That particular "beach" had a night club next to it, which sold cold stuff during the day. Including a dude who was employed to puff up the cushions on the couches and spent literally about 5 minutes carefully arranging the seating arrangements like he was an artise putting the latest touches on his art nouveau piece.

The following week we cruised out to Sardinia for the weekend. That was also very cool and I am very fond of the bronze tan I got from there - hint for the Italian newbies - you don't get brown in the sun...you get bronzed. The former is reserved for nuts and other edible products. It really is a beautiful island and its rocky outcrops and semi barren countryside is quite unique. We were staying at the Costa Esmarelda, about an hour from a place called Palau. Palau is a place for those people who ooze cash out every pore. It's a place on the coast, which is nestled at the base of hills that descend in to the azure water below. Sitting on the gentle water are what I like to call, understatingly, houseboats. These are ones with 100" rear projection TVs, four levels and electric sliding doors with the woosh sound from the Starship Enterpise. Benedetta called the place plastic and she's not far off the mark. Nevertheless, the Italians don't take such a dim view of people with boatloads of cash compared to New Zealanders. Berlusconi, the richest man in Italy, sailed all around Italy in a huge luxury boat during the last election (which he subsequently lost). At Palau, even on a Sunday night, the place was packed with people, wandering along the waterfront, admiring the opulence of the vessels.

And this weekend, for a nice change I get to do nothing, and I'm loving it. My two weeks capacity that my suitcase seems to have ran out just in time, so after the second laundry load, I'm almost done.

And here's my picture of Emojet taken in Dubai (geeky sense of humour required):

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