I have visited Malacca [wikipedia.org] before but only took a few photos, because I was only there for a few hours. This time I was there overnight but I still didn’t have time to explore much other then the Chinese district and Stadthuys Square [wikipedia.org]. The problem is the drive up and back takes so long. I don’t think exploring Malacca should take more than a couple of days but that means staying a few nights when you factor in the drive and the oppressive sun and heat. Anyway, maybe I’ll make it back one day.

Malacca’s Chinatown, if you can call it that, fascinates me because it is what Singapore was or would be if not for the Singapore Governments intervention. The Peranakan culture filling the falling-down, left-over colonial era “Shophouses” [wikipedia.org]. On almost everything that could count the modernized Singapore has Malacca beat, but Malacca does retain an air of history which Singapore has lost with the leveling and fixing-up of the shophouses.

Click on the photos to see the whole set [flickr.com] on Flickr [flickr.com].

I originally drafted this post in May ‘08 — more than 5 month after the trip — and now it’s January ‘09. So not only am I a slacker, I’m a world class slacker. But without further sarcastic self-deprecation here is Candice & beggs adventures in Rome [wikipedia.org]!

Rome was the last big stop on our delayed honeymoon trip to Italy. The Eternal City deserves to be the icing on the cake. I mean, this was home to Julius Caesar [wikipedia.org], Cicero [wikipedia.org], a whole list of other famous Romans [wikipedia.org], not to mention The Roman Republic & Empire [wikipedia.org]! Few places rank this high on the history scale.

As with everywhere else we went in Italy the choice to go in November was a bit of a cramp — sun sets too early. But most of the big sights in Rome were within easy walking distance of our hotel on the forum side of the Quirinal Hill [wikipedia.org]: Trajan’s Forum [wikipedia.org], the original Roman Forum [wikipedia.org], The Colosseum [wikipedia.org], The Trevi Fountain [wikipedia.org], The Pantheon [wikipedia.org], and a ton of other things too numerous to mention let alone visit in the short time we were in Rome. (Add to that the Vatican which will be separate post and the amount of sightseeing you can do in Rome is awe inspiring and mind numbing.)

Two slightly annoying things; the Spanish Steps were covered in scaffolding. And, the number of people was amazing, I can’t imagine visiting at the height of the tourist season if late November is so crowded!

On the non-sightseeing side of things; we stayed in a very nice hotel, great view of the tops of the building leading down the Quirinal Hill to Trajan’s Forum. It was the best hotel we stayed in while in Italy, save the best for last. Most expensive too. We found a couple of brilliant places to eat, great Italian food and we at Euro-infected Chinese food at a small place near the Trevi Fountain, but off the beaten path.

Rome is defiantly a city I could live in for a long time and not get tired of; the food the sights! Oh man, and the people are not as obnoxious as the Parisians. But I think Florence just beats out Rome in my list of dream cities to live in. Just walking around the streets in Rome is amazing, the palpable history and the wonderful feeling the mix of buildings give you is amazing.

Novosibirsk [wikipedia.org], dead smack in the middle of Siberia, is not some place I think I would normally travel to. So, why did I go to Siberia… in November? Work. Unfortunately I showed up, so I’m told, in the three week gap of “nastiness between the beauty of fall and the beauty of winter.” That means something about the fall leaves color and the winter wonderland of permanent snow. When I was there everything was gray and mud, rain and wind. But it was not all that bad.

I actually spent most of my time in what could be called a satellite city to Novosibirsk, called Akademgorodok [wikipedia.org]. During the days if the Soviets this was the larges of a number of purpose built closed towns filled with the brightest brains of the Soviet world. Akademgorodok is filled with large academies of every possible discipline; Math, Physics, Geology, Chemistry and the piste-de-resistance the Nuclear research academy. Wide roads, tree lined boulevards and parks must have provided a happy escapist world for the scientists.

Too bad it did not last. Since the end of the USSR Akademgorodok has seen better days. The end of government money funding pure research seems to have hit Akademgorodok hard. Recently foreign money has started to make its way in and local entrepreneurs have started a ‘Silicon Forest’ of high tech companies.

I only spent a single day in Novosibirsk itself — and a winters days is not long enough to see everything I wanted to see. But what I did see is an interesting hodgepodge of a city. I felt the same hectic uncontrolled pace that I felt in Shanghai. Novosibirsk is a city that has grown too fast to keep up with itself.

One of the things I wanted to see but did not get photos of is the Novosibirsk train station — a big stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway [wikipedia.org]. Unfortunately I did not get to take the train to or from Novosibirsk, it takes three plus days to Moscow or Beijing, the bosses thought that was too long. Oh, and it’s not cheap. I did see the big green exterior of the station, but it was after dark in a car on the way back to the hotel in Akademgorodok. So no photos. Maybe next time.

Speaking of the railroad, Novosibirsk has a rail history museum. Everything from steam powered pre-soviet era locomotives to trains make in Novosibirsk in the ’90s.

I did see the Nikolai Chapel, (sorry no link for this one,) once supposedly the geographical center of the Russian Empire. Now, not so much, the Kazakh border is only a few hundred kilometers south.

And what Soviet city would be complete without a statue of Lenin?

The hill top city of Siena [wikipedia.org] is a few hours by train from Florence. I suspect the bus trip would have been better but we had more days than we could use on our rail pass so we took the train. From the train station we walked the 2 kilometers or so to the top of the hill and into the center of the medieval and renaissance town.

The center of Siena, Il Campo [wikipedia.org] sight of the famous Palio di Siena [wikipedia.org] a twice yearly crazy hours race between representatives of the various wards of the city for bragging rights. By the time we got to Il Campo it was time for lunch so we pulled out our friendly Lonely Planet Italy guide [lonelyplanet.com] and looked for a good place to eat.

The first place we tried was only open for dinner in the off season. The second place was closed completely for the off season. The third was an empty shop. The fourth we never found. So after an hour of back and forth around the city center and it’s steep hills and steps we decided to just go back to Il Campo and eat at one of the many places there. The food was not bad but it was a bit frustrating after looking forward to the highly recommended menus of the places in the guide

An unfortunate side effect of our hour looking for food was that we could not enter one of the major sites I wanted to see in Siena; the Palazzo Pubblico [wikipedia.org] or town hall and it’s museum and the Torre del Mangia [wikipedia.org] the 102 meter high bell tower dominating the Campo. Problem was these sights close an hour before sunset in the off season, sunset was around 4:30 when we were there and it’s was just after 3:30 when we got there. The only thing we could do was go the the Siena Cathedral [wikipedia.org].

The cathedral is one of the most beautiful in Italy. The exterior is similar to the cathedrals in both Florence [confusion.cc] and Pisa [confusion.cc]. The inside is much more amazing; whereas the inside of the cathedral in Florence is, aside from the painted dome, sparse, Siena’s Duomo is beautiful. Filled with mosaic floors and frescoed alters.

By the time we finished touring around the cathedral it was dark outside and we did not do much more in Siena. A cup of coffee in a small cafe and one more stop at il Campo before taking a bus back to the train station and heading back to Florence for the night. I hope we can go back and visit the sights we missed some day, Siena was one of the most beautiful places we visited in Italy.

An hour and a half down the tracks from Florence near the mouth of the Arno River [wikipedia.org] sits Pisa [wikipedia.org].

Our adventure began on the train to Pisa. We rode a packed commuter train rather than the faster direct train and most of the passengers were locals. A good percentage of the standing crowd changed at each stop. There were two other tourist couples in the car with us which became apparent when the conductors came through to check tickets. Our carriage was near the middle of the train and a few minutes past the second of third stop the conductor lead about five young guys into our carriage all waring street clothing but with conductors hats and the automated ticket machine and punch.

Pisa is, of course, famous for one thing [wikipedia.org]. That one thing is on the far side of the medieval town from the modern train station, a 20 minute leisurely walk. Since only a set number of people are allowed in the Tower each day in small groups we marched directly from the train station to the ticket booth with only a short stop to purchase more storage for the digital camera.

Upon entering the Piazza dei Miracoli [wikipedia.org] I was driven to repeat the great words of The Flugie saying; “it’s slanty!” (Guess you had to be there the first time.) Not so bad as it used to be mind you since they spent a lot of money and a lot of time to pump mud out from under it in order to get it to stand back up a bit straighter.

Straighter it may be but straight it is not and while 3.97 degrees might not sound like a lot of lean it means that the top of the tower is leaning 4 meters from where it should be! Haft the time you are climbing the 296 steps you lean against the outside wall and half the time you lean against the inside wall. Quite an odd sensation.

Anyway, beyond the worlds most famous engineering mistake the Piazza dei Miracoli also holds the Duomo or Cathedral and the Baptistry of St. John [wikipedia.org]. We didn’t visit the Baptistery but the Cathedral is beautiful, not the best in Italy but beautiful.

After the Tower and Cathedral we took a slow walk back to toward the train station and stopped to have lunch at a place listed in the travel guide. The review looked promising and the food was good but it was a bit pricey. After lunch and a bit of shopping it was back to the train because the sun was already going down.

I’m sure there is a lot more to Pisa than just a construction error but it two visits to Pisa I haven’t seen it.

High up on a hill overlooking the beautiful Tuscan [wikipedia.org] countryside, San Gimignano [wikipedia.org] is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Really San Gimignano is not much more than a village despite the fact that some seven thousand people call it home year round. With one main street within the medieval walls it’s not a big city.

However, San Gimignano was the most ‘authentic’ medieval Tuscan city we visited. Maybe it was the lack of large crowds of tourists (there were tourists, in fact quite a number compared to the locals we saw, but the city most definitely did not feel crowed.) Maybe it was sitting on the main square having coffee and people watching. Maybe it was the food… ok maybe it was not the food..

After navigating our way to the bus station early in the morning we were dropped off by the first bus at a small stain stop in the town of Poggibonsi [wikipedia.org]. After about 45 minutes the bus that would take us up into the hills to San Gimignano arrived at Poggibonsi to save us from the freezing train station. 30 minutes of climbing into the hills later we arrives just outside the gate to the medieval city. Just before 11 AM (this despite getting up at 5 AM!)

We did not really do much hardcore sightseeing in San Gimignano. More wondering around the streets punctuated by lunch and coffee. Lunch was an interesting ordeal. At about 11:50 we selected a nice looking restaurant along along the main street. When Candice stuck her head in to ask if they were open (it was not obvious to us) it took a few tries for us to understand that they opened at noon. Wait 10 minutes? No problem. Too bad that no one had told us that it was 10 minutes by Italian country time…

30 minutes later after much wondering around the few shops near the restaurant we finally had lunch. It was OK but not worth the buildup.

It did not really matter that the food was only mediocre. The city was so beautiful and peaceful that it was a pleasure just be walk around and sit in the piazza and enjoy a cup of coffee… and a cup of ‘cioccolata calda’ which means hot chocolate but is so much more. Good cioccolata calda is literally melted chocolate bars, served steaming hot! It warms you up all the way down, you can feel it sliding down your throat. So good. Can’t possibly be good for you. I drank a lot of it while in Italy.

San Gimignano was a wonderful place and I would like to see it in the summer when the rolling Tuscan hills are in full bloom. But I understand that the city is overrun with tourists all summer. I think that would destroy the magic.