We have visited this town on a hill, famous for its fourteen towers, twice. The first time we stayed in a hotel overlooking the main piazza, and the second time, for a day visit, and return to a little restaurant tucked away off the main piazza for its home cooking.
No cars are allowed inside the town and parking is provided outside the town walls. You can drive up to the hotel to deliver your baggage, but the car must return to the carpark overnight.
This is one of the fourteen towers
I didn’t attempt to climb to the tower, which you can do in some of them, just getting up the church steps was enough for me. Inside the building was, if I remember correctly, a museum.
Looking up the piazza towards some battlements, and when you reach the top and turn left, there is a small restaurant on the right-hand side of the laneway that had the best wild boar pasta.
Another of the fourteen towers, and through the arch, down a lane to the gated fence that surrounds the town. The fortifications are quite formidable and there are several places along the fence where you can stand and look down the hill at the oncoming enemy (if there was one).
Part of the main piazza which is quite large, and on the right, the wishing well where my wish for a cooler day was not granted.
Officially, the Piazza della Cisterna is the most beautiful square of the town, San Gimignano. The well was built in 1273 and enlarged in 1346 by Podestà Guccio dei Malavolti.
And not to be outdone by any other the other old towns, there is an old church, one of several. It is the Collegiate Church or the Duomo di San Gimignano, a monument of Romanesque architecture built around 1000 and enlarged over time.
Next door is the Museum of Sacred Art.
And I guess it’s rather odd to see television aerials on top of houses that are quite literally about a thousand years old. I wonder what they did back then for entertainment?
There’s nothing like being a few days early or a few days late for a major festival.
We have the dubious honor of being able to both without thinking. I guess this is why you should try to plan your holiday around events, if possible.
We love Italy.
We’ve been a number of times, but the last visit was the best. Of course, it was not without a lot of hiccups just getting there, but in the end, later than we expected, actually about five minutes before they closed Florence airport, we made it.
So, little did we know there was such a thing as Calcio Fiorentino an early form of football and rugby that originated in 16th-century Italy and thought to have started in the Piazza Santa Croce in Florence. But we were in Florence, at the right time, and even got to see the procession through the streets of Florence.
We were not so lucky in Siena where we were about a week early for the Palio di Siena which was to take place on 2nd July.
Nor were we in Arezzo at the right time for the Saracen Joust which was held on the penultimate Saturday in June. It is held at the Piazza Grande in the heart of Arezzo and is one of the most beautiful piazzas in Tuscany.
The Piazza Della Liberta and the Town Hall tower
The Piazza Grande, also known as Piazza Vasari, is said to be situated on the site of the ancient Roman Forum. Here, it is being set up for the coming Joust.
A different view of Arezzo Cathedral | Cattedrale dei Santi Pietro e Donato
For the first time on this trip, we encounter problems with Chinese officialdom at the railway station, though we were warned that this might occur.
We had a major problem with the security staff when they pulled everyone over with aerosols and confiscated them. We lost styling mousse, others lost hair spray, and the men, their shaving cream. But, to her credit, the tour guide did warn us they were stricter here, but her suggestion to be angry they were taking our stuff was probably not the right thing to do.
As with previous train bookings, the Chinese method of placing people in seats didn’t quite manage to keep couples traveling together, together on the train. It was an odd peculiarity which few of the passengers understood, nor did they conform, swapping seat allocations.
This train ride did not seem the same as the last two and I don’t think we had the same type of high-speed train type that we had for the last two. The carriages were different, there was only one toilet per carriage, and I don’t think we were going as fast.
But aside from that, we had 753 kilometers to travel with six stops before ours, two of which were very large cities, and then our stop, about four and a half hours later. With two minutes this time, to get the baggage off the team managed it in 40 seconds, a new record.
After slight disorientation getting off the train, we locate our guide, easily ground by looking for the Trip-A-Deal flag. From there it’s a matter of getting into our respective groups and finding the bus.
As usual, the trip to the hotel was a long one, but we were traveling through a much brighter, and well lit, city.
As for our guide, we have him from now until the end of the tour. There are no more train rides, we will be taking the bus from city to city until we reach Shanghai. Good thing then that the bus is brand new, with that new car smell. Only issue, no USB charging point.
The Snowy Sea hotel.
It is finally a joy to get a room that is nothing short of great. It has a bathroom and thus privacy.
Everyone had to go find a supermarket to purchase replacements for the confiscated items. Luckily there was a huge supermarket just up from the hotel that had everything but the kitchen sink.
But, unlike where we live, the carpark is more of a scooter park!
It is also a small microcosm of Chinese life for the new more capitalistic oriented Chinese.
The next morning we get some idea of the scope of high-density living, though here, the buildings are not 30 stories tall, but still just as impressive.
These look like the medium density houses, but to the right of these are much larger buildings
The remarkable thing about this is those buildings stretch as far as the eye can see.
Our airport experiences are all without incident, although from time to time the sight of police or soldiers patrolling with guns can be disconcerting.
We have also experienced the odd problem in London at Heathrow, firstly trying to get help from the designated help staff and then to find the check-in desk of an airline apparently no one available knew existed. They were not very good ‘help’ staff.
The fact we couldn’t find the airline counter left us cursing the travel agent. It existed in name, we found it in the phone book and on the internet, but …
The phone rang out – ugh!
The internet site could not be used to check in or manage the booking on the same day as the flight!
Double ugh!
Until a little footwork found the agents desk and the misunderstanding was sorted out.
By the way, the airline itself was a pleasure to fly on, the staff was very helpful and most of all we arrived just before the airport closed. It was odd to discover that some airports closed, particularly Florence. It was the second time we were the last people out and having to turn off the lights. And, because I booked the transfer to the hotel myself, he was there waiting for us!
Holiday over, the joys of visiting relatives we hadn’t seen for a long time, and an unusual but wonderful New Year’s Eve and a wedding two days later, only a flight stands between us and getting home. After days, sometimes weeks, it is that moment we all look forward to; sleeping on our own beds, making our own food and getting to the gym to work off those extra kilos put on by delicious hotel food or local fare where calorie counting is not part of the dining experience.
Of course getting to the airport from the hotel can be an experience in itself whether by taxi, perhaps the taxi driver from hell who knows only two speeds fast and stop and is also, unfortunately, color blind. Or whether you have arranged for a transfer only to discover it’s not coming because the company went out of business or you changed hotels and someone forgot to tell them. Or the travel agent made a mistake or forgot to confirm the booking. Oh yes, it happens.
We have a hire car and will be returning it t the same place. Let’s hope the signage at the airport makes it easy to find the rental place. In London we had a hell of a time trying to find it; good thing we were hours earlier than we should be. In Chicago, the car rental depot was miles from the airport.
And just because the sign says ‘rental returns’ for the lane you’re in it doesn’t necessarily follow it’s the right lane. Then as you miss the exit, and get stuck on the one-way road system, all of a sudden you have left the airport and you’re heading back to the city.
If you’re running late …
But if everything goes to plan you can get to the airport with time to spare.
Sydney to Beijing – Qantas A330-200 Boarding 11:45, everyone on board by 12:02, for a 12:10 departure. Pushing back 12:12 Take off 12:27
Lunch Airline food is getting better but the fact they serve it up to you in a metal tray with a thick aluminum lid does nothing for the quality of the food inside. I get what the chef is trying to do but often there is too little of one thing and too much of another and what you finish up with is slop in a tray. Sometimes it’s edible sometimes it’s not. Sometimes the meat is tender and other times it’s like boot leather. As it is today. I think it’s pork, I should have had the chicken. Or perhaps it was chicken. I hate it when you can’t tell what it is that you’re eating. But, the drinks were good.
Rest or Sleep, maybe It’s going to take 11 hours and 20 minutes from Sydney to Beijing, a long time to sit in a plane with nothing much to do other than crosswords, read a book or newspaper or magazine, listen to music on your own device, or the in-flight entertainment, watch a movie again by the in-flight entertainment – if it works – or try to get some sleep. I started with the crosswords but got bored quickly. I fiddled with the in-flight entertainment, looked at the movies and tv shows but none really interested me, not then at least, so I set it to the flight path. Not exactly stellar entertainment, but it’s always interesting to know where the plane is. Or is it? If we crash, what good would it do me to know it’s somewhere over the ocean, not far from Manila, or somewhere else. It’s not as if I could phone someone up, on the way down, to let them know where we are. But, just after dinner, we still haven’t left Australia
However, by the time I’ve finished fiddling with and dismissing all of the entertainment alternatives, it’s back to the flight path and now we are…
Somewhere approaching the Sulu Sea, which I’ve never heard of before, so it looks like I’ll have to study up on my geography when I get home.
OK, Manila looks like somewhere I’ve heard of, so we have to be flying over the Philippines. Not far left of that is Vietnam. Neither of those places is on my travel bucket list, so I’ll just look from up here and be satisfied with that.
Working, or not Chronic boredom is setting in by the time we are just past halfway to our destination. We are over 6 hours into the flight and there no possible way I’m going to get any sleep. I brought my Galaxy Tab loaded with a few of my novel outlines, and planning for missing chapters, thinking I might get a little thinking time in. Plane rides, I find, are excellent for getting an opportunity to write virtually unhindered by outside interruptions, if, of course, you discount the number of times people brush past, knocking your seat, the person in front lowering the seat into your face, or people around you continually asking you to turn off your light because they’re trying to sleep. Sorry, I say, but you can suffer my pain with me. It’s one of the joys of flying with over two hundred others in a claustrophobic environment. Besides, aren’t the lights supposed to be slanted so only I get the rays of light? Except, I guess when the fixed light doesn’t line up with where the airline has fixed the seat (usually so they can squash more people in).So, sorry, not sorry, take it up with the airline.
Back to work, and I put in some quality time on a part of the story that had been eluding me for a while. I knew what I wanted to write, but not how I was going to approach it, so that blissfully quiet and intense time worked in my favor, something that would not have happened back hope. I won’t bore you with the synopsis, just suffice to say it’s finally down on paper, digitally that is, and it’s a huge step forward towards finishing it. There is, of course, the end play, the reading of the will but not before there’s a few thrusts and parry’s by some of the players, but all in all the objective was to showcase a group of people with their strengths and weaknesses pushing their characters in various directions, some at odds with what is expected of them. But enough of that. A quick check of our position shows we’re still over water but closer to our destination, so much so, we might start the pre-landing rituals, starting with food.
Dinner 7:00 – Dinner is served, well, the lights go on and a lot of tired people try to shake the sleep, and sleeplessness, out of their systems. Then flight attendants that are far too cheerful, and must have beamed in from somewhere else, serve another interesting concoction that says what’s in it but you can’t really be sure of the ingredients. It comes and it goes.
9:10 – We begin our descent into Beijing, you know, that moment when the engines almost stop and there’s a sickening lurch and the plane heads downward. 9:56 – We touch down on the runway, in the dark and apparently it has been raining though from inside the plane you’d never know. 10:10 – the plane arrives at the gate, the usual few minutes to open the door, and, being closer to the front of the plane this time, it doesn’t take that long before the queue is moving.
Early or late, it doesn’t matter. After clearing customs and immigration, we have to go in search of our tour guide, waiting for us somewhere outside the arrivals terminal.
The novel ‘Echoes from the past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The birthday’.
My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.
Thus the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.
So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.
So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.
I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.
And like all re-writes, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.
There was motivation. I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample. I was going to give them the re-worked short story. Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’
Originally it was not set anywhere in particular.
But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself. We were there for New Years, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.
One evening we were out late, and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow, it was cold and wet, and there were apartment buildings shimmering in the street light, and I thought, this is the place where my main character will live.
It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected. I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.
I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.
Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller center is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.
The original main character was a shy and man of few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party. I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble. No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.
Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule, and begins a relationship?
But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul, as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.
Instead of making a grand entrance, arriving in style and being greeted by important dignitaries, we are slinking in via an airplane, late at night. It’s hardly the entrance I’d envisaged. At 9:56 the plane touches down on the runway. Outside the plane, it is dark and gloomy and from what I could see, it had been raining. That could, of course, simply be condensation.
Once on the ground, everyone was frantically gathering together everything from seat pockets and sending pillows and blankets to the floor. A few were turning their mobile phones back on, and checking for a signal, and, perhaps, looking for messages sent to them during the last 12 hours. Or perhaps they were just suffering from mobile phone deprivation.
It took 10 minutes for the plane to arrive at the gate. That’s when everyone moves into overdrive, unbuckling belts, some before the seatbelt sign goes off, and are first out of their seats and into the overhead lockers. Most are not taking care that their luggage may have moved, but fortunately, no bags fall out onto someone’s head. The flight had been relatively turbulent free.
When as many people and bags have squeezed into that impossibly small aisle space, we wait for the door to open, and then the privileged few business and first-class passengers to depart before we can begin to leave. As we are somewhere near the middle of the plane, our wait will not be as long as it usually is. This time we avoided being at the back of the plane. Perhaps that privilege awaits us on the return trip.
Once off the plane, it is a matter of following the signs, some of which are not as clear as they could be. It’s why it took another 30 odd minutes to get through immigration, but that was not necessarily without a few hiccups along the way. We got sidetracked at the fingerprint machines, which seemed to have a problem if your fingers were not straight, not in the center of the glass, and then if it was generally cranky, which ours were, continue to tell you to try again, and again, and again, and again…That took 10 to 15 minutes before we joined an incredibly long queue of other arrivals,
A glance at the time, and suddenly it’s nearly an hour from the moment we left the plane.
And…
That’s when we got to the immigration officer, and it became apparent we were going to have to do the fingerprints yet again. Fortunately this time, it didn’t take as long. Once that done, we collected our bags, cleared customs by putting our bags through a huge x-ray machine, and it was off to find our tour guide.
We found several tour guides with their trip-a-deal flags waiting for us to come out of the arrivals hall. It wasn’t a difficult process in the end. We were in the blue group. Other people we had met on the plane were in the red group or the yellow group. The tour guide found, or as it turned out she found us, it was simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the group, of which there were eventually 28.Gathered together we were told we would be taking the bags to one place and then ourselves to the bus in another. A glance in the direction of the bus park, there were a lot of busses.
Here’s a thought, imagine being told your bus is the white one with blue writing on the side.
Yes, yours is, and 25 others because all of the tourist coaches are the same. An early reminder, so that you do not get lost, or, God forbid, get on the wrong bus, for the three days in Beijing, is to get the last five numbers of the bus registration plate and commit them to memory. It’s important. Failing that, the guide’s name is in the front passenger window.
Also, don’t be alarmed if your baggage goes in one direction, and you go in another. In a rather peculiar set up the bags are taken to the hotel by what the guide called the baggage porter. It is an opportunity to see how baggage handlers treat your luggage; much better than the airlines it appears.
That said, if you’re staying at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, be prepared for a long drive from the airport. It took us nearly an hour, and bear in mind that it was very late on a Sunday night.
Climbing out of the bus after what seemed a convoluted drive through a park with buildings, we arrive at the building that will be our hotel for the next three days. From the outside, it looks quite good, and once inside the foyer, that first impression is good. Lots of space, marble, and glass. If you are not already exhausted by the time you arrive, the next task is to get your room key, find your bags, get to your room, and try to get to be ready the next morning at a reasonable hour.
Sorry, that boat has sailed.
We were lucky, we were told, that our plane arrived on time, and we still arrived at the hotel at 12:52. Imagine if the incoming plane is late.
This was taken the following morning. It didn’t look half as bland late at night.
This is the back entrance to Building No 4 but is quite representative of the whole foyer, made completely of marble and glass. It all looked very impressive under the artificial lights, but not so much in the cold hard light of early morning.
This the foyer of the floor our room was on. Marble with interesting carpet designs. Those first impressions of it being a plush hotel were slowly dissipating as we got nearer and nearer to the room. From the elevator, it was a long, long walk.
So…Did I tell you about the bathroom in our room?
The shower and the toilet both share the same space with no divide and the shower curtain doesn’t reach to the floor. Water pressure is phenomenal. Having a shower floods the whole shower plus toilet area so when you go to the toilet you’re basically underwater.
Don’t leave your book or magazine on the floor or it will end up a watery mess.
And the water pressure is so hard that it could cut you in half. Only a small turn of the tap is required to get that tingling sensation going.
Yes, the question on everybody’s lips, how do you fit 200 plus people into a room clearly designed to fit 50 comfortably?
The answer; pure mayhem, and a lot of people missing out on breakfast, or at the very least trying to eat in the awkwardest of positions, by balancing on edges of chairs or just standing at the bar. This is a zero out of ten for the tour company.
Seven plus tours all leaving at the same time and no possible way of fitting them in. Good for the hotel if they charged you for breakfast, because at various times there was nothing to eat, and definitely no milk for coffee if you could get coffee.
Still, as we keep saying, it is what it is.
It’s rather hit and miss with breakfast, sometimes there’s adequate catering, a large enough room, and enough food set out for a very large group all turning up at the same time.
So, after the lucky few who did manage to get a seat and equally something to eat, we all pile into the bus, after having to get our suitcases onto the bus because we’re moving on to Shanghai after the day’s activities…
…and then have to wait for the other seven to move off. In the end, we reverse into the traffic and get underway. I’m not sure what the other buses were going to do.
But, getting out of the hotel car park was only the first part of the morning’s adventure, the next part was not exactly going to be any easier. 8:00 in the morning means peak hour traffic, and here peak hour traffic takes on a whole new meaning.
Four or five lanes completely full and at a standstill, and the odd daredevil, including our bus driver, thinking he can change lanes.
Having a window seat can be fraught with danger; you get to see some of the most incredible maneuvers Chinese driver’s attempt and amazingly often succeed.
Yes, it’s dark and late at night on this side of the world, and I’m guessing where you are, it’s probably winter, the sun’s disappeared, the day is freezing cold, and you’ve having a hard time keeping warm.
Here, in the so-called land down under, which surprisingly a lot of people from the other side of the world do not know about, it is wet, and cool where it should be sunny and hot as well as humid.
Now, hang on, that can’t be true others don’t know about us, because we all know the world is round and there has to be something or somewhere opposite. I know that north we have China, and Europe, and further away, the United States.
Been to China, and Europe and the United States, so I know you’re all there, somewhere.
And, as you can see, the rain and the cold has amped up the boredom factor and pushing me to do anything other than writing. I have three jobs I’m supposed to be doing,
Editing Walthenson PI, a Private Detective novel
Writing two episodes of a serial story about surveillance going wrong, and
Finishing off the travelogue about our China trip
None of them is appealing to me at the moment.
Instead, I find myself looking at what is showing on Winter TV in the US, one of which is Snowpiercer, and is suitably cold. It’s also complicated, and sometimes a little hard to follow which means it takes two viewings to understand what’s going on.
Fascinating,
Then there’s several of my favourites, FBI, The Rookie, a new show called The Equalizer, a new version of an old TV show I used to watch many years ago. Another was Bridgerton, which was odd but interesting since we like those Jane Austen like programs. Now there’s Miss Scarlett and the Duke, set in Victorian England.
There was Resident Alien, but it took a turn for the worse in the second episode, and I could take it or leave it, and The Blacklist, where Liz and Red are butting heads more than is necessary, and it’s time to get back to catching bad guys. If not, it might also drop off my viewing list.
