Matri-moany
We emerged from the Mont Blanc tunnel into the sunny Italian countryside and a fairly persistant cross-wind that battered us around the autostrada like a crisp packet. There’s pretty much just the one route you can take across the top of Italy towards Milan and so, to break up the monotony, the Italians have thoughtfully built a series of medieval castles on every available hillside for travellers to gawp at. Literally every mile or so another fortification would hove into view – some of them were so close together it was like driving through some kind of historical housing estate.
We stopped at a campsite just outside Milan and I was immediately set upon by the nation’s entire EU quota of mosquitos. But even these were outnumbered by Irish traveller kids, swarming over the place like a plague of evil munchkins. While they didn’t bite us quite as much as the mozzies, they did run riot around the campsite hurling insults, stones, pool cues and each other with equal enthusiasm. We stayed a single night and then fled to Venice.
Venice is Italy’s largest pigeon sanctuary. Over the centuries it has become a place where pigeons can come to enjoy art and architecture specially provided for their relaxing qualities. For a lot of tourists, getting a photograph with these noble birds can be as important as viewing some of the novelty bird houses dotted around the place, like the Basilica, Campanile and Doges’ Palace. Venice has, of course, had to diversify over the years and has now also become the world’s leading outlet for papier maché masks and some of the planet’s most grotesque glassware. If you can imagine the most stupefyingly tacky way of shaping glass into an ornament that nobody except the most criminally insane would consider decorative, then maybe there might just be a job for you in the Venetian glass industry.
Another great activity to do in Venice is to photograph a quaint little alleyway, a pretty bridge, a shimmering canal and maybe some shuttered windows. Then repeat this exercise for the next four hours until each alleyway, bridge, canal and shuttered window all start to look exactly the same – or until you realise that you have actually been going in circles and really are photographing the same alleyways, bridges etc etc… We spent the early part of the day trying to get the definitive Venetian shot with a gondola floating by in the background. By lunchtime it was pretty difficult to take a photograph without a bloody gondola getting in the way. Sometimes there are so many gondolas they all sort of clump together like leaves in a gutter.
The weekend we were in Venice, though, the one phrase that was on everyone’s lips was “Have you seen George Clooney?” That’s because the Ocean’s Eleven star had arrived in town for his much-publicised wedding to Amal Alamuddin. That very same weekend, a couple of friends of ours were getting married back in the UK, so as the Hollywood elite and international jet-set flew in for possibly the most glamorous wedding Venice had ever seen, we – the easyJet-set – flew back to the UK for possibly the most glamorous wedding Ironbridge Rowing Club would ever witness. As the world’s press descended on Venice, any awaiting paparazzi at Gatwick airport must have been on a cigarette break because we managed to slip back through arrivals unnoticed and unphotographed. My shades and hood-up look garnered the attention of nobody except passport control.
After a spectacular and lavish ceremony, we returned to Venice 48 hours later just in time to see the media circus checking their footage, packing up their camera equipment and throwing beer down their necks with relief that it was all over. As we’d missed all the excitement, the kind people at Entertainment Tonight showed us some of their footage so that we could relive the moment Matt Damon and Bill Murray bobbed past in water taxis being hounded by a flotilla of journalists and screamed at by a bazillion tourists. Thankfully, there was no such kerfuffle on the River Severn that weekend. I think George Clooney would have been jealous.
We stopped at a campsite just outside Milan and I was immediately set upon by the nation’s entire EU quota of mosquitos. But even these were outnumbered by Irish traveller kids, swarming over the place like a plague of evil munchkins. While they didn’t bite us quite as much as the mozzies, they did run riot around the campsite hurling insults, stones, pool cues and each other with equal enthusiasm. We stayed a single night and then fled to Venice.
Venice is Italy’s largest pigeon sanctuary. Over the centuries it has become a place where pigeons can come to enjoy art and architecture specially provided for their relaxing qualities. For a lot of tourists, getting a photograph with these noble birds can be as important as viewing some of the novelty bird houses dotted around the place, like the Basilica, Campanile and Doges’ Palace. Venice has, of course, had to diversify over the years and has now also become the world’s leading outlet for papier maché masks and some of the planet’s most grotesque glassware. If you can imagine the most stupefyingly tacky way of shaping glass into an ornament that nobody except the most criminally insane would consider decorative, then maybe there might just be a job for you in the Venetian glass industry.
Another great activity to do in Venice is to photograph a quaint little alleyway, a pretty bridge, a shimmering canal and maybe some shuttered windows. Then repeat this exercise for the next four hours until each alleyway, bridge, canal and shuttered window all start to look exactly the same – or until you realise that you have actually been going in circles and really are photographing the same alleyways, bridges etc etc… We spent the early part of the day trying to get the definitive Venetian shot with a gondola floating by in the background. By lunchtime it was pretty difficult to take a photograph without a bloody gondola getting in the way. Sometimes there are so many gondolas they all sort of clump together like leaves in a gutter.
The weekend we were in Venice, though, the one phrase that was on everyone’s lips was “Have you seen George Clooney?” That’s because the Ocean’s Eleven star had arrived in town for his much-publicised wedding to Amal Alamuddin. That very same weekend, a couple of friends of ours were getting married back in the UK, so as the Hollywood elite and international jet-set flew in for possibly the most glamorous wedding Venice had ever seen, we – the easyJet-set – flew back to the UK for possibly the most glamorous wedding Ironbridge Rowing Club would ever witness. As the world’s press descended on Venice, any awaiting paparazzi at Gatwick airport must have been on a cigarette break because we managed to slip back through arrivals unnoticed and unphotographed. My shades and hood-up look garnered the attention of nobody except passport control.
After a spectacular and lavish ceremony, we returned to Venice 48 hours later just in time to see the media circus checking their footage, packing up their camera equipment and throwing beer down their necks with relief that it was all over. As we’d missed all the excitement, the kind people at Entertainment Tonight showed us some of their footage so that we could relive the moment Matt Damon and Bill Murray bobbed past in water taxis being hounded by a flotilla of journalists and screamed at by a bazillion tourists. Thankfully, there was no such kerfuffle on the River Severn that weekend. I think George Clooney would have been jealous.
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