Walking on top of Milan's Duomo

The Gothic cathedral took five centuries to complete and is the fourth-largest church in the world.




Unbeknownst to most people you can walk up to and onto the roof. If you feel a little tired you can go up a lift.

From the top we saw some interesting buildings. We also saw people staring at us; wondering how we managed to get so high up on the roof.

"Here we are sitting on the marble ridge of the roof of the Duomo in Milan, Italy. How cool is this?" Well, it's pretty cool!


In the first place, it's really huge. People are strolling around, sitting and talking, taking in the sights, having lunch and generally just chilling out.


I don't think there was ever a moment when the designers of this building ever conceived this kind of usage but what a wonderful experience.

To top it off you can get really close to the carvings. Nowhere have I been able to do that i.e no one else but the stone mason was this close.


This is an ornamental drain pipe.

The facede of the cathedral has five Baroque doorways with double buttresses by the central doorway and on the outside and single buttresses on the inside. The pilasters rest on heavy bases, above which are talamons.

The doorways have panels depicting the saints. Often in very painful images of their deaths.

A Funny Thing Happened...

...when we tried to locate our camping ground (Eichholtz Camping in Berne, Switzerland).
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Picture two grown men, a car sick woman, and a teenage girl trapped in a small golf (with luggage and camping gear). Now visualize these people driving in a strange country on the opposite side of the road (right hand side for Europe).

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It was getting dark. Dark in summer (approx 9pm) and they were supposed to check in by 10pm or they'd not be allowed into the site.

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They are following directions for Strandweg 49, Berne, Switzerland (the campsite address) on the TomTom.

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They departed the highway and drove into the city. Then through the steep streets towards the river.

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All seemed to be going well.

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They got to the street named Strandweg and noticed that on one side there was a very steep drop to the river and the other were suburban houses. Thinking that the campsite was further down they kept driving along noting the street numbers.

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40, 41, 43.

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Then there was a sign saying '48 to 50' for a dirt lane going up the hill.

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53, 54, 57.

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And a dead end.

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Reversing back they re read the street numbers.

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This must be the place. Maybe we miss translated the website and it was a house not a campsite.

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'Cheryl you get out and see if you can see if 49 is up the lane way.'

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What a good idea. (NOT!)

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Walking along the lane she noticed that there weren't any numbers. Up and up she went. Even up several sets of stairs.

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Then down again.

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Slowly, a second time, she went up again.
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Now, lets all sing.
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Oh the grand old Duke of York

He had 10,000 men

He marched them up to the top of the hill

And he marched them down again

And when they were up they were up

And when they were down they were down

And when they were only half way up

They were neither up nor down

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Finally she heard voices. (No, not the crazy voices.)

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It was a family eating their evening meal on the porch.

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A young child of 5 ran to the edge and waved at Cheryl so she asked (in English as she knows no other language) 'Is your mum or dad there?'

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Then she yelled very loudly 'Hello, Pardon, Excuse me, Bonjour'.

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Finally, she attracted the adults attention and a man came to see what the screaming was.

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She then said 'Pardon, monster. Parlez-vous anglis?' 'Sorry, do you speak English'.

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Thankfully, he spoke English.

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After apologising several times she asked him for his assistance regarding directions to their campsite. Eventually, he came down to the street and looked at the printout of the campsite address.

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'Ahhh, how do I say. mmmmm, this is Stranweg. Not camping, house.
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It's ummmmm, Wabern is like a part of Berne. Not here. '

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My heart sank. 'Oh no.' (That wasn't what I was actually thinking)

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After several gestures and attempts at translation the conclusion was that we had the right street but in the wrong part of Berne.
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Wabern was a suburb of Berne.

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Embarrassed, Cheryl went back to the car where 3 very concerned individuals were awaiting her findings.

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After explaining her finding they re keyed the address into the TomTom.

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There were 2 addresses for Berne:

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1. Strandweg 49, Berne, Switzerland

2. Strandweg 49, Wabern, Switzerland

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We had found no.1 but actually wanted no.2.

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Distraught we gasped in horror. How far away could this place be?
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Time was ticking on.

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According the to the magic of the TomTom we discovered our new destination was a mere 30 minutes away.

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Yay! We are Saved! (or so we thought).

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Vroom, Vroom. Off we hurtled.

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Complete darkness was upon us when only a few minutes away from our destination we encountered a problem. The road we were told the campsite was on was blocked by a very large fence without a gate.

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Panic set in. Followed by frustration and anger.

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This seemed strange as there were houses on the other side which indicated that the occupants needed to drive in and out.

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The TomTom would not let us know of an alternative way to get to the campsite.

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In desperation we decided to back track a bit and hope we could find a road further up which would lead us to the one we wanted. Fingers crossed, the

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TomTom might re design the route once we were far enough on the other side to the new entrance road.

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We drove around for another 20 minutes, through quite suburban streets, before finally reaching the other end of the campsite road.

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At 9.55pm we arrived at the entrance to the campsite.

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We managed to book in and find our site.

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The last task was to put the tent up. Easier said than done as Alan was the only one who knew how to do this and it was completely dark (no lighting around our site).

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After a bit of bickering and a few false starts we managed to get the tent up.

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Then after another 10 minutes we had dragged our sleeping gear into the tent.

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Now you are thinking 'that ended well'. But there's more. Like those annoying commercials for steak knives there was one more bonus.

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We didn't have a pump for the air beds. That's right folks.

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We had to blow up the beds ourselves.

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At this point we'd begun to contemplate sleeping on the ground. This thought process lasted until one of us laid down. Yep, it was stoney and extremely uncomfortable.

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There was nothing else we could do. Heaving, we slowly blew up the two double bed mattresses.

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Finally, we went to bed (on semi inflated air beds). Despite the lack of comfort we were very glad to end the day at our destination.

Well, actually, it wasn't that funny. You had to be there.

The Hills Are Alive

We drove from Amsterdam to Berne, Switzerland as we wanted to show Daisy and Alan how beautiful the country was.

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We stopped at a typical public toilet. This one was situated alongside a river and as this was just a lovely spot we took some pics.

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Further along, we stopped at a town on a lake.

Switzerland is a very clean country where the people take great pride in making sure it doesn't have any rubbish lying around..
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As you can see it was very picturesque. Even the graves in the church yard were kept and had living flowers.

THE ROAD TRIP
(aka In the beginning they drove to Amsterdam)

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Four people (not to forget their luggage and camping equipment) squeezed into Golf hatchback at midnight. They drove to Dover to catch a ferry across the channel to Calais.

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Pumped we then drove straight to Amsterdam; arriving at 9am.

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Unfortunately, we weren't able to get into our accommodation until 1pm so we ate breakfast and wondered around the city for 3 hours.

We then spent 3 full days enjoying the extremely warm weather and beautiful scenery.

One of the days we wondered into the main park which contained some art.

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One was the Amsterdam marketing logo - 'I am Amsterdam'.

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Others were lizards.

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As you can see we had a nice relaxing time.

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We even hired some bikes and road around Amsterdam for 4 hours.

However, we did see some funny signs. Here are a few.
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Only in Amsterdam would you find a clog shaped boat.



Our accommodation had a tiny balcony which we availed ourselves of.

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In the shop opposite our flat we noticed that there was a very large light in the shap of Miffy. Daisy and I ran down and took these photos.