Nick Fryer

Tag: Europe

  • Europe 11 – Under the Appenines 

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    Nick Fryer
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    Audio: Stazione Firenze SM Novella A last poke around Florence. Plans to get over the Arno to the Piazzale Michaelangelo foundered on the rocks of the Florentine bus system. After ten minutes sitting on a stationary bus, the driver arrived and said something in Italian which sounded dismissive, but then, it always does. Everyone who…

  • Europe 10 – You’ll Uffizi and You’ll Bloody Well Like It

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    Nick Fryer
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    Some more random observations on Florence and/or Italy: We live at Via della Scala 41. Like all civilised places, Florence numbers its streets so that all of the odd numbers are along one side and the even ones the other, and yes, I’m looking at you, Rome. However, our apartment block is right between Via…

  • Europe 9 – La Ricerca dei Giardini

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    Further observations about Florence: Trees are too good to waste on the poor. At a certain point today, the need for some sort of greenery got to us all, but especially Anna. The map suggested that a large garden – Il Giardino de Boboli – was to be found on the south side of the…

  • Europe 8 – But Mostly Couture

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    Nick Fryer
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    A harried morning getting on each other’s tits in Rome was followed by our first high speed train ride, the Frecciarossa, which was followed by a harried evening getting on each other’s tits in Florence. At one point Seb ran off into the crowd on the Ponte Vecchio, Anna ran off after him, and in…

  • Europe 7 – Cathedrals and Couture

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    Nick Fryer
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    Audio: Saint Peter’s Basilica, Vatican City Right then, not going to spend another day deciding the queues are too long, so it was up at can, military precision, breakfast, street, bus, at St Peter’s Basilica only minutes after the target 0700h. Straight in, my fingers were twitching as they tried to obey the “no photography”…

  • Europe 6 – An Embarrassment of Basilicas

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    Nick Fryer
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    In the game CivCity Rome, one attempts to grow a Classical Roman settlement, striving to meet the needs of the electronically generated populace to keep them happy and thus breeding (or immigrating – the mechanism of increase is not clear: new people simply appear from behind the lunch shed. Ok, it’s breeding.) The ungrateful wretches…

  • Europe 5 – A Roma 

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    A two hour flight takes all day, of course, or at least well into the evening. Within thirty minutes of landing in Italy, I know two things. At the airport (!) an espresso costs €1.10. Also, these people have completely recovered from fascism – our train was late. Well, cancelled, more accurately, so we got…

  • Europe 4 – Llibertat

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    Plans to take the boys to the Tibidabo fun park come immediately undone as the damn place doesn’t open until tomorrow. After some googling for alternatives, I am set free to wander the streets of Barcelona without either of Messrs Let or Hindrance, nor wife neither. My day off. I stopped to open the hotel…

  • Europe 3 – Knackered 

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    Seeing the city you’re visiting had to be better than hurtling through a black tube, right? Right, so let’s make the kids walk a couple of kilometres first thing. Ooh look, Gaudí. Queue to see inside though, so nah. Repeat. Audio: Calle de la Libretaria, Barcelona In the meantime, we discover things. Every hundred metres…

  • Europe 2 – We Have Come Down

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    Nick Fryer
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    After chasing us all night, the sun finally caught up with us as we descended into Dubai, where I had cleverly left us about nine hours to pop in to the city and get my first ever look at a Gulf state. Starting before dawn, during Ramadan. There will have been less successful military campaigns…