Stand up for the socceroos!

Tried to get Carl to write this entry, given that he is the self-confessed football expert in our relationship. But no luck - he's convinced no one would want a tactical analysis of the Aussie v Croatia game and that, he says, is all he's capable of. If you were in Stuttgart after the game you would have been treated with a blow by blow account of all the best and worst bits - a treat, I can tell you. However, you weren't. And my pleas are falling on deaf ears. Maybe some peer pressure from you all might do it ... In the meantime, you'll just have to settle for my ramblings about an experience that's up there with some of the best of our travels!

Craig Moore's spectacular penalty!

It's not often that I am lost for words, but its a struggle to find the right ones to describe how amazing it was to watch the Aussies take on Croatia in Stuttgart. Phenomonal. Intense. Crazy. The atmosphere in the stadium was better than anything I've ever experienced. The game was better than we could have hoped for and the crowd, fan-bloody-tastic.

Carl turns into a crazy man

The Aussie supporters were brilliant. We've even managed to come up with a few of our own chants. Thankfully, it seems Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi is all but obsolete, replaced with some hilarious alternatives. My fav: "who let the roos out? Guus Guus Guus Guus!". Don Carlos did his Aussie passport proud for the weekend. Yep, he wore green and gold. He cheered as loud as any other aussie supporter, and he didn't dare mention the ol' chilli-bin. It was an esky all the way, mate. In fact, all of the aussie supporters went all out, a few even braved full kangaroo suits in the 30+ degree heat.

Our seats at the match were firmly in the Aussie corner. Behind us four young guys screamed their hearts out for the entire match. An old dude to Carl's left tried to play it cool but we knew he was hooked when we heard him scream, "auf wiedersehen, you bunch of tea towels". Never have I heard the national anthem sung so loudly or so proudly. It was rivaled only by the shouts of 'bullshit' at the many suspect calls of the ref,Graham Pole (who is even being disowned by his countrymen in pommyland). And when the socceroos did a lap of honour after snatching the draw from the croats, the aussie crowd really went off ... we spent at least an hour in the stadium after the game singing, dancing and generally going a bit bonkers.

The socceroos take a well-earned lap of honour

It was a socceroo, however, who took the prize for the most Aussie Aussie in the stadium - Archie Thompson, with energy to burn after spending the entire world cup campaign on the bench, could not resist rockin' out to AC/DC: he grabbed a corner flag, gave it his best air guitar and took the chorus home using the flag as his microphone. Noice one, Archie, noice one.

Check out the rest of our photos here.

Defeat for kiwis at hands of Russians

The sun was shining in regent's park but it wasn't enough to help Carl and the rest of the kiwi boys in this year's inner city world cup football tournament. Not quite an opener for the real world cup, but, with amateur teams from 32 countries competing over two days, it's pretty cool all the same. For the second year, don Carlos suited up as an all black. The kiwis drew against spain, lost to Ghana and beat Afghanistan. But they could little when pitted against the russians in the knockout round. Scary buggers, they were. Plus I didn't get the impression that they had been at the pub until closing the night before like Carl and some of his team mates. Bulgaria went on to win it, but we got to see a streaker. Enjoy!

Team talk

Carlos takes a dive

A rare blue london sky!

Streaker!

A weekend of Guinness...

The peace wall in west Belfast

Carl's been waving around his Irish passport for so long now, I thought it high time he actually visited the place which earned him that precious little book. We've been to Dublin, but Carl's grandfather was actually a Belfast boy, born and bred. So, for Carl's birthday, we grabbed some cheap flights and headed to Northern Ireland for a few pints of the black liquid, some craic and, not surprisingly, a pretty interesting history lesson.

Carl and Waz enjoy the first of many pints of Guinness

Couldn't have picked a better weekend for it, actually. On the Friday night, we emerged from our first pub, the Crown Liquor Saloon, to find the streets filled with men dressed in uniform marching through the city streets. An old Irish man with no teeth told us that the parade was in commemoration of the Battle of the Somme, where the British Army suffered its largest loss at the hands of the Germans during the first world war. Sixty per cent of all officers involved in the first day of the battle were killed. There were 60,000 casualties in total. Twenty thousand of these men died.

Quite a few people had turned out to watch the parade. Even the groups of kids under-age drinking themselves into a stupor had stopped to pay homage to those who'd lost their lives. The only problem is the battle didn't take place in May. By all accounts, it ran from July - November 1916. So, unless I am missing something, that little old toothless man had NO idea about the purpose of the parade. If anyone wants to enlighten us, go right ahead.

The next day we went on a black cab tour, which is the only way to really get to grips with the 'troubles' in northern Ireland (you quickly realise that half of what you hear on the news is bollocks). Our cab driver, Pat, was a staunch catholic. He never said this outright, but he didn't have to. Old Pat was a 'falls road' cabbie, during the height of the 'troubles, when buses were taken off the roads (because "they kept getting hijacked"). Back then, he stuck to the catholic areas of west belfast. These days he'll "travel anywhere as long as the meter is on".

Our tour began in the protestant neighbourhood of west Belfast. In an empty parking lot, wooden crates were being stockpiled for the annual July bonfire which commemorates William of Orange's victory over the Catholic King James II at the Battle of the Boyne. Two months to go till the event and the parking lot is already piled high.

Pat drives us into a suburb, which on the surface looks like any other in Belfast. Look a little closer, however, and you see the flags of St George and the Union Jack hanging from the windows, doors and gates of the houses. Step around the corner and you see that many are adorned with protestant murals. Some mark a key battle or a fallen comrade. Others can only be described as propaganda. In one particularly menacing mural, the gun of a soldier looks like it follows you around. Freaky.

From here, Pat drives us to the 'peace line' that stretches between the Catholic and Protestant areas of west Belfast. The bottom section of the wall is made of concrete blocks that have been painted white. On top of this is metal sheeting painted green. In some places, there is also a metal grill to try to prevent missiles from being thrown over the wall. We stop on the protestant, Shankill Road, side of the wall and read the messages of peace that now grafitti it. Pat gives us some chalk and we leave our own message.

Em leaves a message on the peace wall

The catholic suburb on the other side of the wall is one that Pat knows well. We pass through a set of gates and stop at a memorial. There's a helicopter flying overhead. The sound reminds Pat of some of the tactics used by the British troops - at funerals or republican gatherings, the British helicopters would hover above the crowd so that speeches couldn't be heard, or at night they would shine their spotlights into people's living rooms.

The Irish flag at the memorial - look closely and you'll see the helicopter in the sky

We drive to Falls Road in the heart of catholic west Belfast and stop in front of the offices of Sinn Fein. Cars drive past, horns beeping, drivers wave their fists in the air. We look up and see a mural of Bobby Sands MP and suddenly we realise the significance of this particular weekend in the history of Northern Ireland.

Bobby Sands died on May 5th 1981. He was one of ten members of the IRA who staged a hunger strike in prison in protest of their prison classification. They wanted to be recognised as prisoners of war, or political prisoners, not common criminals. Bobby Sands was the first to die, after 66 days without food or water. The others followed soon after. According to Pat, the protest marked the beginning of Sinn Fein's 'armalite and ballot war'.

That afternoon we walked down Ormeau Road to the area in which Carl's grandfather grew up, stopping along the way for a pint with some crazy locals at Hatfield House pub. They weren't too fond of the English, that much was clear. But come the next ashes series, there'll be a pub full of Irish cheering us Aussie's on to victory!

The next day, in need of fresh air, we headed off to explore the northen irish coast that we'd heard so much about. And we weren't disappointed. Everything they say about the coast of Ireland is true, at least in these parts anyway. Rolling hills, green fields, rugged rocky coast - all the cliches are warranted - but what we didn't expect to see was the beautiful torquoise sea, which looked extremely inviting (despite the fact that it was windy and cold, and the water was probably freezing).

We headed along the coast, stopping at Carrick-a-Rede rope bridge, which is suspended across a 24m deep and 18m wide chasm, separating the north coast mainland from Carrick Island. Originally, it was erected to allow fisherman access to Carrick Island, a spot favoured by salmon. Now its a there for the tourists ... although its not for the feint-hearted.

A little further north is the Giant's Causeway. I won't attempt to explain something I don't undertand so I'll quote from the brochure: "The Giant's Causeway, renowned for its polygonal columns of layered basalt, is the only World Heritage Site in Northern Ireland. Resulting from a volcanic eruption 60 million years ago, this is the focal point of a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty". They're right, of course. It is pretty bloody cool. And, in a very un-British way, it's free, you get to climb all over it, and there's a great pub nearby where you can re-charge with a hearty steak and guiness pie and a pint. No wonder everyone (bar the English) love the Irish.

Check out the rest of our photos here. And just in case we got any of the information wrong, or you want to know more about the conflict in Northern Ireland, here are some key dates in the history of Northern Ireland.

It's church and it's trashy

So, it's not church, per say. It's 'The Church' and it's very very trashy. Having said that, it's become a kind of London institution. It began in 1979 in a pub in Fulham Broadway, when a few aussies and kiwis would gather for a Sunday session. These days, its a full-on, crazy Sunday session, with expat 'church goers' from all corners of the globe drinking too much, singing to bad music and generally getting up to mischief. It happens one Sunday a month, for four hours, but it always ends in a mess at the Walkabout.

Given all that, we thought it appropriate that we take Waz there for a bit of a belated birthday bash. He loved it ...and we've got the pictures to prove it. This is just a little teaser. Head to our bugbitten website for more.

Six days, two italian cities and too many vinos

On the grand canal in Venice

We knew it was going to be a great long weekend as soon as we walked into the wine bar. The wine was listed on a blackboard on the wall - glasses of quality wine for one euro (no cheap and nasty chardies in Italy), served in glasses large enough to make me go weak at the knees - and scattered across the bar were bowls of olives, marinated vegetables, crisps, crackers and pretzels, all free.

I thought I had died and gone to wine bar heaven. After all, I've sampled my fair share of drinking establishments around the world and never had I been served cheap wine that tasted good with free nibbles. Carl was less dramatic. As usual, he was just glad to take a load off with a nice cold drink after a long day of sight-seeing.

Beautiful Verona

The view of Piazza Bra from the Arena in Verona

This was the end of the second day of our Easter break. We'd flown into Verona early the previous morning - "Morning folks, this is your captain speaking. We are now flying over the alps. Swiss alps out to the right, french alps on the left" - and we'd given the city two days and two nights to impress us before we moved on to northern Italy's pièce de résistance, Venice.

Juliette's balcony, allegedly

We'd checked into our hotel, Guiletta e Romeo - one of many enterprising businesses in Verona trading on the myth of Romeo and Juliette, thank you Mr Shakespeare - and had spent our first day traipsing around the city in a desperate bid to make the most of the sunshine and good weather. We'd covered most of the major sites - the colluseam-like arena on Piazza Bra, which was being prepared for Verona's popular Opera season; Casa di Giuletta, where you can pay to stand on Juliette's balcony (although she never stood there herself) and hope that romeo will appear below to sweep you off your feet (and if that doesn't work, you can also seek inspiration from the thousands of messages of love stuck to the walls of a nearby tunnel with chewing gum); and Teatro Romano, roman ruins dating back to around 100AD which offer some amazing views of the city (and provide a great place to chill out in the sun!). We'd even seen a local fisherman catch a duck in the river.

On day two, we'd braved the chaos of the local Saturday markets, with stalls stacked high with copy clothes and bags and large italian mamma's searching through piles of suspect looking underwear in search of the perfect pair of boggers. Every second person seemed to know each other, so there was a chorus of 'ciaos' wherever you turned and we were slightly amused to see the italians bypassing chorizo ciabattas and chowing down on hot chips with mayo from dodgy looking food stalls. We spent the afternoon recovering from the madness at Lake Garda, which is an enormous lake about half an hour out of Verona by train. It stretches for miles and on clear days you're rewarded with views all the way to the dolomites. We followed the lead of the locals and ate take away pizza on the edge of the lake (an interesting alternative to fish and chips by the beach) and wandered around the cobbled streets of the beautiful little town. We'd stopped for pizza in a piazza, enjoyed an espresso (which is code in Italy for 'coffee that you can stand your spoon up in') in a few of the many cafes that dot Verona's side streets, eaten more gelato than we care to admit, and, in between, even managed to slip in a little bit of football action for carlos.

Carl chomps on some pizza at Lake Garda

Now I'll admit that it hadn't all been smooth sailing. On day one, we'd been forced out of a primo spot on one of Verona's main piazza's because the people at the table behind us were feeding the filthy pigeons (those of you aware of my fear of birds will understand why we had to move!). We'd been disappointed by some dodgy pasta and suspect wine at a place called Cafe Imprezza, which clearly it was not. Carl had endured the humilation of 'picola birra' (half pint, not a real man's drink) on more than one occasion as a result of our poor attempts at speaking Italian. And, of course, the day that we choose to head to Lake Garda, you couldn't see anything in the distance, least of all the magnificent italian mountain ranges. But, standing at the bar enjoying a glass of wine, we easily forgot about any of that. There were tables but we wanted to do enjoy our drink the veronese way. Three girls were also standing at the bar with their spritz, chattering away. An older man came in, enjoyed some crisps, a piccola birra and was gone within five minutes. A couple opted for two spritz and a cozy corner of the bar. Three bikers order wine and settle in for a chat with the barman.

What you get from Verona immediately - and this is evident in Venice and everywhere else we've been in Italy - is a real sense of family and friendship. I know it sounds like a cliche but it's true. Very few couples dine at the cafes on Piazza Erbe. In every bar, the barmen greet patrons with genuine warmth and often an 'italian' kiss or conversation - you can't understand what they're saying but you get the impression that they know each other. In one bar, three men, we guess aged around 60, walk in and are greeted with three large glasses of red wine within minutes. It's a trendy bar, heaving with young and stylish customers. One of the men is shorter than me and wearing a cap - he looks a bit like Paul Simon. They greet the owner, swill their glasses, and take good sized sips of wine. They munch on breadsticks wrapped in proscuitto, chatting loudly. Within ten minutes, they're bidding the owner farewell. Both Carl and I hope we'll have mates like that when we're sixty.

In Bottega De Vino, a gem of a wine bar just off the main shopping street, a family of six sit at a table. Grandmother, son and grandson are instantly recognisable because they all look alike. They are animated and loud, all speaking at the same time, and they seem at home in the bar and with the waiters. One of the waiters recommends that we try a couple of glasses of local white wine. Its good. Two glasses later (one of which ends up on the floor, drawing chuckles from the waiters and the locals at the other tables) and I am officially in love with Verona. Wine bars around the world take note: Verona is the place to enjoy a tipple and the locals know it. Check out our photos from Verona by clicking here.

Ah, venezia Gondolas line the grand canal to the Rialto Bridge

The train from Verona to Venice, on Easter Sunday, is full to the brim with Italian families, who don't stop talking the entire journey, even the kids. It takes us straight to the Grand Canal, so first impressions are definitely good. In fact, better than good. It gives you goosebumps to see the beautiful old venetian buildings lining the canal, the vaporettos (water taxis), the gondolas, the tiny streets leading who knows where and the ornate bridges linking one side of the canal to another. Finding your way in Venice by water is easy. The hardest part is beating the locals on board the vaporetto. It's always a battle and the locals win every time because they don't wait, they don't line up and they certainly don't care about queue jumping. And really, why should they care? It's their city and they've already lost most of it to tourists. Why should they give up their spot on the vaporetto as well?

That's the thing about Venice. It's beautiful and unique but it's sold its soul for the tourist dollar. The locals have been priced out of the housing market, out of the restaurants, out of shops. It is at risk of becoming less like a city, and more like one big tourist theme park. Unlike Verona, where we felt like visitors, local businesses in Venice see only dollar signs when you walk into their establishments. You can't really blame them, though. We stumbled briefly into San Marc's square on our first day and were stunned to see so many tourists in one spot (and we've seen our fair share of tourist hot spots in our travels). Within seconds, we were heading back into the quiet side streets of Carnerregio (jewish quarter) , San Palo and Castello away from the craziness in the square. Because, its in these backstreets that Venice really comes into its own.

One of Venice's famous canals

We spent hours and hours and hours wandering along the canals, dotted with beautiful buildings, churches and cafes. We even stumbled across the Ospadale (hospital), which looks from the outside like it should house some famous tintorettos instead of sick Italians. We walked over the famous Rialto bridge. We skip the middle of the bridge, lined with tacky jewellery stalls and tourist shops, and head to one of the outside lanes and we are rewarded with a third of the tourists and amazing views down the grand canal.

On our first night, we tried to stick to our budget, but we got fleeced 11 euro for two small beers in a bar so for dinner we choose takeaway pizza in our hotel room. It turned out to be a real treat. The pizza guy made it from scratch, with fresh spinach and ricotta, even flings the dough into the air in true Italian style. We practically run back to the hotel, open the doors to our verandah (which has a 'glimpse' of the grand canal) and enjoy one of the best meals of our trip!

We spend our second day island hopping. We start at the Lido, a seaside resort island where venetians head to for a bit of sun and fun. But the beaches aren't up to scratch for a couple of aussies, so we move onto Burano.

Burano

More than once in Burano, we felt like we'd stepped into the Truman Show. The island is apparently known for its lace, but we were captivated by the canals lined with multicoloured houses. We grab a gelato and head as far away from the main tourist strip as possible. We find ourselves wandering through people's backyards. We dodge the underwear handing on lines above the paved streets. We sidestep a man reading his book in his front yard (which is also the street), oblivious to the people, mostly nosy tourists like ourselves, desperately trying to sneak a peek into the houses to see if they are just as cute on the inside. But the locals are wise to our antics - most have covered their front doors with brightly coloured material, which allows them to keep their door open without pesky tourists looking in.

From Burano to Murano, on a ferry filled with italians determined to out-talk each other. Their conversations get louder and louder until we could no longer hear ourselves think. In Murano, we quickly find a spot on the steps of a small canal bridge, to take a break from the chaos. Murano is 'famous', at least that's what the guidebook says, for its glass. It doesn't disappoint. Brightly coloured glass of all shapes and sizes is everywhere we look. Some of it, particularly the jewellery, is amazing, some of it's garish. Our serenity is broken by a small girl, who arrived on rollarblades and sent us scurrying towards a vaporetto with her high-pitched squeals of 'mamma, mamma, mamma'. Mamma, for her part, was doing that thing that only mothers can do: walking calmly in the opposite direction, oblivious to her daughters painful, ear-drum piercing voice. Or maybe we're just sensitive.

That night, determined not to be fleeced again, we went in search of what the guidebook called the liveliest area in Venice. And we weren't disappointed - a campari spritz at Margaret Du Champs, a cheap and cheerful vino at cafe noir (although full length mirrors in the toilets take a bit of getting used to) and, to finish, an 'interesting' meal of black squid in its ink (a venetian specialty) in a cute little hidden restaurant.

The view of Piazza San Marco from the Basilica

On day three, carl's in charge. We finally brave the tourist crowds in san marco and visit the basilico and the Palazzo Ducale (Doge's Palace, which is kind of like a venetian local parliament). In the afternoon, we go everywhere and anywhere - following little canals and tiny side streets. We eat gelato, drink espresso and, in the evening, we join the locals in the bar for a bit of italian football action. Carl, obviously, never misses a trick. Check out more of our photos here.