Festa Major, Sitges 2007

I arrived in Sitges on Wednesday evening, and will be here until Monday. The town is throbbing with people, quite apposite to my experience last year, that I recently blogged about. Without realising it, I managed to arrive in Sitges at the busiest time of the year, when their annual festival, the Festa Major, is held. Last night was an incredible 30 minute fireworks display which featured fireworks that went up, and down, and up again, fireworks that burned in the water, and fireworks that looked like they had exploded inside the town´s famous church.

This morning I was woken at 6am to the sound of more fireworks, being let off in the street as part of the traditional street parade. It was repeated this evening, as shown in the photo at the left. Fireworks are ignited in the crowd, and bounce off the narrow laneway walls. It´s amazing, and a little bit scary too! Health and Safety does not seem to be an issue. You´d never see this in Australia or the UK!

Venice 2006

Venice is my favourite "old place" in the world. I first visited in December 2005, and immediately fell in love with this fantasy city that has defied natural forces for hundreds of years. The beautiful thing about Venice is that so much of it is unchanged. When I visited the Vatican in November 2006, the tour guide pointed out a perspective map of Venice (in the Gallery of Maps, of course) dating from the 16th century. She said the map is so accurate, and the city has changed so little, that there are only two buildings on the map that do not exist today. I think that's marvellous.

I returned to Veneto over the weekend of 13-15 October 2006. On the earlier trip I made the acquaintance of Simone, whom I met up with on this trip. Simone lives on the mainland in a little town called Dolo-Mirano, which we used as a base for the weekend's day trips.

Our first stop was Verona, famed for its association with Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. Verona is a beautiful city in its own right, with notable ruins, and a very pretty pedestrianised old town. It's also a massive tourist trap that wrings Shakespeare's play, and tourist's wallets, for every last euro. There are houses signposted as being Romeo's and Juliet's house respectively, the latter having a courtyard and a balcony. There is also a place known as Juliet's tomb. Of course, while there are some family names that mildy match the Montagues and Capulets, and suggestion of inter-family rivalry (then again, this is Italy), the whole thing is an elaborate extrapolation for tourist value. Take for instance the balcony at Juliet's house: it was constructed in the 1920s. And, it is worth pointing out, Shakespeare never visited Italy.

Our next stop was Padua, another beautiful city with a Shakespearean assocation, but, thankfully, less of a draw for tourists. Padua is a university town since blah. The pedestrianised shopping district is fabulous with every high street designer label one could imagine. I really liked the waterway in the park in the centre of town. We also visited the nearby Cathedral, where we queued for a fleeting few seconds glance at the relics of a dead saint. I saw his jaw. I don't know why it was decided to preserve his jaw.

On the Saturday night, I had dinner with Simone and a few of his friends. We went to a traditional restaurant on the outskirts of Dolo-Mirano. The meal was delivered in a multitude of courses with plates to share. I ate horse! The meat was cured, and finely shredded. It just tasted like smoked meat. We finished the meal with a few rounds of grappa. Ghastly stuff, but I wasn't prepared to be rude and refuse the offer.

The main event, Venice, was our daytrip on Sunday. We decided to get a ferry, which also meant we could sidetrip to two villas of note. Simone explained to me how the wealthy families of Venice maintained larger villas on the mainland, often linked to the lagoon by canals that provided a means of transport. Simone was able to tell me some of the history of these villas. Villa Pisani has been host to Mussolini, Hitler, and blah. Villa Malcontenta is said to have been named for the duchess who owned it, and cried herself to death.

Having previously used road and rail to travel between Venice and the mainland, it was a thrill to arrive on this occasion by ferry. And as with the mainland, it was a joy to have Simone offer me a local's view of Venice. He showed me the last traditional gondola builder on the island, and a spiral staircase (at the Palazzo Contarini del Bovolo) which appears in Moonraker. Another highlight was the trick third column on the Doge Palace. Hundreds of years ago, the Doge's Palace was not protected from the lagoon by the walkway that is there now. A person guilty of a crime was offered the opportunity to pass a simple challenge in order to be set free. With their hands bound behind their back, they were required to straddle around the lagoon-side of one of the Palace's columns. The prisoner might even be shown how easy it could be done. In reality, this was nothing but a cruel ruse. The prisoners were always forced to walk around a specific "trick" column that was not quite at a 90 degree angle. Consequently, the ledge was much thinner and impossible to successfully navigate (unlike the ledge and column used by the captors). The prisoner always slipped and drowned in the lagoon!

The highlight of the trip was the view of Venice from the top of the Campanile. On my previous trip, the city was shrouded in dense fog during an aqua alta, so it wasn't worth the ride to the top. The view is sensational, not only of St Mark's Square, but the cluster of islands that make up Venice. The Campanile is actually not original. The original collapsed in 1902 (check out this amazing photograph). The present campanile is an exact replica, completed in 1912.

Barcelona

After my week in Sitges, I travelled north to Barcelona to spend a few days in the Catalonian capital. I found Barcelona to be a vibrant and cosmopolitan city, with beautiful modernist architecture. The weather, as in Sitges, was superb. I did not, however, find the Barcelona people all that friendly. There was a touch of big-city/cultural-city attitude, that I had not experienced in Madrid. I've since been informed that this could be because I visited Barcelona at the end of summer. Spain has a population of 40 million people, and 50 million tourists each year. Millions pass through Barcelona, so there must understandably be some exhaustion in the tourist service industry by the end of the season.

Top of my must-see list was Antoni Gaudi's La Sagrada Família (slideshow), a Roman Catholic basilica. Begun in 1882, and worked on by Gaudi for more than 40 years, the cathedral is still not finished. Visitors can walk around the cathedral, explore the museum in the basement, and take an elevator up one of the spires. The view is sensational, and not just of the city. There is a wealth of detail in the architectural design, some of which is only revealed when the cathedral is viewed from a variety of angles, and distances.

Gaudi is responsible for two architecturally significant residential blocks in Barcelona: Casa Batlló and Casa Milà (aka La Pedrera). On this trip I visited Casa Batlló (slideshow), mostly because of its convenient location slap bang in the middle of Eixample (slideshow). As with the Sagrada Familia, the beauty of Gaudi's design is in the details. Little things like the fact that there are no conventional 90 degree angles anywhere in the building. Three other interesting places I visited are Plaza George Orwell (slideshow) celebrating the author's residence in Barcelona during the Spanish Civil War, the Basilica De Santa Maria Del Mar (slideshow), and the Gothic Quarter (slideshow).

I never leave Spain without experiencing a drama at some point during my trip, and this trip to Barcelona and Sitges was no exception. I stayed in a homestay arrangement on Ronda de Sant Pere, diagonally across the road from one of the main gay clubs called Salvation. Because of the ludicrous operating hours of Spanish nightclubs I went to bed around 10pm on Saturday night, woke up around 1am, and got ready to go out. Salvation is interesting in that the club is divided into two rooms named Hot and Cold. The music, the bartenders, the uniforms, and, most significantly, the clientele is very different from one room to the next. In the Hot room are what the Spanish describe as the musculoso, and in the Cold room the twinks.

I had a good time at Salvation, but decided to move on around 4am, when the crowd started to thin out. In Salvation, I was handed a reduced entry pass to Souvenir, an after-hours venue which I presumed to be nearby. It was not. On the street I met a Brazilian/Spanish also heading to Souvenir. They said the cab fare was expensive, so it made sense for us to share. By the standard of London cabs, the fare was cheap at only E30, but it was a long 25 minute drive. I watched from the front passenger seat as the high rises turned into low-rise, followed by tract housing, and then industrial sites. Next we were on a highway that cut through open farmland. I only started to worry when we passed the turn-off for the airport, but drove on. By now, we were halfways to Sitges!

Eventually, in the distance I spotted a speck in the farmland; a small industrial area that revealed itself like the first approach into Mos Eisley. The taxi turned off the highway, pulling up outside a non-descript warehouse. A few odd people loitered around the street, mostly looking like extras from an early Almodovar film. This was warehouse city. Apart from the distant staccato of heavy bass, there was nothing that suggested we were near a nightclub. Butonce inside the warehouse I could see what all the fuss was about. Souvenir is an amazing and exceptionally well-appointed club with a huge dance floor punctuated by massive cages for go-go dancers. It's a film set approximation of what a nightclub should look like. My favourite detail is the 8x2 matrix of round screens built-in to one wall. The reason it's so far out of town is to escape the licensing laws of the Barcelona metropolitan area.

I woke around 1:30pm later that day, feeling very seedy and surprisingly anxious, but not sure why. I sensed I needed to check the time of my flight back to London. I remember sitting on the sun-drenched terrace nursing paracetamol and coffee, and feeling relieved to discover that the flight was scheduled for 10:30pm. Then a nanosecond later feeling I couldn't breathe because the flight was scheduled for Saturday, the day before. I spent the next half-hour in a frantic state - despite of my hangover - trying to sort out how to get home. RyanAir had no seats available until late the following day, when I was due back at work. British Airways wanted to charge me €730 for the one-way flight in business class, as that is all that was left. I found a seat on the last EasyJet flight for £140 one-way. To put that price in perspective, my original return flight with RyanAir totalled £35. I was paying 5x that to get home, one-way. But given my hangover I would happily have paid much, much more.

All of my Barcelona photographs can be viewed on Flickr, either as a browsable set, or as a slideshow.

Sitges

The London summer of 2006 was the warmest on record. Week after week I sought a variety of ways to enjoy the sun, but none compared with the Australian tradition of heading to the seaside. I've previously blogged about my disastrous experience of visiting Southend-on-Sea, and it's so-called "beach". So I was keen to cut my losses and head for Europe. Greg suggested Sitges, and we quickly hatched a plan for a week in the sun, accompanied by Martin and Mark.

Sitges is a small village situated 30 miles south of Barcelona. The beach is long, facing south-east, with white sand, and decent waves. And being Spain, it's almost always sunny. One of the best things about European beaches is the provision of umbrellas and deckchairs, for hire. It's so much more civilised than parking one's ass on the sand. There are even little kiosks where you can buy beer and other refreshments, which I've never seen in Australia. But my favourite feature is the freelance masseurs who work the beach. Most are illegals, and some do a dreadful job, but €20 for a thirty minute massage is a very good deal.

Sitges has been a gay mecca since the 1970s when scores of European tourists first discovered the town. It is now best described as a gay Ibiza, although on a much smaller scale. In fact, the Ibizan superclub Pacha originated in Sitges.

There seems to be a set routine to holiday life in Sitges. Get up, breakfast, beach, lunch, beach, dinner, bars, nightclubs, sleep, repeat. There's not much more to it than that, really, but it's a very enjoyable ride. The restaurants are very good, and the food is excellent. And the nightlife of bars and clubs are conveniently located within stumbling distance of one another, evenly spread through the cobbled and pedestrianised old town.

Unfortunately, timing is everything in Sitges. We managed to visit the bars in the correct order (a peculiarity of Sitges nightlife)... but we chose the wrong month. We arrived in Sitges on the last weekend in September, which clashed with the closing party weekend in Ibiza, and the reunification long weekend in Germany. Ergo, Sitges was practically a ghost town, with too few people under 40, and way too many cashed-up old German queens looking to sugar someone.

We still had fun in Sitges, and frankly I preferred the lower-gear. There was plenty of time to enjoy the sun, and explore the town and port, ably guided by my new Venezuelan friend Marcos. I also saw the preparations for the Sitges Film Festival, which looked really exciting. In fact, I had so much fun last year, I've been itching since to return. That trip is planned for later this month. And yes, I will be visiting in-season!

All of my Sitges 2006 photographs can be viewed on Flickr, either as a browsable set, or as a slideshow.

Devon

The Travel Bug began with my Devonish Weekend Brouhaha. I first discovered Devon during my Agatha Christie phase, in the (relative) youth of my late teens. Christie describes her home county like a slice of heaven, tucked into a far corner of an otherwise dreary landscape, where wealthy people, with murderous intentions, live in grand houses, doing very little to pass the time. In short, it sounded wonderful.

Against everyone's advice, I decided to drive down to Devon on a Friday evening in September. I picked up my car from Hertz in Russell Square, rushed home to change, and set off from Holborn around 6:45pm. I needn't have rushed, because it took 1¼ hours to reach Gunnersbury, a distance of only 10 miles from Holborn. Averaging 8mph, a Ford Ka in contemporary London is no match for a horse-and-coach in Victorian times! The onward journey from Gunnersbury on the M4 was equally calamitous, taking another hour to travel 27½ miles to the Reading off-ramp. By this time I was furious. Throwing caution to wind (or more precisely my foot to the pedal) I managed the remaining 180 miles in around 2 hours... to arrive in Torquay only 4½ hours after setting off.

Torquay (slideshow) is a pretty seaside town, but I feel it's lost to time why people actually visit there. For that reason, it's rather like Surfers Paradise in Australia. I suspect some people visit these towns year-after-year out of habit... Let alone any substantial fondness for the place. That is where any similarity ends, for these two seaside towns separated by 11,000 miles. As one might expect, the temperature is somewhat cooler in Devon, and the beaches are still like most in England: thin brown streaks with an afterthought for waves. Cornwall, the next county over from Devon, is where it's at, surf-wise. But that is another trip, yet to be had.

Torquay's population must swell during the holidays, as the city seems to be mostly comprised of hotels, inns, B&Bs, apartments and all other variations of holiday accommodation. It was in Torquay in May 1970, that John Cleese (on tour with Monty Python) encountered Donald Sinclair, the "wonderfully rude" hotel manager of the Gleneagles Hotel. Sinclair was the inspiration for Basil Fawlty, and the Fawlty Towers sitcom. The recently-refurbished Gleneagles Hotel is now a Best Western, and I considered staying there, but it was a bit too expensive for this budget trip. Instead, I stayed both nights at the splendid, and splendidly-priced, Hotel Hudson. A short walking distance from the seafront, the Hudson is also a few doors down from Torquay's museum, which may be small but not short of interest. There are two special exhibit rooms, celebrating two of Torquay's most famous residents: the crime writer Agatha Christie, and the great Victorian engineer Isambard Kingdom Brunel, who was responsible for the Great West Railway that still chugs through Torquay.

Christie has a long association with the English Riviera. She was born and raised in Torquay, and subsequently set many novels in the area. Her first novel, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, in which we're introduced to Hercule Poirot, was written at the Moorland Hotel, nearby on Dartmoor. Another, Peril at End House, was partly set at the Imperial Hotel (my photo). The novel opens with Hercule Poirot sunning himself on the hotel's terrace, which I tried my best to photograph.

A short distance ouside of Torquay is a little town called Totnes. I visited the Norman castle there, before stopping off at the more-scenic Berry Pomeroy Castle (slideshow) on the return trip. Berry Pomeroy is considered the most-haunted castle in England. I didn't see anything suspicious, other than an English Heritage volunteer more than willing to encourage tourists to part with their money on the back of this legend. So I moved on.

In 1939, Agatha Christie purchased the Greenway Estate (slideshow), near Dittisham, and about 45 minutes drive from Torquay. This huge estate, itself the setting for two novels (Dead Man's Folly, a favourite of mine, being one) was home to Christie, and then her daughter and son-in-law, Rosalind and Anthony Hicks, for many years. When the Hicks' passed away a few years back, the family gave the estate to the National Trust, a private not-for-profit charity that maintains important stately homes and estates around the country. I took out a year's membership with the Trust, to tour Greenway. The house, pictured at right, is in a poor state and clearly sign-posted as being off limits to visitors... not that the signs stop some rude tourists. Apparently in the final years of the Hicks' long lives, they had to endure an endless stream of tourists who ignored the signs to rush up to the house, thrust a camera up to the windows, and randomly fire off a photograph. No doubt, these muppets wouldn't know how to switch off their flash, making the experience even more unsettling for the aged Hicks, who possibly spent their remaining days regretting the decision to open the gardens.

Greenway House is not yet open to the public. In the meantime, one can tour the beautiful gardens, and visit the boat shed, with its nifty tidal plunge pool down below, that featured so significantly in one of her books. There, I chatted with Tessa Vattersall, an elderly lady who volunteers as a National Trust guide. Tessa told me that she lived in the area as a child. I asked her how the town folk interacted with Agatha Christie, given her celebrity. Tessa said that people knew who she was, of course, and would often see her going about her business. Yet they respected her privacy and didn't bother her. And, as Tessa implored, they never referred to her by any variation of Agatha Christie. To the townspeople, she was Lady Mallowan.

Tessa's recollections were touching and really moved me. After all, these first-hand stories help to humanise and play down the celebrity of someone that I admire. Tessa asked me if I was an Agatha Christie fan. Yes, I answered. She said that there was something I must do before I leave: sit in Agatha's favourite chair. It's an iron chair, painted white, with a little cushion. And it's located just a few feet from where Marlene Tucker's body is found in Dead Man's Folly.

The highlight of this Christie-a-thon was visiting Burgh Island (slideshow), a tidal island (meaning you can walk to it at low-tide) off the coast of Bigbury-on-Sea on Devon's south coast. When cut off from the mainland, the island can only be reached by boat, or the regularly-scheduled sea tractor service.

Burgh Island's largest structure is the eponymous art-deco hotel, constructed in the 1920s by Archibald Nettleford, a mad millionaire. Agatha Christie, just one of many famous guests, visited Burgh Island on more than one occasion, and was very familiar with its terrain. The island's significance to Christie fans is that it was the source of inspiration for two of her novels.

Evil Under The Sun was set here, partly written here, and was also the location for the Poirot television series adaptation in 2001. But for me personally, it is the island's assocation with And Then There Were None, that made this visit so special, as that is my personal favourite of all written by Dame Agatha. So visiting Burgh Island wasn't just an interesting set-jetting experience, it was something I'd dreamed of doing for fourteen years.

The following morning, back in Torquay, I abandoned any intention of taking a leisurely drive to Cornwall for the day. A few mislaid crumbs would obscure both counties on most world maps, and on a road map, it looks like a morning drive separates the two. In reality, it would take several hours just to drive from Torquay to Penzance. Distance isn't the problem; the narrow, winding country A-roads are the obstacle.

With a modified itinerary, I set out across Dartmoor, on one of the few roads that actually cuts through the moor, to Castle Drogo (slideshow). Built in the 1930s, with concrete structural elements, and utilising modern construction techniques, Castle Drogo has the distinction of being the last castle built in England. It's now owned by the National Trust, and on the day I visited, there were also special WW2 celebrations. Castle Drogo, like many stately homes throughout Britain, was commandeered during the war years, and became a home-away-from-home for many people relocated from London, or elsewhere.

My next stop was the stately home of Athelhampton (slideshow)in Dorset. (I intended to stop in Exeter along the way, but the horror of one-way lanes and no parking facilities proved too much for me to bear). I chose Athelhampton because it was here that the exteriors were filmed for Joseph Mankeweicz's Sleuth (1972). I've previously blogged about my love for this film, so I won't repeat myself now. But let me just say, Athelhampton was one of those magical set-jetting experiences: the house exterior looks exactly the same as it does in the film.

From Athelhampton I drove north to Wiltshire to visit Stourhead (slideshow), another stately home. Stourhead is almost a set-jetting experience, as a model of the house was used for Lady Penelope's mansion in the Thunderbirds. I need to go back, actually, because bastard slow drivers prevented me from getting to Stourhead in time to view the interior. However, the beautiful gardens, for which Stourhead are famous, were open, and I was able to snap a few photos in the magic hour of dusk.

My final stop was Castle Coombe. I actually attempted to visit this postcard-pretty village on way to Bristol in 2005. I missed the turn-off on that occasion, which on an English motorway means one might travel ten miles to find the next exit. Anyhow, I made it this time, although only in time for dinner! There was scarcely any moonlight, and no streetlights on the country lanes that evening. Both factors conspired to make Castle Coombe very difficult to find. But it is well worth the trip, as it looks just as one expects an English village to look.

I ate dinner in one of the three pubs (all within 20 metres of each other), and eavesdropped on the proprietress' conversation with some locals. They were discussing a trip, "up" to London, perhaps to see a show. It's curious how English people say they're travelling "up" to London, even when most of the country is north of the capital. There are a few theories, one having to do with the directions used by railway companies, whose main terminii were in London. But one gets the sense that it has more to do with London's place as the seat of power and wealth, and thus the capital's tradtiional hold over the rest of the country. This latter meaning was the best fit for the conversation I overheard at Castle Coombe. The locals decided against the trip to London because they couldn't be bothered dealing with the pretence of snobby Londoners who think that they're "all that". That conversation suggested to me that there is a parallel between how non-Londoners view London, and other Australians view Sydney. For what it's worth, I don't think Londoners think the world revolves around London in that rather special way that Sydneysiders have made their own. But the country/city divide does exist in England, and is so profound that it cannot be ignored. I often feel that England is comprised of London,and what's left. Still, it's what I enjoy most about travelling outside of London, as on this trip to Devon. It truly feels like I'm visiting a different country.

All of my Devon photographs can be viewed here on Flickr.

The Travel Bug

Not long before I left Australia, I remember a conversation with Mark, a member of my trivia team, to whom I declared that "a year of travelling should hopefully get it out of my system". Mark looked at me rather strangely, like I recently arrived from Pluto, and declared, rather matter-of-factly, "oh no... once you start travelling, it's never enough"... as I was soon to discover.

When living in Holborn over the summer last year, I found myself living from paycheck to paycheck, with very little margin for error. That did encourage me to discover London and surrounds on-the-cheap, but by August I was in desperate need for a holiday in the sun. So I arranged to travel to Sitges for a week (with Mark, Greg, and Martin), returning to Barcelona for a solo weekend. I also booked weekend trips to Venice, Berlin, Rome, Brussels, Vienna, and Istanbul. In September/October alone, I was out of London for five consecutive weekends... which is more exhausting, unfun, and unrelaxing than it sounds. Still, I'm not complaining. But that exhaustion, coupled with my many house moves in the fourth quarter, meant that photos remained unsorted, not uploaded, and my blog very out of date... I actualy started writing this post in February this year, six months after the material time, and it's been in draft until now!

Wit in the Face of Adversity

Sleuth is being remade! Joseph L. Mankiewicz's original 1972 film, with Laurence Olivier and Michael Caine, is one of my all-time favourites. Their performances are great, in this cat-and-mouse thriller that exposes England's class wars, and the bullshit macho-matches that men play. The film was adapted by Anthony Shaffer from his own Tony Award winning, and sellout-smash play. It was also his first play, which makes its success that much more remarkable.

In his autobiography, So What Did You Expect? Shaffer describes Sleuth as the "main event" of his life and tells many funny stories relating to the play. My favourite is when Shaffer recalls the occasion, on the set of Sleuth, when an extremely-nervous and intimidated Michael Caine first met Laurence Olivier, who had recently become a life peer.

     "What do I call you?", asked Michael.
     "It's quite simple", said Larry, "by our names - you are Mr Caine, and I am the Lord Olivier!"
     Michael blanched. After a beat, Larry continued, "That's for the first time, after which, of course, it will be Mike and Larry!"

Shaffer went on to script Frenzy (1973) for Alfred Hitchcock, The Wicker Man (1973), and several Agatha Christie film adaptations starring Peter Ustinov. Later, he moved to Mossman in Queensland to live with the wonderful actress Diane Cilento, whom he met on the set of The Wicker Man. I remember the occasion when Paul and I visited Karnak Theatre a few years ago. I encountered Ms Cilento in the office, sitting in the corner holding court, and still looking radiantly beautfiul in her eighth decade.

Sadly, Anthony Shaffer passed away in 2001. I don't write fan letters, but I really admired Shaffer's work, and (as silly as it sounds) I actually regret never having written a letter to Shaffer. His work is fantastic. And so it saddens me that there will be no new work. However, from beyond the grave, he conjured one final dramatic turn, with the court battle over his will. The matter was taken all the way to the High Court, and the judgement is interesting, and worth a read. I especially like the quotation from one of Cilento's faxes, to Shaffer, where she writes, "I think you're all mad living in that terrorist trap of London … but that's your choice so you stick to it." Bless.

I'm looking forward to this new adaptation of Sleuth, and hope that Harold Pinter's new screenplay and Kenneth Branagh's direction gives the film a modern, fresh take, that honours the integrity of the original. They're certainly off to a good start with the novel casting: Jude Law takes Caine's role of Milo Tindle (which will be the second Caine role he's reprised, cf Alfie), and Michael Caine will play Andrew Wyke, which is the part played by Olivier in the original film.

Here is the trailer on YouTube:


Postscript: Sleuth is the second remake of an Anthony Shaffer story to be released to cinemas in the last eighteen months. I had never considered, until now, why these films were being remade, but it may have something to do with Shaffer's estate. After writing this post, I discovered a Sunday Times article, The curse of Amadeus, from May 2005, that alludes to more of the background battle over the will. It, too, is well worth the read.