A Christmassy Christmas

We are still dealing with jetlag, some better than others, four days after arriving back in Singapore. It is not only the disruption in our sleeping pattern and getting really hungry at 2am, but also the over stimulation by the new sights, sounds and experiences. It feels like our bodies are still disconnected with our surroundings. The two younger kids have been pretending to run a hotel offering a full breakfast buffet. The problem is that the plastic looking breakfast spread has taken over the entire living room with very little room to sit - food safety doesn't exist in this world of make believe. They needed to get it out of their systems.

I am still getting to grips with the idea that tomorrow is Christmas. Not that there is much to do to prepare our home for Christmas.  Our Christmas tree is a 12-inch miniature that sits on the dining table. We bought gifts when we were in Italy so that's settled. We are going over to my sister-in-law's place for the Christmas lunch after church tomorrow. And I've already made reservations for the Christmas eve dinner in a steamboat restaurant tonight, partly because we need to catch-up on local food. So the logistics of Christmas has been sorted out.

It is ironic, Italy was very christmassy - the lights, gigantic Christmas tree in the centre of the cities we visited, panettone, Christmas markets, the smell of mulled wine. Renaissance masterpieces that depict Mary's encounter with the angel foretelling the birth of the Messiah and the nativity scene. Back in Singapore, everything tells you it is Christmas too. There is no denying that when even Burger King's seasonal special is called "Melty Cheesemas".

I am every thankful that there is far more to Christmas than BK's cheese specials. The reason for the season is just as comforting as it was when Jesus was born as it is in today's chaotic and troubled world. There is so much indifference, confusion and violence that can lead us to believe that God did not and does not have a plan for humanity. And so, it is important for me to reread the biblical accounts of the first Christmas found in the gospels of Matthew and Luke to prepare by heart for tomorrow.

Peace on earth and goodwill to men.
A blessed Christmas to everyone.

Venezia

View of Santa Maria della Salute fro Piazza San Marco

It was a four hour train journey from Rome to Venice on the Frecciarossa.  Apart from the occasional delays, intercity travel by train has been fantastic - clean, comfortable, and gets us right into the city. On arrival, we were greeted at the platform by Annamaria and her daughter Costanza. Anna and I were staying in International House, in our first year in University of Warwick more than 20 years back. It was so good to see her in person after all these years. We took the vaporetto from Santa Lucia station to San Marco where we did a quick tour in the beautiful sunset before heading to our hotel.  Later, we went to a nearby restaurant for dinner because we haven't yet figured our way around the Venetian calli, especially not in the dark. We had a great time catching up on what we've been up to since graduation and learned more about the Italian way of life.

The plan for the next morning was to walkabout aimlessly and see what we chance upon. As Anna said, Venice is an one big open air museum. There are beautiful and interesting shops and cafes at every turn, and galleries, churches, bridges in between all the multi-coloured buildings that are full of character. Our walk from Piazza San Marco to the imposing Santa Maria della Salute took us through Calle Larga XXII Marzo, the address for all luxury brands. Our walk to the Ponte de Rialto brought us to the fresh produce market and the sight of the giant hands emerging from the Grand Canal to support the Ca'Sagredo Hotel, a sculpture by Lorenzo Quinn.

We did a gondola ride on our Day 3 in Venice. Valentino, our gondolier, was friendly, great with the kids and serenaded us with 3 songs. He also got the kids to post with his gondolier hat. The gondola took us through some quiet canals, Piazza St Marco and under the Bridge of Sigh. It all seems very touristy, but I am all for that these days! We spent the later part of the day at the Doge's Palace. By now the kids were having a museum overload, but when they saw the Palace courtyard and the interior, they were genuinely impressed. On this trip, I realised that it is worth giving the kids a nudge to visit the museums even if they fuss about it. We also got a perspective of the Bridge of Sigh from the inside as we crossed from the Palace to the prison. It was pretty grim.

On Day 4, we took the Line 2 vaporetto service from San Marco to the train station. Even as we were leaving, we were treated with wonderful views of this UNESCO Heritage city from both sides of the Grand Canal. The family was unanimous about Venice being the favourite part of this vacation.

Roma

Rome is just fascinating. I have not visited a city where so much of the present day is intertwined with ancient world. I am not talking about the gladiators and Roman soldiers that invite tourists to the Colosseum for photo opportunities.  Rome is literally a giant museum of history and art. This is the Rome that God used to change the course of history. About 750BC several villages came together to form a city. It was ruled by kings for two centuries before it became a republic. Eventually it was ruled by emperors who declare themselves god man. Under their rule, Rome became the centre of a vast empire.  

It is then recorded for us in Luke 2:1-7 (ESV):  1 In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child.6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth.  7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

A Roman decree somehow led to the fulfilment of prophetic words recorded several centuries before. The promised Messiah was born into a tumultuous world in Bethlehem. And as prophesied, he would become the sacrificial lamb for the sins of the world, suffering the cruelest Roman torture and crucifixion under the hands of Pontius Pilate. The early Christians, who were primarily Jews, suffered hideous persecution. 

 It was a miracle that the Christian faith survived at all. Saul, who was a Roman Jew, had a mission to persecute the early Christians because he saw the Christian faith as heresy and blasphemy to God's truth. On his was to persecute the Christians in Damascus, God appeared to him and blinded him temporarily. Ironically, the experience led him to see the truth - that Jesus is the fulfilment of the Old Testament. Saul, who later changed his name to Paul, spread the gospel throughout the Mediterranean before he was arrested in Jerusalem and behead in Rome. This is the true sense of the word martyrdom - dying to self for the sake of the truth, not killing everyone out of a false understanding of God's purposes. In fourth century AD, Constantine became a Christian and the faith spread across the empire. What used to be a empire who believed in many gods, including the emperor as a god man, became the centre for Christianity. We walked in heavy rain from Vatican City to the Pantheon yesterday. The Pantheon was a temple for all gods which was converted into a church in the seventh century, a living artefact of Rome's conversion.

We could easily spend two weeks just wondering around Rome. We only did quick photo stops at St. Peter's Basilica, Castel Sant'Angelo and the Tiber, the Trevi fountain, Piazza Navona, Vittorio Emanuele II Monument. The Vatican Museum, which was awesome, would take at least two full days to do it some justice. We were in and out of the museum within three hours. We skipped having a gelato on the Spanish Step because its been raining since we got to Rome three days ago. 

 This city links the ancient with the present earning it the nickname "The Eternal City". In the Palantine Hills, you can see the Arch of Titus which depicts Roman soldiers carrying the loot from the Jewish temple back to Rome after the destruction of Jerusalem. And on our visit to the Colosseum, I read that the amphitheatre was finances with the spoils from Israel.

I hope Rome left an impression on the kids and that they would come back for a visit with their own kids. 

Firenze

Our third stop on our Italian winter vacation was Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance. Believe it or not, I classified it as optional when I was doing interrailing about two decades back, favouring Rome and Venice. Hey, I wasn't an art history major, nor a liberal arts student with options to do peculiar electives. I was an accounting and finance major, which helped me make choices when I have a budget to work with.

We were delayed by over an hour getting into Florence. We got to the Monterosso station ahead of time and my younger son noticed that SOPP was indicates against our train to Pisa Centrale. I said that may be to indicate that it is a Non-Stop train. Later we found out from another traveller that SOPP (abbr. for SOPPRESSO) meant that the train was cancelled. She advised us to take the next available train to La Spezia and catch the connection to Pisa Centrale, which we did but the train to Pisa departed 17 minutes late which meant that we missed the connection between Pisa and Firenze Santa Maria Novella. It's good that I watched one of Rick Steve's youtube videos about travelling by train when I was preparing for the vacation - the train schedule is good until it gets changed, so don't stress about it.

We arrived in Florence when it was already getting dark. After a short rest at the apartment, we set out to Trattoria Zaza for a wonderful Tuscan dinner. Although everyone was reluctant, I got them to do a detour to Santa Maria del Fiore after dinner. We were treated with the most stunning view of the cathedral.  The Christmas decorations were up and many tourist were out on the streets. It felt really festive. We had our gelato, our first since arriving in Italy, right next to the Duomo.

We returned the next morning to visit the Duomo but did not do the 463 steps up to the copula. Instead we had breakfast across the road followed by a walk to Piazza della Signoria and the historic Ponte Vecchio. I was initially planning to skip the museums because the kids would make a fuss. But after lunch, we decide to give the Uffizi a go, despite the expected resistance. To my surprise, the kids did take in some of the art.  We did quizzes on some of the paintings that depicted events from the Bible. Caravaggio's The Incredulity of Saint Thomas was an opportunity to discuss the prophetic words from the book of Isaiah, what happened during Jesus' crucifixion, and what it took for Thomas to finally believe that Jesus rose from the dead.

The next morning, I wanted to see if I would be twice lucky. I brought the family to Galleria Accademia since we didn't have any plans other than catching the afternoon train to Rome. I didn't know what to expect aside from Michaelangelo's David. The Christian art collection was exquisite and invited a number of questions from the kids - what is INRI? why is there a skull below the crucified Christ? why some of the people in the painting look so grey? The kids giggled at David. The Accademia is a lot smaller than the Uffizi so it is a good beginners art museum.

There is so much more to see and do in Florence and well worth another visit. There are also a couple of day trips that would have been worth doing if we had the time. But I am glad we didn't skip the Uffizi and the Accademia on the assumption that it would be too painful for the kids The problem with skipping such things is that you never know what you have missed, like when I skipped Florence many years back. 

Cinque Terre in Winter?

Cinque Terre, the five lands. In the north eastern coast of Italy, it is part of the Italian Riviera. We arrived in Monterosso  al Mare on Friday to clear blue skies. We had problems locating our accommodation because the address on the internet turned out to be a wine bar. After looking around for awhile, I called the number provided and the host came out of the bar to greet us and took us to the apartment.

There were four sets of very steep and narrow stairs to climb before we got to the apartment. Fortunately the host carried our luggage bag up the stairs. And I think he felt lucky that we only had one. The apartment was in a rustic looking building in the old part of Monterosso. There were two ensuite bedrooms on one floor and the lounge and roof terrace on another. From the terrace, we had a beautiful view of the town and church tower. Perfecto!

When I was planning the holiday, I wasn't sure what Cinque Terre would be like in winter. It was in and out of my draft itinerary. Would there be decent restaurants opened or just convenient stores selling cold pizzas? Would it be creepy with everything closed and nobody around? Would the kids find it too challenging to do any of the hikes? Would I get grief for not allowing them to play on the beach? And would there be much point coming to the seaside if we were going to avoid the sea? I looked through a number of articles about Cinque Terre in winter and decided to take the gamble. The national park is a UNESCO heritage site after all.

But then there are choices to be made - five towns to pick from, where do we set base camp? The most picturesque or the largest? The first, middle or last on the regional railway line? I kept forgetting what each town offers and what they look like. Every blogger and vlogger has a different opinion on which town is the most beautiful and they will all tell you that they have biased views. I initially settled on Riomaggiore because the apartment was in a location featured in postcards, and supposedly less than 10 minutes from the station. Eventually, I switched to Monterosso because it is the largest and has all the necessary amenities, which is important when travelling with young kids. 

We set out to visit the other towns the next morning. The host told me that it was going to be wet over the next 2 days. He also said that the hikes would be too challenging for the young kids. Great start to this leg of the holiday! We bought a family pass which comes with unlimited travel on the regional trains for a day.  We stopped at all the towns except Corniglia because it was raining heavily at that time. All of them were beautiful even though the weather did not hold up. Manarola was particularly charming from a popular lookout point just 500 meters to the right of the town. 

There was a bit of excitement when we travelled from Manarola to Riomaggiore. It was probably only a minute ride before the train came to a halt in a tunnel. There were no announcements so we thought the train would be on its way again soon. Then we saw people trying to get out of the train. The doors would not open so they ran through several carriages in front. We realised that we were already at the station and ran after the others. It would have been nice if Trenitalia told us to stick to the front carriages due to the short platform in this town.

After getting off the train, we followed the path out of the station. It led to a slope up the hills with a beautiful view of the sea and the train station below us. We passed by homes with lemon trees in the gardens. Eventually, we had to make our way down to the town centre through very steep and narrow steps, where rain water was streaming down. As we were making our way down those steps, I was thinking about the effort required to get back up on our way back. But I was also relieved that we did not book our accommodation here. It would have been a disaster if we had to carry the huge luggage up and down those steps. 

Although we just had some pastries in Manarola, we were famished when we finally got to the Riomaggiore town centre. We had a hearty lunch and tried to wait out the rain. When we were leaving the restaurant I asked the waiter for directions to the station. It turns out that the station was only five minutes away via a tunnel. No slopes nor steps needed whatsoever. To think that I vlogged about this town being beautiful but difficult to access.

So is Cinque Terre worth a visit with the kids in winter? It is a beautifully rustic place in rain or shine. Whilst there would have been much more to see in the summer, it is not jammed packed with tourists on the trains, alleys and restaurants at this time of the year. And you can always create excitement for yourselves if you wanted some by sitting in the wrong train carriage or taking a long footpath to town.

Travel by Train

Milano Centrale

We set out from Milan yesterday morning for Cinque Terre. The hotel was just a 5-minute walk to Milano Centrale. The station is an architectural wonder and I was looking forward to seeing the interior. Its construction started in 1864 but expansions continued into the 1930s as railway connections opened up to Germany and Switzerland making Milan the railway hub in northern Italy. The station owes its grandeur to Mussolini who wanted it to reflect the enormity of his fascist ambition. 

This is the first family holiday travelling by intercity trains. For long holidays, we have always preferred the self-drive option. However, it would not be feasible to drive in Cinque Terre, Florence, Rome and certainly not in Venice. I also thought it would be a fun experience for the younger kids. For this travel arrangement to work, we had to minimise the number of luggage bags. Trying to handle 3 or more luggage bags and 2 younger children in busy train stations would just make us easy targets for pick-pockets. So on this trip, we only have 1 luggage bag, and 3 rugsacks for thick winter clothes. I also chose accommodation that are, by the kids' definition, walking distance to the stations. So far so good.

Our train ride from Milan to Monterroso al Mare took 3 hours. My eldest son occupied himself with an ebook but the younger kids got restless pretty quickly because there was no onboard entertainment. They had some snacks, slept a bit, and woke up to find out how much longer it would take. I, on the other hand, found it quite a nice change not having to drive. It was also nice to see the the changing landscape as we travelled south west to Genoa and then down the coast to Cinque Terre.

People passing by, and people speaking in different languages, intermittent opening and closing of the coach doors, the public announcements in Italian and English - all of this reminded me of interrailing in Europe when I was an undergraduate. I remember that travelling around Europe was the first thing that came to my mind when I found out that I had received a scholarship to study in the UK. Talk about getting my priorities right. I remember picking Rome and Venice for the Italian leg of the trip and completely missed out on so many other great places. I have expanded my repertoire ever so slightly on this trip.

Travelling by train in Italy with young kids seems manageable. I hope it will grow on them during the rest of the trip. They are already planning to get more snacks for the train ride to Florence. I hope that the trains calling at different towns and cities with strange and interesting names will leave them with a sense of nostalgia when they are grown up. I hope that it will be a topic of conversation that will warm their hearts in their adulthood. I hope they will describe it to their kids with fondness when they too decide to go on a train adventure.

Milano

We got into Milan early yesterday morning after a 12 hour flight from Singapore. It is the first time our family is vacationing in Italy, although we have driven through some parts of northern Italy two years back when we visited Switzerland. My wife's last visit to Italy was when she was younger than my daughter. I spent a grand total of 4 days in Italy after my first year in university. But Milan is a first for all of us and I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I was planning the itinerary.

Well clearly not the best planning because I only found out after I booked the flights that we would arrive on L' Immacolata Concezione, a public holiday to commemorate the Immaculate Conception. Fortunately, most shops, restaurants and museums are still open. I wanted the kids to rest in the hotel from the long flight but they were wide awake and making enough noise to wake the other hotel guests up. So we decided to take a slow walk from our hotel near Milano Centrale to Brera for breakfast. Most things were still closed at that time of the day but there was lovely window shopping in this artsy district. We found a cafe serving wonderful pastries and hot chocolate, which was literally melted chocolate. By the time we were done, the two younger kids were starting to look sleepy - the classic why-didn't-you-take-a-nap-when-you-could situation that most parents of young kids are familiar with. 

So instead of walking around Brera after our breakfast, we went to Parco Sempione to look for ducks. Ducks and chasing pigeons are their all time favourites wherever we go, and it motivates them to stay awake. On the way to the duck pond was the massive Castello Sforzesco built by the Duke of Milan in the 14th century. And after looking at the ducks we visited Arco della Pace, which is also the site of the northern gates to the old city of Milan. (As I was writing this, I suddenly realised what Arco in Arco Lamp means, and just remembered that Milan is its birthplace)

Next we walked to Santa Maria delle Grazie to look at Leonardo da Vinci's fresco of the Last Supper. The kids got to chase pigeons around whilst waiting for our turn. You have to book the ticket in advance and the session allows you 15 minutes in the refractory where the Last Supper is on one end, and Donato do Montorfano's depiction of The Cruxifixion is on another. We were in the same session as a Japanese tour group. The female tour guide was explaining quite a few things about the church, which was extensively bombed in WW2, and the painting. I wondered whether she explained the significance of the Last Supper and why Jesus had to die for all of us on the cross. Amazing opportunities to share the Good News as a tour guide for Italian holidays.

We could not locate an Ubervan and the taxis do not take a family of 5. We were considering taking 2 cabs but eventually resorted to walking. Our phones died along the way so we didn't have access to Goggle Map but fortunately we sighted the church we walked pass in the morning and figured the rest of the way back. We rewarded ourselves with a lovely Italian dinner across the road from our hotel and crashed out immediate after shower.

I was surprised how much less the kids complained about walking. But it is only Day 1.