Archive for February, 2008
Honeymoon & Anniversary Trip – 5th stop – Rome
February 12th, 2008 by Leo
Our first impression of Rome – the traffic here was horrible! Cars / bikes just come from nowhere. It is difficult and dangerous to cross the road. Moreover, there was a strike of the public transport drivers.
Doris is clever again by choosing a hotel very close to the railway station. The host & hostess there are so nice. The hostess talked a lot about where we can go and what to do, along with a lot of free information booklet and maps. She even gave us a set of travel guide that costs them, for free. But we learnt that we have to get up early if we need to go somewhere, because every morning, we stood at the counter listening to her for at least 15 minutes.
Although it seems to be a messy place, Rome is actually quite well organized. Going to everywhere is easy as long as you have a map handy. Things here are not as cheap as the other places, but there are more things to look at. Sculptures, fountains… And of course shopping as well. However, our next stop was Tokyo, so we didn’t really buy a lot here. Doris and I both managed to get some shoes, which are really nice!
Talking about fountains, there was a famous one which the HK TVB has a shot here for the famous pilot drama serious. We were told that if we toss a coin in the fountain, we are very likely to go back to Rome again! Oops we went pass it about 5 times but never did. Well, Italy is surely a good place to visit again!
And since we are in Italy, of course we need to enjoy an Opera. Wrong… we never got the chance. We missed the famous Rigoletto by one whole week 
However, we managed to get some tickets for some Arias. It is actually Doris’ first time listening to operatic music, and she really likes it! The group performed a lot of famous pieces including La Donna Mobile, Habanera and other pieces from Carmen, pieces from marriage of figuro, Rigoletto etc. We both enjoyed the night very much!
Thanks to the hostess again, we were also pointed to 2 famous gelato places. One of them made the best Gelato and the other one has the most variety – hundreds of different Gelatos for you to choose from, can you imagine that? Only for chocolate, there were at least 20 different chocolate flavours. From the best gelato place, I especially like the pear sorbet and honey gelato. Highly recommended! If you are planning to go to Italy please make sure you get the address from me.
In Rome we have tried both cheap and expensive food. We bought pizza priced by weight instead of pieces. They are more like takeaway food in Rome. And don’t forget the Italian Coke – Chinoto. It is so nice and cheap. We got a bottle from the supermarket and finished it in no time. We spent our last evening of our Rome stop in a very nice restaurant. There we had the best spaghetti carbonara that we have ever tried.
Enough of food, of course we visited the famous Colossum and Vatican City. It can easily be identified how glorious Rome once was. The Colossum was a huge place. Surely there were a lot of great (/ violent) shows here before. But half of the Colossum was destroyed by fire. Sad.
We visited the Vatican City. As it was the most famous place, we were advised to go there early and queue as they only open for certain period of time. We started queuing at 7am at such a cold weather! We were told that the museum would be opened at 10am but luckily, we were allowed to get in at 9am. My advise is that if you are going to visit such places, it is better to join local tours because tours can go in before general public. Inside the museum there was the Sistine Chapel, which holds a lot of nice arts and crafts, including the famous “Creation of Adam”. I never did know it was actually painted on the ceiling!
We also wanted to visit the St Peter’s Chapel but we found out we had to queue for 4 hours under the sun. At that time we were already so tired (signs of getting old) and hence we decided only to take pictures outside. It was such a huge plaza anyway.
The Pantheon was also a famous place. It is quite funny that the building has a big hole at the ceiling. It was designed to let rain go into the building and drain away. There they displayed a lot of paintings. We took too many pictures.
There were many other places we visited in Rome…
Although tiring, our time spent in Rome was so enjoyable.
Weekend
February 11th, 2008 by Doris
On Saturday morning, I finally can stay home and did a bit of tidying/cleaning. While Leo was working on his project, I was ironing clothes, one after another… > 10! After lunch, we did a bit of practice of the songs that we were gonna sing for the praise & worship at night for the fellowship. Then, we went to get some grocery and visited mum. After an early dinner, we went to church and had rehearsal for the praise & worship.
After church on Sunday, we went to joined the uni gym and stayed gymming for a while. It is good to get some exercise. Hopefully, we will able to keep this up and stay healthy and fit. We got home around 6ish and started to prepare for dinner. At 7pm, Evelyn, Mandy and Lih Reng came for dinner. We had a relaxing time.
Honeymoon & Anniversary Trip – 4th stop – Florence & Pisa, Italy
February 8th, 2008 by Doris
From Venice, we took the train to Florence. We stayed at Hotel Globus for 3 nights. It was a very small hotel (most hotels in Europe are small anyway), but thank God there is a lift (most hotels in europe has no lift). We only managed to squeeze ourselves and our luggage into the lift but it was very “interesting” that we needed to press the button continously for the lift to move. What if I let go half way, will it drop? haha! The room as expected is small, is the size of a double bed. But it was modern, clean and tidy.
The special thing about Florence was the market. Leather and cashmere wrap/scarf is especially popular there. They are cheap comparing to what we have to pay in NZ. You can get 3 cashmere wrap for 20 Euro but of course it is up to you to decide for the quality. Before we left for our trip, Ivy recommended us a restaurant called ZAZA. We thought we tried our luck by asking the hotel receptionist and he directed us to ZAZA. We enjoyed our dinner very much, yummy pasta and dessert!
We planned to go to Pisa the next day. So, we woke up early the next morning. Normally, the breakfast is provided by the hotel but since we has to go out so early we didn’t expect to have any breakfast. However, the manager of the hotel was so nice that he asked us to grap things from the dining room (although they haven’t finished preparing) to eat on the train. Because of that, we nearly missed the train to pisa. The train was only few minutes from departing and we ran crazily. There were couple others running with us too haha!
There is nothing much going on in Pisa. The only place to go is famous leaning tower. We managed to find the right bus stop and caught a bus there. Since it was quite early, there wasn’t many tourists (which was nice). We had a good walk about. Then, we took the bus back to the train station. When the bus arrived at the train station, there was an old lady who does not speak any English asked for Leo’s arm to help her to get off the bus. Leo who does not understand any Italian offered his arm as a gentleman. It was so sweet 
.
For the rest of the afternoon, we spent time walking around in Florence. I could not remember the name, but there was a huge and very beautiful church at least for its exterior design. It was where most tourists gathered. So, it was not easy to take a photo without having someone as a background .
6 Feb 2008 Chinese New year Eve
February 7th, 2008 by Doris
It was Waitangi Day yesterday for New Zealand and for Chinese culture, it was also Chinese New Year Eve. I got up early as I have a meeting at 9:30am to discuss about the children programme for a church camp. Leo also got up early to help in preparing the breakfast and then went back to sleep while I was having my meeting, haha! The meeting was productive; we sorted out the programme, who in charged what etc. We will be meeting again on the 19th, 2 weeks before the camp.
After the meeting, I had a 10 minutes nap before we went back to North Shore. It is always happy to go back to North Shore. Kat and CT have bought heaps of “junk” to celebrate the Chinese New Year. And of course, prawn cracker is a must! And I ended up cooking for the dinner with sisters’ help. We had pork rib with bitter melon soup, chicken with mixture of vg, steamed fish, sweet and sour fish fillet, crabs and vg. The hardest part was to cook the crabs as noone has cooked crabs before but it turned out to be quite nice! haha. Lolly kinda noticed that it was a special day and she didn’t want to eat her own food but kept asking for our food! Haha…
Since VT didn’t do much cooking, she cleaned. Kat and CT made desserts and we watched dvd together. We had a lot of fun!
護胃要訣 戒掉不良飲食習慣
February 5th, 2008 by Doris
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