The land speaks. It is our duty to listen. Our flight takes us east from Broome to Kununurra. Kununurra, established in 1961 to service the Ord River Scheme, is situated in the far north East Kimberley region of Western Australia. Kununurra is the English pronunciation of Goonoonoorrang the Miriwoong word for river. We are about […]
Travel
Clouds like spun cotton float above the land on an updraft of hot steamy air. The land below is flat grasslands. Ochre coloured roads scar the surface as they crisscross, coming from nowhere and heading nowhere. Time passes in a haze of wonder. We leave the grasslands behind. Below is a landscape of sparsely covered […]
Saturday and Home Saturday, our last day in Florence. Tomorrow we catch the train back to Rome and fly home…one Virginia to Australia and the other to Munich. We have had a wonderful week. Done all we wanted. Seen all we wanted. We have breathed in Florence and its wonderful history. We have experienced Alessandro […]
Friday Today we were touring with Sense Umbria, Narelle and Troy Hindley, two Australians now living in Umbria. See www.senseumbria.com for details of their tours. We were meeting outside Firenze Santa Maria Novella at 8am. Up early we walked to the station. We had a photo of Narelle hopefully we would recognize her. It was […]
Thursday Today we visit the Boboli Gardens and Palazzo Pitti. The Boboli Gardens is the home to sculptures dating from the 16th and 18th century and was the main seat of the Medici grand dukes of Tuscany. The architecturally designed gardens are behind Palazzo Pitti on eleven acres…an open-air museum. Ancient stone steps lead us […]
Wednesday Today we are going to Pisa and Lucca, a private tour. We are supposed to meet our driver on Via Por Santa. It seems I have given the wrong address to the tour company. I call to see where he is. We are told to walk to Ponte Vecchio he will be there in […]
I love train travel, anytime, anywhere in the world–Africa, Europe, USA, Japan and Central Australia. One day I will board the Orient Express and travel across Europe…Venice, Budapest, Paris and London…for now we travel two hours on Italia Rail and arrive in Florence early afternoon. We cab it to Santo Stefano Piazza, a little square […]
Rome Saturday 23rd of January 2pm and I am two hours late. I have been flying for twenty-eight hours. At home it is 11pm Saturday night. Virginia is already here having arrived from Munich a couple of hours earlier. She is excited, happy. We are spending a week together in Italy, a 60th birthday celebration […]
Today, our last day together, we will visit Minerve, another Cathar stronghold and site of persecution and death. For all the history of death and sadness in both Montsegur and Minerve, it is possible to find places of beauty and peace within their surrounds. Minerve is perched high above the meeting place of two rivers […]
This morning, excitement pervades the group. Today we are officially pilgrims. Today, those of us willing will climb the holy mountain Montsegur, the ancient symbol to Catharism. At an altitude of 1200 metres the Chateau de Montsegur is perched precariously on a rock formation called a pog. An Occitan word meaning peak, hill or mountain. […]