WA

Presently in sunny Perth for some meetings and some relaxation.

M and I spent the weekend in the Margaret River region - had a fantastically relaxing couple of days (well, except for the early-morning Saturday 3 1/2 hour flight followed by the 3 1/2 hour drive, and then the 3 hour drive back to Perth yesterday afternoon).  Awesome dinner on Saturday night at Wise's winery, then a hike at Cape Naturaliste yesterday morning, breakfast in Dunsborough and a great picnic lunch yesterday at Cape Mentelle.  Real estate is far from cheap out Margaret River way - and it's easy to see why.  So beautiful and so much to see and do.

Now looking forward to sun and relaxing and reading Statements of Claim and hanging out in my incredibly small and dated room at the Parmelia Hilton and various other stuff. 
Have decided I really like Lederville - great cafes and a good feel.

No Country For Old Men

Have been meaning for a while to blog about this film.   The best thing I've seen in at least a year.

The pacing was perfect and the film was beautiful and extremely well-acted (despite the graphic and disturbing violence).  Javier Bardem was incredibly menacing and basically every cast member's acting was praiseworthy.  It was fairly measured in its pace - but perfectly so for the story it was telling - and it evoked emotions and built characters and created a perfect self-contained world.  Basically it was good.  And it had some almost Lynchian moments: a scene when Javier Bardem speaks with an elderly clerk in a gas station conveys an amazing level of menace, reminiscent of the scene in Lost Highway when the dwarf confronts Bill Pullman and tells him that he is at Pullman's house right now.

The Coen Brothers nailed it as they have before (Miller's Crossing, The Man Who Wasn't There) and as I look forward to them doing again.  They are much, much better when they keep away from the comedy.

Cloverfield

Just saw Cloverfield - OMG.

A one-line summary:
A party. What's that? A monster destroys New York. Let's save our friend. Ouch.

I'll avoid saying too much about the film at this stage - I may post on it again once everyone's seen it - but it is genuinely new and different and terrifying. Not easily replicable without losing quality - but JJ Abrams has found a new way of making a blockbuster film. Never heard of anyone on the cast - but they are cute and I thought the acting was good. Plenty good enough for the material.

And check out the Slusho website - apparently Slusho was a working title / decoy title. Who wouldn't love seabed nectar?

random

So... since my last post I've been:
- working too hard through most of December
- on the gold coast (doing not much)
- in Byron Bay and environs (doing not so much again)
- at the cricket - 4th day of the Boxing Day test
- looking for somewhere to live
- hosting a new years' dinner
- lunching with D & K - who have arrived from Holland
- in Court
- working
- drinking coffee
- at K&P's wedding
- seeing I Am Legend and The Darjeeling Limited

I liked The Darjeeling Limited a lot more than M did. Great production design, some great dialogue, amusing juxtapositions etc. But you do get the feeling Wes Anderson is becoming more self-referential than is good for him.

I Am Legend has lots of good stuff about it: again, great production design and a pretty good performance by Will Smith. But it felt like there was too much left unexplained for my liking (not unexplained in a good way - just unexplained) and the ending was deeply unsatisfying.

Elements Tour - Swollen Members, Z-Trip and more

Went to the Elements Tour at The Forum last night with M and W. The best night out I've had in a long time.

Jungle Brothers
Mike Gee - who's looking a little older than he did in 1989 - still has what it takes, although most of his material was unfamiliar to me. A small crowd at this point (he was first up) - so there was little atmosphere - but he demonstrated his skills and a great big smile.

Swollen Members
These guys were who I was there to see. They have a huge live reputation and I was far from let down. In fact it was one of the best performances I've ever seen. And they gave the impression they could (and may well) do it every day of the week. Prevail in particular had incredible energy and just so clearly loved being on stage and performing. The crowd were incredibly enthusiastic and there was great interaction between the band and the crowd. Prevail possibly spent more time surfing the crowd than he did on stage. Madchild was perhaps a little muffled and low-energy: he may well have been partying too hard on the tour.

The performance was absolutely jaw-dropping. The crowd was singing/rapping along to every song - and every track they played was good - and the energy had to be felt to be believed.

Some [horrible phone camera] photos.

Z-Trip
An incredibly skilled DJ, master of the mash-up... I can't say much that hasn't previously been said. Except perhaps that the heavy reliance on mixing in hard rock and heavy metal tracks left me cold - I could appreciate the skills, but given that I hate hard rock I still couldn't feel it. Some great moments - in fact, most of the stuff that wasn't heavy rock mixes was great. And Soup from Jurassic 5 was criminally under-used... did he have an easy tour or what?

Long time no see

It's been a while since my last post... an incredibly busy patch with work - sorry!

Had a great birthday weekend last week - M took me on a surprise trip to NSW. Birthday dinner at North Bondi Italian on Friday night, caught up with Sydney friends Sat AM then drove to Newcastle and settled in to watch the election. A swim at the surf beach Sunday morning then lunch at Robert's in the Hunter Valley before our flight home.

More soon.

iGoogle

Was planning a post on how well Google's many features/apps are integrated (and was planning to say, not particularly well)... so I just typed www.google.com into my browser and instead of the familiar simple interface iGoogle popped up -

and what do we have but a 2007 version of a 1997 portal.


Yes there's (much) more personalisation, yes it's not an html page with frames but a collections of feeds, yes i'm sure it's great in many ways, but it is not the no-frills homepage from you can conduct excellent search that Google is famous for (or perhaps i should say, became famous for)

Seriously - half-close your eyes and you could be looking at a 90s version of Yahoo, Excite, MSN or a million other portals. Actually I just typed in www.msn.com and (without having personalised either), it and iGoogle are almost indistinguishable

Interesting GOOG judgment

See this link to an appeal judgment in a Reid v Google - a case brought by a former employee of Google who alleges he was sacked because of his age.

Reid was formerly a Director of Engineering and Director of Operations at Google - a reasonably senior position. The reason he was given when he was sacked was that he was not a 'cultural fit'. Reid claims that the 'youthful atmosphere' at Google demonstrates a bias against older workers.

Sad news - Matt Price

Duncan Riley reports at duncanriley.com that Matt Price, the columnist for the Australian, has some serious health issues.

Price is interesting and idiosyncratic on both football and politics; I enjoy reading his columns and wish him and his family well.

Who has scored from Web 2.0?

Interesting article in BusinessWeek about the present (tough) conditions in the VC market, including this extract:

Take Web 2.0, where exactly one company, YouTube, had a $1 billion-plus outcome when it was purchased by Google (GOOG). Only a handful has sold in the hundreds of millions. And because the costs of starting these businesses are so low, venture investors own smaller stakes than they did in the last Web bubble.

I'm sure the statement is right - as far as it goes - but I'd make the following comments:

- like much in this world, it all depends on how the key terms are defined.

- many of the 2.0 companies have been founded, effectively, as single-product or niche-focused businesses suitable for early, cheap acquisition rather than building into stand-along megaliths. And much of the early development of these focused businesses took place out of the pockets of angel funding and/or bootstrapping and/or very small VC rounds. Meaning that the peersons involved probably did fine out of relatively small exits (although I'm sure some - such as the founders of flickr - wonder what might have been).

- GOOG's suite of 'web 2.0' assets would be valued at far more than $1 billion; as would Yahoo!'s; as would News Corp's etc etc. Much of the Web 2.0 upside has been captured (at least in monetary terms) by the media and Internet giants. They either developed in-house or, more commonly, bought earlier. The media and 1.0 survivors have done an excellent job in the latest wave of making smart, early, cheap acquisitions: MySpace, flickr, photobucket, FeedBurner, etc etc.

- the BusinessWeek analysis ignores the gorilla currently sitting and waving in the corner: Facebook. To suggest it has a less than $1 billion valuation at this point would be ludicrous.

Facebook v MySpace v Facebook v Microsoft

a couple of good articles re Facebook and MySpace from CNN Money:

Facebook CEO visits Seattle, Microsoft schemes

and

As Facebook takes off, MySpace strikes back

From the Facebook article

This year Facebook apparently expects to make $30m profit on $150m revenue [if this number is right it surprises me; the margin is far lower than I would have expected - but then they're presumably investing heavily in infrastructure / development / scaling]

A good quote:

Facebook is the closest thing the world has to a next-generation Internet, one structured not around Web sites but around people. In the Facebook topology, every data source or service is defined by who else is using it.

The company has, in a crude way, solved the critical problem of Internet identity. Each member's profile is tantamount to their personal Web site, which defines who you are, who you know, what you are interested in, and what you are doing now.

Another good quote re Facebook's potential to advertisers:

Facebook may be the best place yet for marketers to experiment with these new techniques. Unlike its bigger rival MySpace, Facebook's individual profile information is intended to represent a real person precisely and accurately. So by investing in Facebook, Microsoft - or Google or another intrepid company

And on Zuckerman v Gates: who is the nicer person?

It may also be worth quite a few hundred million for any company to get into bed with Mark Zuckerberg.

I have gotten to know him a bit in recent months. He is the closest thing to Bill Gates I've seen since the original. Not only does he have natural gifts for programming, leadership, and marketing - traits that served Gates well in Microsoft's first couple decades. He also, like his industry predecessor, seems mostly driven by a conviction that what he is doing will make the world a better place.

The money will come to him, as it did to Gates, not because he seeks it but as a byproduct of finding effective ways to help society move forward using software.

His focus is extraordinary. What's more, he is a nicer person than is Gates.

It would behoove any company to keep him close. His thinking about the importance and role of what he calls the "social graph" - the network of relationships that underlies a social network - is subtle and unselfish.

And from the MySpace article
"Everyone believes all the b.s. press that says MySpace is done for and Facebook has passed us," moans Tom Anderson.

Now there's starting to be real money in the business, as every major consumer advertiser realizes that if you can engage effectively with these newly networked hordes, they become agents of your brand. Last year MySpace was on the lips of every teenager. Now Facebook is growing faster, is usurping the buzz, and thus has Tom Anderson tied into knots.

But defensiveness does not behoove executives who run a division of News Corp, Rupert Murdoch's consummately aggressive company - especially not when that division is the biggest player by far in an explosively expanding business like social networking.

I haven't been on top of the stats and had no idea the numbers were so extreme:

MySpace is the most trafficked website in the U.S.: It registered 45 billion page views in July, according to comScore Media Metrix. Another research firm, Compete.com, calculates that Americans spend about 12% of all their Internet time there.

MySpace v Facebook

Comparing MySpace and Facebook is inevitable because of their dominance in the business, but their differences are profound.

Facebook is intended to be used only to connect you to the people you already know offline; it's a "utility," to use the preferred label of its founder and CEO, Mark Zuckerberg. Its user interface is clean and tidy, and the whole vibe is efficiency and getting things done.

MySpace, on the other hand, is a mishmash of modern media - rich with music and video and comedy. It's like a rock & roll club - chaotic, loud, and packed. Many user profiles are florid and flamboyant, with flashing text and music that starts playing as soon as you arrive.

Myspace has much bigger ad revenue - this year at least

The research firm eMarketer calculates that in 2007, MySpace will sell $525 million worth of advertising, 58% of the social-networking industry's total. (Facebook will sell $125 million - less than a quarter as much.) One huge upcoming opportunity, says DeWolfe, is ad-supported MySpace on mobile phones.

The platform

In late May, Facebook announced it would open up its site and access to its 41 million members - to software created by anyone, from the largest software companies to dorm-room hackers. That made it, Zuckerberg said, a "platform." There are now more than 4,000 new applications on Facebook - and most of the popular ones replicate features already on MySpace.

Any talk about Facebook and its platform is a great way to spoil the mood around the MySpace offices. It's that defensiveness again. "MySpace has always been a platform," DeWolfe insists. "We have an open platform." What he means is that MySpace allows small software applications, known as "widgets," to appear on the site.

The Rupert anecdote

Murdoch visits the hipster-filled headquarters at least once a month, peppering DeWolfe with questions about membership numbers and sign-up rates. In early 2006, DeWolfe enthusiastically told him that MySpace was about to open its first international site, in Britain.

"I was so excited about it," says DeWolfe. "And he's like [mimicking a deep slow Australian voice], 'How many more this year?' and I said, 'Maybe a couple more.' Then he said, 'How about 12?' So we ended up opening 14." )

Anderson has his own Rupert stories: "He called me once and couldn't log in for some reason. I was trying to help him over the phone, saying, 'Type this. Type that. What do you see on your screen?' And he says, 'It says, 'Welcome John.' And I'm like, 'John? Why does it say John?' and he says [affecting his own version of the deep, slightly cranky voice], 'I don't use my real name on MySpace.'"

Are the MySpace dream team about to jump?

So how is it really going, Chris and Tom? "That this has worked out so well and we both hope to be around for a long time is, I think, a really unique story," expounds DeWolfe, as Anderson nods. "We're almost at our two-year anniversary with News Corp. and we're probably going to sign up for another two years, and ..."

Wait a minute. Probably? When pressed, he looks sheepish.

"I don't know," he says, glancing nervously at his PR person. He hesitates. "We may stay with the company." MySpace's top two employees have spent several months negotiating a renewal of their two-year contract, and it's not a sure thing. They didn't own much stock in the parent company that News Corp. acquired, so for all their successes they have not had a big Internet payout.

The two have reportedly pushed for a $50 million, two-year pact and encountered resistance. To be fair, there is every sign they are deeply engaged in their work and are unlikely to leave. DeWolfe's hesitation in our interview could merely be a negotiating tactic.

fun for high-end geeks - Kevin Rose Kool Kit

This video has found its way to YouTube - it's an in-joke video about Digg founder Kevin Rose. Startups must have way too much time and money on their hands in Silicon Valley. In a scary way this sortof feels like a signal that the good times are coming to an end - like the infamous 99/00 launch parties.

Funny Games - NYT interview with Haneke

I've blogged before about how curious I am about the new Michael Haneke film - an English-language remake of Funny Games.

The NYT has this weekend published an in-depth interview with Haneke about Funny Games and much more. I still have absolutely no idea whether the remake of Funny Games will be brilliant or is a horrible lapse in judgment by Haneke.

The decision to remake his signature work in America with an A-list cast caused considerable controversy among hardcore cinephiles, not least because of Haneke’s reputation as one of Hollywood’s most outspoken critics. Haneke was quick to defend himself. “Of course I’m a critic of the studio system,” he said, as if it were unthinkable not to be. “But that doesn’t mean that one can’t work within that system. ‘Funny Games’ was always made with American audiences in mind, since its subject is Hollywood’s attitude toward violence.

When I asked whether the average American moviegoer was likely to appreciate having his attitude adjusted, Haneke-style, the director thought for a moment, then threw up his hands in mock surrender. “I’ve been accused of ‘raping’ the audience in my films, and I admit to that freely — all movies assault the viewer in one way or another. What’s different about my films is this: I’m trying to rape the viewer into independence.”

“Funny Games” occupies a unique place in Haneke’s body of work, not least because of his decision to shoot it twice. “Originally, I approached Michael about optioning ‘Funny Games’ for some other director,” Chris Coen, the film’s producer, told me. “And Michael’s reply was that he’d do it himself, but only if I could get Naomi Watts for the lead. I hadn’t thought about him wanting to do it, to be honest. But he said very clearly that ‘Funny Games’ was the one film of his that he’d allow no one else to direct.” Hollywood has a long and hallowed tradition of buying the rights to art-house hits and refashioning them to suit its own ends — in fact, the director Ron Howard recently acquired the rights to Haneke’s “Caché” — but Haneke’s decision to remake his own film surprised fans and colleagues alike. The peculiarity of the project seems to have been part of its appeal. “To my knowledge, no one has ever remade his own film so precisely,” the director told me in Vienna, with an unmistakable trace of boyish pride. “The new version is the same film superficially, of course, but it’s also very different: a different atmosphere, different performances, a different end result. That in and of itself is interesting.”

Watching both versions of “Funny Games” back to back is especially revealing of Haneke’s skill. Though the dialogue, framing and sequence of shots are identical, the end result is remarkably different: Michael Pitt, the other of the family’s tormentors, brings a disconcerting sweetness to his role; Tim Roth emotes where Ulrich Mahe endured stoically; and Watts herself infuses her character’s suffering with a sexuality that Susanne Lothar, perhaps intentionally, kept at a definite remove.

Haneke’s sudden prominence, and the unfailingly extreme subject matter of his films, has led to comparisons with Quentin Tarantino, with John Woo and with the directors of the so-called Asian Extreme movement, but Haneke himself sees little common ground. “I saw ‘Pulp Fiction,’ of course, and it’s a very well done film,” he said. “The problem, as I see it, is with its comedy — there’s a danger there, because the humor makes the violence consumable. Humor of that kind is all right, even useful, as long as the viewer is made to think about why he’s laughing. But that’s something ‘Pulp Fiction’ fails to do.” When I mentioned Oliver Stone’s “Natural Born Killers,” another film that “Funny Games” has been compared with, Haneke shrugged. “Stone made the same mistake that Kubrick made. I use that film to illustrate a principle to my students — you can’t make an antifascist statement using fascist methods.”

Bizarre - Kerry heckler tasered

A heckler at a speech by John Kerry in Florida has been tasered - Kerry described the incident as a "good healthy discussion" that was "interrupted" by Andrew Meyer being arrested and Tasered by police!

In 37 years of public appearances, through wars, protests and highly emotional events, I have never had a dialogue end this way," Kerry said in a statement. "I believe I could have handled the situation without interruption, but I do not know what warnings or other exchanges transpired between the young man and the police prior to his barging to the front of the line and their intervention. I asked the police to allow me to answer the question and was in the process of responding when he was taken into custody."

"I was not aware that a taser was used until after I left the building," he continued. "I hope that neither the student nor any of the police were injured. I regret enormously that a good healthy discussion was interrupted."

See also
http://abcnews.go.com/Video/playerIndex?id=3617810

Meander Falls

M and I went to Tasmania for the weekend for some hiking.

Had a great time on Saturday hiking to Meander Falls. Beautiful scenery, a challenging hike and we had the track almost totally to ourselves... after 2 1/2 hours of hiking we bumped into a few people, then didn't see anyone else the rest of the day.

And I had an awesome time driving the ute the hire-car company gave me instead of the small car I'd requested!

The Chaser's War on Everything - APEC

Finally got around to watching last week's The Chaser's War on Everything, including their infamous infilitration of security at APEC in the guise of being Canadian.

Funny stuff.

Washington Post article on Moby Media / Tolo

Long and interesting article in Friday's Washington Post about Moby Media / Tolo, largely comprising an interview with Saad Mohseni. The article is entitled Reaching His Prime Time in Afghanistan / Murdoch-Like Magnate Builds Media Empire - and it endeavours to draw analogies between Saad and Rupert Murdoch.

They say it's a mark of independence when everyone thinks you're on the other person's side; by that measure it looks like Moby is pretty independent....

A few quotes:

In some ways, Mohseni, 41, is the Rupert Murdoch of Afghanistan.

Not only is he an entrepreneurial media lord with Australian roots who buys his soap operas from Murdoch's Indian Star TV network, his programming has been criticized as sensational, lowbrow and corruptive to the culture -- much as Fox's "The Simpsons" was panned when it hit the U.S. airwaves. And, like many of Murdoch's programs, Mohseni's are wildly popular. Both points of view came through in interviews on the streets of Kabul this week.

We are mindful of the mullahs and clerics," Mohseni said during his Washington visit. He said that his network is the only one that the Taliban talks to, because it is seen as unbiased, yet it also broadcasts Afghanistan's most popular -- and Western-style -- entertainment programs. Tolo even had a dustup with the Afghan attorney general this year that resulted in some staff members being arrested and briefly detained.

"You can kick-start social change with TV," Mohseni said.

Like many expatriate Afghans with a plan, Mohseni came to Kabul after the U.S.-led invasion loosened the Taliban's turn-back-the-clock grip on Afghanistan's business, technological and cultural life.

Mohseni is the son of an Afghan diplomat who was stationed in Tokyo when the Russians invaded his country in 1979. His father resigned his post, moved his family to Melbourne, Australia, (coincidentally, Murdoch's hometown) and settled down.

Mohseni dropped out of college and sped to the business world, becoming first an investment banker in Australia. When that proved too tame, he moved to Uzbekistan in the mid-'90s, as that country was flexing its capitalistic muscles after decades of Soviet control, and became a commodities trader.

After a few years in Central Asia, and a cultural reconnection with other expat Afghans there, Mohseni headed back to Australia looking for opportunity. It came in the wake of the U.S. military response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks . With no media background, Mohseni was not specifically looking to start a media business when he hit the ground in Kabul, but that's where he found the market gap.

By March 2003, Mohseni and his two brothers had launched Afghanistan's first privately run radio station, Arman FM, with their own money and a $228,000 grant from USAID. When Mohseni started Tolo in 2004, USAID kicked in another $2.1 million. The Mohseni brothers say they have so far invested more than $6 million of their own money.

Michael Wolff strikes again

Michael Wolff, the author of Burn Rate (a notorious and bitchy account of life as the founder of an unsuccessful Internet startup) and an excellent and highly experienced journalist, writes in the latest Vanity Fair about newser.com, a news startup which is apparently endeavouring to create a new paradigm in news and in which Wolff has a stake and is involved.

Here's another quirky advantage of the Internet (or, depending, serious disadvantage) and Internet news: people are willing to work for less and, even, for free. That's one result of the Internet's utopianism, that you're doing something of higher purpose, and of the myth of sweat equity, that you're working for future, fabulous riches (which sometimes you are).

Oddly, talking about the plasticity of the Internet, about the possibilities for utopia and riches, actually makes things happen. Somehow something comes into existence. While Google and its creepy form of corporatism dominate this Web era, there are now, given off-the-shelf "solutions" (meaning cheap equipment and cheap, pre-written software), more garage and dorm-room operations than there have ever been (one of which, perhaps sooner rather than later, will challenge Google). Indeed, Mark Zuckerberg's dorm-room companions continue to sue him over the ownership of Facebook because they claim it grew out of more than just idle dorm-room chat. (For the purposes of full disclosure: my financial interest in my hypothetical newspaper is about the same as that of Zuckerberg's roommates in Facebook—I will settle, if big money is made, for a small retirement home on the beach in East Hampton.)

The last few weeks

Life since we arrived back in Melbourne has been crazy. Settling back in, the Melbourne Film Festival, work busy-ness, M's mother getting hit by a car. Anyway, lots of stuff. Still a few travel summaries to come, but snippets follow:

Films
- Black Snake Moan is pretty good. I mean not good as in a good film, but good as in lots of fun.
- A Dirty Carnival is a classic Korean gangster film. It reminded me a little of Number 3, the first Korean film I ever saw. Over-long but definitely worth seeing
- Triple Dare, a Danish film about 3 teenage girls coming of age via a ritual they make u involving daring each other to perform various sex acts is even better than it sounds.
- Teeth is terrifying but good

Computer
My new 24 inch high-def Dell screen rules. Although I'm not sure I yet have the resolution or colour settings quite right.

Photos
Check out my Flickr and Photobucket accounts for preliminary travel photos. More to come.

Lost in Beijing - MIFF

A few more posts coming to round out my blog on our (amazing, incredible) 8 week trip, but we're now back and I'm into the Melbourne Film Festival for the 18th consecutive year.

My first film this year was Lost in Beijing - a Chinese film set in contemporary Beijing and showing off the city to full effect (though I didn't see streets as empty as those shown in the film when I was there last week!). The stock plot revolves around a young couple and an older couple. Through a plot device the younger woman has sex with the older man. She also has sex with her husband. She becomes pregnant. The older couple have no children as the wife is infertile. Who is the father of the younger woman's baby? (dramatic music plays)

Actually there is much to like in the film. Apart from the older woman, the acting is good. Tony Leung (the older man) is excellent as always. The film really does give a sense of life in contemporary Beijing and some of the scenes (particularly the sex scenes and the birth scene) feel particularly 'real'. Horrible camerawork.

7.5 out of 10.

Beijing

Another short one.  Having a great time in Beijing, being shown great hospitality by K.

 

Great Wall yesterday - absolutely amazing, a tourist attraction that lives up to the hype.

 

Awesome peking duck.  Great Iranian food last night.

 

Shopping and massages today.

 

Forbidden City and Tiannanmen tomorrow.

Portofino

It already feels like a long time ago, but last Thursday afternoon we took the train from Levanto to Santa Margherita (spelling?) then walked to Portofino.  SM is a very resorty seaside town.  Portofino is a few kilometres away and is a very exclusive port attracting an international crowd of yachties, playboys and wannabes.  And us.  The walk from SM is boring in parts, but most of it is beautiful and meanders past some amazing clifftop houses.

 

When we arrived we sat at a bar on the harbour for a drink with all the other beautiful people, then went for dinner.  Again with all the beautiful people, except for the woman with the scary plastic surgery at the next table.  Then the best pistacchio gelati I'm ever likely to eat. 

 

All followed by a long, painful train ride back to Levanto.

 

Portofino had the most amazing selection of shops - pretty much every top-end designer name had its own shop there, even though probably only a few hundred people live in the village.  The harbour is extraordinarily pretty and absolutely crammed with boats.  The town square is very pretty also.  Overall a good but slightly surreal experience.

Amsterdam

I still need to blog about Portofino, but right now M and I are staying with D & K in Amsterdam.  They have a beautiful huge and light apartment in the 9 streets; very central.  A great dinner last night at Nomads - a north african feast - then a wander through the central city and the red light district.  Off to Bruge for the weekend.

Cinque Terre

A few great days in the Cinque Terre, staying in Levanto. 

 

Walked from Levanto to Riomaggiore on Tuesday - about 7 1/2 hours.  The walk from Levanto to Monterosso was fantastic - far less busy than the 'cinque terre trail'.  We saw only a few people and it was very beautiful and a fantastic start to the day.  From Monterosso to Vernazza and Vernazza to Corniglia were great walks (very hilly!), Corniglia to Manarola and Manarola to Riomaggiore are nowhere near as interesting. 

 

Levanto, where we were staying, is 1 town further along than the cinque terre.  An italian-style seaside resort - the beach was pretty crappy (at least to Australian eyes) but the europeans all seemed to love it.

 

Tuesday night we had a fantastic pizza right on the Vernazza waterfront.  An amazing view and a fantastic evening.

 

 

 

 

 

Lucca

Our travels roll on.  We are now in the beautiful Tuscan town of Lucca and looking forward to exploring.

We spent the weekend with A & F in Florence at their fantastic new(ish) apartment near Piazza Santa Croce.  An amazing location.  It's great seeing A in her home environment - it's been more than 6 years now she's been in Florence.  M and I did much wandering around Florence's streets and taking in the atmosphere and had a great dinner at a local Osteria with A & F.

Dinner in Panzano on Thursday night was an experience - the local celebrity butcher (!) has opened a very trendy restaurant which has a set menu of 6 meat courses.  A & F drove down and we all had a fantastic meal in the little town. 

Also this week we visited so many places - Montepulciano, Montelcino, St Gimingano ... the list continues.  Tuscany has many, many beautiful towns.  And some great hiking quite near our base in Lucolena.

It was incredibly rejuvanating settling into a base for a week - the constant packing and unpacking is very draining.  Our little farmhouse was cute and a great base to see the Chianti region and Tuscany more generally.