Milan: Eat

Most of the people I know told me to shop in Milan. But I didn't at all. I waited until I am in Paris to shop. Main reason is that I still have another flight to take to Paris and we were using EasyJet. This Easyjet is somehow annoying because you are not allow to bring a carry-on and an extra handbag/laptop bag/etc. Meaning that I need to squeeze my sling bag into my carry-on luggage. My carry-on luggage is already quite full and if I squeeze the sling bag in, it's almost impossible to zip it alone. We only have a checked in baggage which is almost 20kg too. On the last flight we measure was 19.9kg. So what i can buy must be real light and have to be hand carry. That suits me because my plan is to buy bags and I have to hand carry them no matter what as they are too expensive to be checked in and face the consequence that someone in KLIA might open up my bag and take them, and I need to do VAT return and might need to show the immigration the stuff I purchased if being asked. I am serious about the part where someone in Malaysia might open the bag while in transit or before the bag comes being placed on the conveyor belt. 

Another part that I would like to talk about is why we have only 1 checked in baggage. Yes, MAS allow us to check in one each, meaning that we have 2 for both of us. The problem is not that. We experienced it already so I can really say that I am glad we only bring 1 checked in baggage. We had to pull and carry all our bags through bus, train, subway or metropolitan and face the danger to be pickpocket.  The subway/metropolitan in Europe, almost all of them don't have lifts. Some may have elevator which still hard to walk around when we have to take our on transportation to reach hotel to check-in and to go to the airport after check-out. For us, I hold had a sling bag on my shoulder and carry the 14" trolley bag. For my hubby, he had a camera bag sling on across his body, a back pack and a checked in baggage worth of ~20kg. Imagine if I need to carry a 20kg up all the stairs, not only 1 stairs in subway. Sometimes you need to change a few trains and go below few levels of underground to reach the station of your destination train. 

So I only manage to get few bags for myself and family and those are mostly long champ which can easily be folded to put into my bags. I only bought the later 2 long champs when we were about to leave Paris on plane because I realized I can squeeze another 2. 

Alright back to the original posting. Milan!!!

We took flight from Rome to Milan because it's more convenient for our friends who stay in Varese to pick us up from airport. We were staying close to the border of Switzerland and if the weather is clear, we can catch a glimpse of the Alps. However we only had 2 days in Milan, in exact 1.5 days as by the time we arrived, it was already 11am.

We went for some local food. This is the bruschetta which we usually see on small piece of grilled bread. We had this one a size of meal bread. One of this is served for one person as meal. Mine is with the bacon and mushroom.

Then we went back to rest for a while before making our way to Milan city. We took the metro there as it's hard to find car park and going around in city in car. This is the famous Milan duomo. 

Then we walked around the place and this picture was taken in front of the Italy castle for the past Kings. 

For dinner we had the crepes. Crepe is actually pronounced as "crap". We had one of this for everyone. I had mine with sangria, the cocktail drink with lots of fruits in red wine.

The next morning, we had the Italian breakfast in local bakery. Croissant and cappuccino. 

Without wasting time, we drove to our wishlist, Lake Como. The wedding scene in Star Wars was filmed  in one of the villa at Lake Como.

We had a full 4 course meal for lunch.

At night, we went for local pizza. They were really yummy!!! 

We finished it up by sharing a tiramisu between my hubby and I. 

Our Milan trip is more like experiencing the life of Italian, something different in our Europe trip. Love it.

Rome: The ancient and modern

On the day we were going to depart from Santorini, I was quite sad because we are going to need to walk a lot again. We had a quick lunch in McD when we stopover in Athens. I pulled some attentions when I uploaded this picture to facebook of me eating the Greek wrap. People were asking why am I eating McD in Europe trip? We had not much choice, we wanted a quick lunch and wifi so McD is a pretty good option available that time. I have not been eating fastfood for long and I had never tasted the wrap in Malaysia before so I can't comment if it tasted better or worse. 

When we arrived in Rome, it was already pretty late at about 4pm. Late in terms of going out to do visiting. But I already planned to go to Castel St Angelo for night photo shooting of the city and the weather seems pretty good so we checked in to hotel, dropped our bags and hopped on to a bus to go to our destination. We purchased Rome pass and it's a very good deal as we used the public transport and the 2 free tickets to any museums for 2days. The pass actually can last for 3 days. Lucky that we went because the scenery from the top of the building was really beautiful.

After having a good rest, the next day we went to some attractions. Throw coins into trevi fountain and you will be back to Rome soon.

Pantheon is a great architecture considering when it was build the technology was not present yet. There is a hole at the dome and rain can drop into the hall but there are some tiny holes to let the water flow out on the ground where the rain falls. In Pantheon also resides the first 2 of Italian kings remain.

The churches/basilica in Rome has this nice paintings and cravings on it's wall or ceiling.  The 2 pictures below was taken in Basilica of St. John Lateran.

Who goes to Rome without going to Colosseum? No one. We went there pretty late. It's a combo ticket which allow you to enter the Palatine Hill, Roman Forum and Colosseum all together. We used our Roma pass on this.

We waited till the night and the place was lighted up. There were a lot Indian illegal immigrants that sells things like umbrella, souvenirs, scarves and accessories. They are really versatile. When it rained, they will sell umbrella and poncho butwhen the sun came out, they will sell scarves and others. We saw some of them running when the police came and raid.

When we went to Vatican museums, we saw a lot of naked statues. There are some which has leaf covering the guys private parts. 

Look at that! They have a statue of a lady  breastfeeding her child!

All the roof are decorated with paintings and cravings.

We are not allowed to photograph in Sistine Chapel but my itchy hands took this. Micheal Angelo painted this on the ceiling!

After the walk in museums, we came out and went to St Peter Square and just sat, lazying around. We didn't go into St Peter Basilica just because we were not interested and the queue was damn long.

Here's the picture of the basilica. No, Pope didn't stand at the balcony on that day.

We had gelato and my hubby didn't know what is gelato until he sees it.

This is the lift that goes up to our hotel. Super small, it only fit 2 of us, 1 carry on and 1 checked in baggage. Imagine that!

OK that's all about Rome. I didn't have any photos on the food we ate. We always go for pasta and once pizza in a pizzaria.

Our first stop of Europe vacation: London

London is our first stop in Europe vacation plan. We arrived at quite late around 8pm in the hotel. Both of us were so tired to walk to find food. We settled in a shabby Chinese restaurant nearby not because we miss our local food but that's the only restaurant that still open at 9.30pm and is not a pub. The food was so bad that both of us can't finish half the plate. I have no intention to describe the menu or what we ordered here. Later we grabbed 5 litre water from the 24 hours convenient store and headed back to rest. 

The next morning we went to see Big Ben and the took this picture with the famous red double decker bus passing by. We walked around the area and short path along river Thames and took many pictures. The eye of London is also around there. Too bad I didn't capture anything using my phone. The weather was great in the morning, sun was great and picture looked great too. However later half of the morning the sun went into shades behind the cloud. After that the pictures that we took were more dull than earlier version. 

We went around to Westminster Abbey, St James Park and the Buckingham palace too. After fish and chips lunch at Bag O' Nails, we went over to the British National Museum. Before that, I want to say I hate London's food because I don't like fish and chips as they are fried food although the review of the restaurant looks pretty astonishing. We had great time in British Museum. The place has very wide range of artifacts ranging from Egypt, Assyria, Greek and many more. The mummies that are in this museums are more than what we see later in other museums. History is beautiful. We walked and sat when we saw bench. We did this a lot, which helps in keeping our legs and body last long for the whole day visit. 

There is a long wall which some parts of it missing and the title of the craving is Lion Hunt. I can't remember in which category did we see this, Assyria maybe. I took this particular picture because it is interesting seeing the lion which was shot by many arrows vomiting. I suspected it was meant to show the tiger vomiting blood after severely injured but does this really happen in real life? Maybe no.

I tried to capture a panorama shot of the British museum but the stupid stitching in my phone repeated the banner twice.

Later at night we went back to the Big Ben area but a different angle for night shots. It drizzled a little so I had to help holding umbrella to cover the camera and photographer when he was at work.

The next day, we went for stadium tour at Arsenal Emirates stadium, took us half of the day.

After lunch we went around to St Paul Cathedral and then to the Tower Bridge and stayed there until WL completed his night shot.

On our last day here, we spend the whole morning in British National museum. It was WL's favorite museum. It has a super huge dinosaurs remains (bones), whale, mammoth ..........

After lunch we just wanted to lazy around, so we took the subway to Harrods to have a look and go back hotel later on.  .

Both of us just wanted to rest because of the walking we did for the past few days and we were glad that our plan was going to Santorini next because there was where we rested and regained our energy before going to Rome. Rest early for the next morning flight.

Santorini ~ so beautiful

Santorini is the second destination of our Europe vacation. It is an island at the south of Greece surrounded by the Mediterranean sea. As I am typing this, I am watching the last color of the sunset on our last day here. Weeliem is still busy taking another sunset photos at different location from yesterday and the day before. We are in oia, the best spot for the sunset view. We stay here exactly close to the sunset view and the famous traditional oia house in white architecture and blue round roof for the chapel.

The ultimate objective of this vacation here is relax. That's why we stay in our room most of the time over looking the Caldera, houses and blue sea. We went to fira town yesterday for a short visit and had lunch at this restaurant called salt and pepper. The lady boss seems intimidating in the beginning as she didn't smile and very stern in her voice. Or maybe it is the way people talk here as in the restaurant that we patronized, we heard the waiter and waitress telling customer to sit aside not at the terrace if they don't order food. We had seen some people just left when were told that and some stayed. Another one was asking to change seat but the restaurant didn't let him to as it is too taxing is everyone is requesting the same.

Ok, aside from that we love the food here. Tasty and rich but I realize I don't like Greek salad because of some ingredients like olive and another pickled type of ingredient.

Here's some pictures.

Bali 2011

This trip was planned a year back, so we didn't know what kind of work schedule we might be facing. There was a lot to plan, backup and find coverage because I had so much leftover work that was half done and critical milestone so coincidently pushed till my vacation time. Bali will be our final vacation before we rest for quite sometime until we can go for next one.

We had a 6 days 5 nights Bali vacation. Though 6 days sounds like very long, the real time we spent touring and visiting was only 4 days. The first and last day were merely for departure and arrival only. We reached Bali at around 9pm on first day and met our driver Made. He was supposed to be Wayan! and they just exchanged the driver like that without telling us upfront. Anyway Made didn't talk much and we like him that way. To say the truth I prefer to rest and not talk much if we are travelling in car because I have car sickness most of the time. In Bali, everyone of Hindu descendent was born and given a standard name. If you are a boy and the first child, your name is Wayan. Second boy, Made. Third boy, Nyoman and the fourth boy, Ketut. Just shout Wayan on the street, there might 100 people respond to your call. We like Made because he helped us buy domestic entrance fee for GWK park which was only half the price for foreigner and told us to tell the restaurant in Jimbaran to give us 10% discount. So we gave him quite a sum of tips when we left Bali on the last day.

We stayed in Ubud for the first 3 nights because most of the attraction that we planned to sightseeing is around this area at the east-north of Bali.

We started out next day by visiting Tegalalang rice terrace in Ubud. It was a short sightseeing with just a couple of photos because there are nothing else there. I bought a sarong for quite expensive price RP40k because I didn't know the price yet. Later when we visited the market, I realised I can probably got it at RP10k :) Anyway, it's fine since RP40k translated to RM is around RM15. Just for your information, anything in Bali , bargain the price down to 30% of the original price they quote you! If the opening price is RP100k, buy only if it's reduced to RP30k.



After this we went to Kintamani and had lunch in one of the restaurant facing Mt Batur, the volcanic mountain in Bali. The lunch buffet priced at RP60k per pax excluding drinks. Bear in mind that all the restaurant in Bali will charge 15% tax on top of your total bill. At the hill road, there are guards that will stop you and ask you to pay some kind of entrance fee. They charged us RP25k which I think is kind of expensive because when I read in internet about this, some people mentioned that the guard charged them for RP3.5k per pax. Anyway, I don't trust the price in the internet anymore because all the entrace fee is increased now. Those are price for 2 years back.



The weather is cooling in Ubud, compared to Kuta and Nusa Dua feel something like in Cameron Highland. I like. After lunch we visited temples! Yes temples, Bali has so many temples and every Hindu home has a temple as well.

We went to Tirta Empul, this is the place where you can bath in the pool of holy water. Entrace fee is RP15k per pax. I think it's a waste for ladies to visit Bali if they are having period because they cannot enter all the temples.



They have this kind of door everywhere in Ubud.






After that we visited Gunung Kawi, entrance fee RP15k per pax. I don't like this place because we have to walk so much of stairs and it was the most tiring places I ever been to Bali before we can see this. Luckily I brought along my pink umbrella I got from Taiwan to Bali, the sun was pretty strong in the afternoon. I think I will get sun stroke and bad sun burn without umbrella and sun lotion.



The next place was Goa Gajah, the worst place and need to pay entrance fee RP15k. There was basically nothing in the this Goa Gajah , just a wall of some statues. We didn't even take picture with the wall. :p I feel that Bali is over rated because it is swarmed by all westerners.



Before dinner time we didn't have anything to do so we requested Made to stop at paddy field for us to take some photos. There are so many paddy fields in Ubud, they are everywhere.



Dinner time! We were back near the place where we stayed. The famous Bebek Begil Dirty Duck Diner is just 5 minutes walk from our hotel so we told Made to just drop us there and we will walk back hotel by ourselves afterward.


Some night photo taken by Weeliem when we were walking back hotel after dinner.


The next morning, around 6.30am we woke up and walked back to the same restaurant because it was facing paddy fields as well and took some sunrise photos. Sun rises around 6.30am to 7am in Bali. By 8am, the sun is already too strong for nice photos.



Around 11am, Made picked us up and we went to do some shopping in the market opposite Ubud Palace. I like this market because things that are sold here are more customized in everyshop, like a shop which only sells painting, a shop which only sells woven product etc. It is not like one shop which sells all sort of product from all kind of suppliers. We bought some souvenirs from here and luckily we got something because in the last 2 days Weeliem had food poisoning and we didn't go out much anymore.

We had the famous Ibu Oka babi guling for lunch just opposite the other side of Ubud palace.


Then we went to visit Pura Taman Ayun at Mengwi. Pura means temple.


We negotiated with Made to bring us to GitGit Twin Waterfall because he insisted of charging us extra RP100k if we want to go there. Entrance fee RP5k per pax Almost all westerners took off their clothes and threw themselves with bikini into the waterfall because the water is so cooling. Too bad, we didn't plan for dipping.


The last place we went before ending the day trip was Ulu Danu at Lake Beratan in Bedugul. Entrance fee RP10k per pax. It is a very picturesque place for photography. Weeliem didn't waste the time when sunlight peep ofrom the cloud and took some beautiful photos.


We asked Made to stop again on the way back to Ubud and took some nice paddy field photos during sunset, around 6pm.


We had pork rib dinner at Nuri's Warung.

The next morning we went to Sukawati for another round of shopping but as I said prefer the market opposite Ubud Palace. Sukawati is just a place where they have 100+ of stalls seling the same thing every stall and the people keep pulling you although you are not interested to see anything. I only bought a simple dress from here.

The best hotel we stayed in Bali in Courtyard by Marriott at Nusa Dua. We checked in after had Jawa food for lunch in Kuta. Too bad we only can stay here for one night. Weeliem redeemed this from his Marriott points, just like how I redeemed my 3 days in Marriott hotel in Singapore last year.


The security is very tight in Nusa Dua because there are so many foreigners staying there and the hotel rate is expensive. There are dogs to sniff our car and we have to scan all our bags and body before entering the hotel. After some wow and wows in the hotel, we proceed with our sightseeing activity. We went to Dreamland the new Kuta beach which is popular for surfing.


Later we visited Uluwatu, the temple on the cliff. Entrance fee at RP3k per pax.




I really hate this place because there are so many monkeys around trying to steal things. I think they are trained by the local to steal tourist's belonging and help them to get back by paying RP5k. Weeliem's glasses was stolen when he was busy snapping photos. We didn't know where the monkey ran to so we cannot get the glasses back. Pity him that he cannot see well after that. I gave my glasses to him so he can wear the next day until we are back to Malaysia. I hold a stick on my hand but one of the monkey came and tried to pull my flipflop from my right foot when I was standing! I used all my strength to pull back my flipflop and I took my stick and scared the monkey away. My scream alerted many tourists there but they didn't know what made me scream because my things are all intact :P

We watched the Kecak dance in Uluwatu as well priced at RP70k per pax.

We asked Made to drove us to Jimbaran for grilled seafood dinner on the beach. The food was good and we got our 10% discount. Everything was great until we were back to hotel. Weeliem had diarrhea and bad abdomen cramping and he even had fever. We gave him paracetamol, drank a glass of eno and chinese traditional diarrhea medicine that we brought along to our vacation. Luckily we have the practice to always bring medicine when we go for holiday. His fever wasn't subdue the next day so we asked Made to stop at pharmacy and we got some real diarrhea medicines and hydration salt.

So the last trip day we only managed to visit 2 places, which is the Garuda Wisnu Kencana park after we checked in to another hotel in Kuta which is basically has nothing in there except for a garuda and wishnu statue. Fee needed RP50k.

Later on we visited Tanah Lot and that concluded our Bali vacation!


Forgot to mention that I threw up the spot we stop in front of Tanah Lot entrance because the ride to there was so tough. The road, the sudden stop, the traffic... horrible.

The next day we were so relieved that we are flying home. I miss home so much and my home cooked food.