When an airline pulls out of a route it merely opens up the market for another, and who can blame Aer Lingus for putting their hands up?
While recognising the challenges for everyone in the aviation industry, our national airline carrier was quick to flag up its product in the wake of the Norwegian news.
Aer Lingus, as we all know, has 16 direct routes to North America.
With Mineapolis-St Paul the latest to arrive on the rank.
And while it is something of sport to diss them probably because they represent the institution.
Crackin’ city: Philadelphia
But I’ve been more than a happy flyer with them, particularly when they moved me when a poor lady was sick next to me half an hour into our flight to LAX.
And they arranged a wheelchair for her on her arrival in Los Angeles.
Aer Lingus flies Dublin to LA from €209, a one-way fare based on a return trip. Valid for travel between October and November.
And at the other end of the scale is Dublin to Philadelphia from €139 and Dublin and Shannon to New York from €149.
As calling cards go it does the job – simple, functional and just what is needed if your stock painting will be halos.
With a swish and a brush of red paint Giotto di Bondone had announced himself to the Papal envoy with his freehand circle.
And within a few years he would announce himself to the world with his magnum opus.
His fresco in 1305 in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padova would in turn inspire Michelangelo when he came to adorn the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel.
For all of us who have attempted a still life and ended up with an egg in a basket of fruit instead of an orange you will know how difficult it is to draw the perfect circle.
But only perfect circles would do as Giotto’s patron Enrico Scrovegni had let his halo slip and needed a grand gesture.
To gain absolution and enter through the gates of heaven.
Enrico’s crime was usury – charging excessive interest on loans.
A crime so serious that it resulted in the banker being damned the fires of Hell.
Worth a shot in Ireland.
Rather than appealing straight to Our Lord, though, Scrovegni had the bright idea of asking Jesus’s mother to intercede on his behalf.
Mary cradles Christ
And then dedicated the chapel and the frescoes to her life with a celebration of her role in human salvation.
And just to leave nobody in any doubt of his devotion he had Giotto paint him into the main scene.
Presenting a model of the chapel to her in the fresco The Last Judgment.
The Scrovegni Chapel is Padova’s calling card but it is only a hint of a more expansive canvas.
I am in Padova (Padua), 38km west of Venice in the Veneto region and 209kms from Milan.
St Anthony’s Basilica
As well as looking upwards – Padova is the City of Frescoes – it looks outwards.
It has been home to the Venetians, French and Austro-Hungarians over the last millennium and embraced all their influences.
Today it is looking westwards which is where we Irish probably come in.
But more immediately to Milan’s Expo 2015, a showcase for feeding the planet and energy for life.
Padova has a rich history of doing both.
The Brenta River which leads right down to the Grand Canal teems with life.
While the Venetian Plain attracted the mariners of that great city to avail of its rich agriculture.
And build grand villas and palaces to entertain dignitaries.
It is also home to the oldest botanical gardens in the world.
On this trip, we will get to witness all of this.
But today it’s Sunday so Church and a visit to the Basilica of St Anthony of Padova.
The Piazza dei Signori
Yes, that St Anthony, the one who helps you – for some coins in his charity box – to find your keys,
St Anthony we are told has a wider reach than just those objects that fall out of your rucksacks and handbags.
He is also the patron saint of people who have lost their way in life or lost or fear losing something or someone close to them.
St Anthony’s bones are kept in an altar tomb in the basilica and people pass it in veneration, touching the side.
Which is adorned with photos of their loved ones.
A little bit more of St Anthony
The image of a young man, his head bowed and his hand placed on the side in silent invocation was truly moving.
I have to confess that this simple devotion touched me more than the veneration to St Anthony’s tongue and the bottom of his teeth in elaborate gold reliquaries further up the church.
The story goes that when St Anthony’s body was exhumed his tongue was still moist in recognition of his great preaching prowess.
So the Padovans decided to place it on show for veneration.
St Anthony hailed from Lisbon, but had he been Italian then you’d have to think his hands would have been on display.
Water, water everywhere
They are a famously expressive people, the Italians.
And while in the big cities there is less of a willingness to indulge those who wish to try out their Italian.
I found the Padovans and, in particular, our guide Mariaclaudia charmingly engaging.
Perhaps it is because this is a university city but not just any old university city, among the top ten oldest in the world.
And where Galileo taught.
Naturally the statue to him which is among 78 in the Isola Memmia in the Prato della Valle portrays him with his hands outstretched.
It is also where the first woman anywhere in the world graduated.
Piazza special
An inclusive place then and one where you can, if you don’t have two left feet like your writer, get up to dance the tango.
With dozens of other Padovans in the piazza at night.
The Villa Pisani
Perhaps with another glass of Venetian Spritz – the local speciality of Aperol (think Campari), Prosecco and mineral water.
Well, next time.
My own personal foodie
A word on the food and drink.
I had the good fortune to have accomplished Travel writer, food expert and bon viveur Peter on our trip.
I’m insisting that he come on all my future expeditions with me.
To describe in erudite fashion how good the likes of regional favourite Risi e bisi is.
A merely English translation as rice and peas clearly doesn’t do it justice.
So it’s best left in Italian.
A work of art on a plate
I’m sure other restaurants do Risi e bisi just as well as Taverna degli Artisti but my dish came at the end of an enchanting visit to Cittadella.
It is a 13th Century walled city which stands 14-16ft high and 4,793ft around.
Taverna degli Artisti stands opposite the quaint old we entered behind a market stall.
And through what looked like a lock-up door.
A treasure more memorable because it feels hidden away.
A touch of colour
There is nothing shy and retiring though about the baroque Villa Pisani in Stra on the banks of the Brenta.
Built by Alvise Pisani, the 114th Doge, or leader, of Venice in 1735, there would be 114 rooms.
Villa thriller
With frescoes of gods and men and women living and loving lustily.
With vino flowing as copiously as the water on the nearby Brenta.
And without the dams that that river employs to hold it back.
In the pink
Pride of place in the villa is Napoleon Bonaparte’s bedroom – the little general bought it in 1806.
Bony’s bed
Bony’s bedroom is surrounded by empirical emblems and deliberately is the first the sun hits in the morning.
Not to be outdone, Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler met here in Villa Pisani for the first time.
One imagines there must have been a fight to get Bony’s bed.
The Villa Pisani comes with its very own maze, the Labyrinth of Love.
Where we are told a young cloaked woman would stand in the centre at the top of a spiral staircase.
Amazing maze
She was, of course, the prize for the man who managed to wend his way through the maze.
There is no historical record that Bony, Benito or Adolf burrowed their way manically through the maze.
But you would imagine that like us, they did.
We can only assume too that the young woman was on a day off when we visited!
But anyway it was time to get back on our burchiello – or boat.
As we skirted along the river at a gentle pace, gurgling wine and scoffing hors d’oeuvres we feel like those nobles of old.
Energy of the water
We are informed that many of the villas along the banks are also richly blessed but lie empty, still needing to be renovated.
It is a theme that keeps recurring: that the Italians, having finished what they had set out to build during the Renaissance packed up early.
And laid back and enjoyed the fruits of their labour.
So with dragonflies gently skimming along the water by our side I contemplate how the energy of life sometimes has to come in great rushes.
But it is often best captured in quiet moments and in water colours.
A gondola by the banks suggests Venice is drawing nearer but that is for another time.
Merchant of Menace
And besides the Brenta boat voyage runs both ways and it was inland to Padova and its environs that the Venetians, after all, came for their pleasure and sustenance.
So, who am I to argue?
Travel facts
How to get there: Aer Lingus flies to Venice on Fridays, returning Sundays.
Package: The Only Weekend Padova option offers a double room in the central Hotel Europa which offers a comfy night’s stay, a balcony and breakfast. For two nights at €155.
Besides free admission the Padova Card www.padovacard.it also provides discounts on attractions and allows visitors to use urban transit buses for free.
This article was first published in the Irish Daily Mail.
A man goes into the doctor: ‘Doctor, I feel like an Italian island,’ Doctor: ‘Don’t be Sicily.’
Dramatic: Sicily Photo by Mauro Reem-Itchy on Pexels.com
You obviously need more than a morning and afternoon to spend in Sicily but alas that is all we had on our day trip from Malta.
Of course we could easily put that right with award-winning Italian holiday specialIsts Topflight.
Their Italian sale is up and running from today with savings of up to 30%.
There are discounts for the remaining summer season (August – October) on every date across all their featured resorts including on a selection of family holiday options.
There is also a raft of Italian escorted tour experiences on sale.
Topflight’s Italian Holiday Sale offers holidays from Dublin, Cork & Belfast. It ends at midnight on Thursday, 15th August.
As a sample, Topflight offers seven days in Sicily on August 24, staying in the 3* Villa Linda (B&B), Giardini Naxos was €871 now €599pps.
Or leaving on the same day, 4* plus RG Naxos (B&B), Giardini Naxos was €1255 now €869pps
And from Cork why not try out Lake Garda? Seven nights departing August 17 and staying at the 3* plus Hotel Garda Bellevue (H/B) was €1037 now €699pps.
With savings of up to €850 per person on seven night stays at Casa de Campo for travel completed by November 6, if booked by August 31.
The offer means that your holiday will cost from €1,509pp.
Among the features are 50% off access to three championship golf courses; 20% off Spa treatments pp.
You’ll have complimentary non-motorised water sports, tennis, horse riding, golf cart and teen-only activities, including billiards tournaments, air hockey and movie nights.
Based on two sharing on all-inclusive basis and including flights from Dublin and transfers.
Licence to chill
Toe the line: Hemingway’s six-toed cats
It’s obligatory as a Scot (and many others) to say that Sean Connery was the best James Bond but I’ve always been different and like my own childhood Bond, Roger Moore.
Pearse Brosnan is the best modern-day Bond while Timothy Dalton is the most underrated. Daniel Craig? Pat!
This year is the 30th anniversary of one of the best Bond films, Dalton’s Licence to Thrill when Bond went rogue.
The opening scene takes place on the Seven Mile Bridge with other segments filmed at Key West International Airport and on Whitehead Street at the Key West Lighthouse and Ernest Hemingway Home & Museum.
Pappa Hemingway is a template for journalists, and not just his adventurous life.
And he was also a cat man.
He had a penchant for polydactyl cats. That’s six-toed cats. Check out the 40-50 polydactyl cats who live on-site.
Aer Lingus flies to Miami. Visit www.aerlingus.com. We found a return trip Dublin to Miami from €457.63.
See you in Tenerife
Old fishing boat at the Mirador de El Archipenque. La Gomera island in the distance
I’m counting down the days to my trip to Tenerife in September.
Travel Department has a Tenerife Coast & Cuntry seven-night full-board guided holiday.
Excursions will include a full-day guided tour of the highlights of the island, a trip to the UNESCO World Heritage colonial city of La Laguna and a visit to Mount Teide National Park.
Prices start from €659pp for seven nights including return flights, full-board 4* hotel accommodation, all transfers and fully-guided excursions with an expert local guide, departing regularly from September – November 2019.
I always associate the Shelbourne Hotel with travel functions and balmy summer nights.
The iconic Dublin hotel are billing their latest package as The Shelbourne Swan Song.
It is a special occasion but you deserve it.
Running from August 18 until September 5 it’s an an overnight stay that includes breakfast and a Summer Spritz cocktail on their new Terrace for €299 for two people sharing.
It’s only 137 days until Christmas and Santa and TUI are getting ready.
TUI will fly you out and back to Lapland on the same day with departures from Dublin on December 7 and 14.
All guides, visits to Santa and outdoor activities like sledging and snowmobiling are included.
All your thermal wear is included in our winter wonderland too; just bring your normal warm day clothes to wear underneath and you’ll be toasty and warm.
Rome wasn’t built in a day… if it was there wouldn’t be so much to enjoy.
But if you’ve only got one day and maybe the next morning then what to see and what to miss out?
An how to do it for less than €50 spending money.
Obviously you have to sleep somewhere, and I do recommend the welcoming and economical Hotel Trastevere although remember there’s a €4 a night city tax.
Walk the walk
Of GodS and Men
It’s free and it’s fun to people watch, window shop, and you can take pictures at your leisure.
You’ll also come upon piazzas you wouldn’t if you were on a public or hop-on, hop-off bus.
Eat al fresco
Step this way: The Spanish Steps in Rome
You’ll pay for the privilege of eating and drinking near St Peter’s Square and the Trevi Fountain.
Instead grab a pezzo (a slice of pizza) on the go for about €3 andfill your water bottles from the ornate water taps that proliferate around the city.
Rather than buy it from the shops.
Or just go into a grocery, or supermarket, and buy a picnic of bread, cold meats and fruit for about a fiver.
You’ll get a decent bottle of wine for about the same (there’s also the Campo di Fiore food market for a more authentic experience).
Book an audience with the Pope. It’s Mass but he plays to the gallery and the backdrop of St Peter’s can’t be beaten.
It you can’t get an audience, you need to book in advance, then attend Mass in St Paul’s Basilica – you’ll be in there anyway.
Or any of the churches in the city. They double as art galleries.
Other frescoes
Look up: The Pantheon in Rome. Photo by Kyle Killam on Pexels.com
The Sistine Chapel is a true wonderful work of art but frescoes can only really be enjoyed if you’ve got time, space and quiet.
Besides every church in Rome has a stunning fresco.
The best fresco, of course, is in the Pantheon, the 7.8m diameter hole in the dome,.
Because God made the view.
It changes every day.
When it rains on Rome, stop whatever you’re doing and rush to the Pantheon.
Spend a penny at the Trevi Fountain
Water, water everywhere: At the Trevi Fountain, Rome
No, not that penny, although I can recommend the toilets in the oh-so English Barrington Tea Room, near to the Spanish Steps.
Byron, Keats and Shelley all lived around here.
More Babington Wee Room, if you like.
No, spend a penny by throwing one over your shoulder into the Trevi Fountain.
It’s a cliche and a superstition but it’s everything that people say it is.,
Of course, they know you’ll come back to Rome.. how could you stay away?
This way: There’s no shortage of statues in Rome
Skull and bones
When you’ve seen everything else – and definitely make time for the Castel Sant’Angelo (€10.50) next to St Peter’s Square where rich Papal history was played out.
And it also adorns the walls.
Before you head for the Capuchin Crypt (€8.50), Piazza Belerini, and join the monks at prayer.
I walked pas a real-live Capuchin monk on my way in before being reintroduce to some real dead ones.
You know, the 3,700 whose skulls and bones were used to build the Crypt’s four chapels.
There’s even a clock made out of a monk’s bones, although the twist is it doesn’t have hands.
Time stands still in here. But not for us.
They have left us a message: ‘What you are now, we used to be. What we are now, you will be.’
Que sera, sera!
Save your money
King of the Castel: At the Castel Sant’Angelo
€10.50: Castel Sant’Angelo. €8.50: Capuchin Crypt. €5: Picnic or pezzo (€3 and €2 for a Peroni beer). €5: Bottle of wine. €1: Souvenir fridge magnet (it’ll cost you much more at the airport). €0.50: For the Trevi Fountain. Listen, it can be a one-set bit, but I’m just keeping it at a nice round number. €7: For an al fresco spaghetti carbonara (it’s a local Roman specialty) deal with Peroni in Trastevere. €2.50: For sweeties for the family/work… they’ll suss out though if it slips your mind and you try to bluff it and get Haribos back home. €10: For the disfigured and displaced around St Peter’s Square…. they deserve it. = €50.
Travel Facts: Flights: Aer Lingus and Ryanair both fly to Rome. Visit http://www.aerlingus.comwww.aerlingus.com.com and www.ryanair.com for best offers. Where to stay: I found Hotel Trastevere, Via Luciano Manara 24A, Trastevere on www.booking.com with a 15% reduction, down from €121 to €103. I spent the day and night at the end of a Via Francigena pilgrimage, 100kms from Viterbo into Rome with www.ViaFrancigena.com
I found an economy return for the sample dates of August 31-September 7 from €321.04.
Now I’m a big fan of Kimpton boutique hotels and LOVED the La Peer Hotel in West Hollywood just up from Huntington Beach. Visit http://www.lapeerhotel.com
I’ve been lucky enough to eat and drink in some fabulous restaurants, in equally stunning locations.
Doing what I do, travelling the globe…. FOR YOU.
But I’ve also enjoyed the comfort food which is often seen as the poor cousin, often disowned altogether by the foodie family, that I’ve encountered along the way.
And the people who serve it and with whom I have got to break bread.
In this weekly series I’ll celebrate both haute cuisine and hot cuisine, Bolly and Buds and everything in between.
First off let’s clink glasses and say Prost… and remember to look into each others’ eyes!
Germany: And the greatest beerfest of them all, the Oktoberfest, where a sallow youth found himself in the company of a busload of Aussies and Kiwis.
Four of us had arranged to go but three dropped out because they couldn’t raise the money leaving this early version of Bandanaman on his own on a coach with said Antipodeans.
Above is breakfast.
Each of us had to make brekkie of a morning on the bus which had a kitchen and seats that turned into beds… and our Kiwi legend Rambo, far right (he usually wore a scarf around his head which immediately endeared himself to me) dispensed with bacon, sausage and eggs and went straight to the schnapps.
I’ll have the one of the left. Photo by ELEVATE on Pexels.com
Being raised on fizzy Scottish lager (Tennent’s hide your head in shame) I wasn’t ready for the real stuff, the Lowenbrau and the Hofbrau, the quantity of a stein, or their halls or their schnapps chasers. And it went straight to my head.
On your typical Oktoberfest day http://www.oktoberfest.de/en, and this year it runs from September 21-October 6, half a beerhall will chant Aussie and the other half Kiwi.
So being of the Scottish variety I wanted to redress the balance and climbed onto the bandstand past Gretchen and Greta who were carrying half a dozen beers on their breasts. Where I duly interrupted the oompah band to sing My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.
My Bonnie might but my body soon lay over the front entrance of the Lowenbrau.
More time to look around the Beerfest and try their half chickens on a spit and their sauerkraut. Best not after a rollercoaster ride though.
Barred from that hall I tried the Hofbrau the following year after the football at Bayern Munich’s old ground and did what no man should do, sober or drunk, and tried to split up two women fighting.
I’m sticking to my story that it was her boyfriend who thumped me on the nose. I was outta there and half an hour later in the hospital.
You’ll compile a book of tales from your Oktoberfest and I will return to the glass boot game, Hexengeist burning flame schnapps and why you should never drink and sled and much, much more. And the Aussies who set up Earl’s Court in my Aberdeen student pad.
But for now Prost… oh, bring back my Bonnie to me!
*I’ve only just got started here so watch out for specialist foreign dishes and restaurants and my Jocktails… bet you didn’t know that about me… or The Scary One?
They’re on many a holiday itinerary and group activity and I’ve probably racked up more castles in my 53 years than Richard the Lionheart, and a fair few racks too! I’ll kick of this series where Robert the Bruce’s nephew Thomas Randolph kicked out the English.
Edinburgh Castle
A couple of Scottish laddies: Early Bandanaman and his pal Peter
It’s the castle I know best… we’d take every visitor through there from Glasgow when I was a child and as an adult I worked on the same street, the Royal Mile.
Hewn from volcanic rock , it has been inhabited since the Iron Age and was a royal residence of Scottish monarchs from the 12th to the 17th Century.
A couple of Scottish soldiers: We’re actually well hard
At the heart of many of the pivotal moments in Scottish history it was besieged 26 times in its 1100-year history, making it one of the most attacked garrisons in the world although today it’s mainly Americans and Asians wielding cameras.
Just in case there’s another siege, although it’s really for ceremonial reasons, at 1pm every day they fire a gun ‘The One O’Clock Gun’ from a cannon (don’t worry, it’s not live ammo).
Also home to the Edinburgh Military Tattoo. No, the battalions don’t show off their conquests on their arms, that’s what they call a massed display of miltary bands. If you like kilties and the swirl of the pipes this is for you. Starting Friday, it runs to August 24.
