Round the World with Mick

Please see http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaellar/ for photos.

After a tour of Genoa with Vilija, including seeing the 'interesting' sculpture at the port I headed off the next day to Brescia to stay with Marco.

Brescia is halfway between Milan and Venice and is a beautiful little town. Brescia experienced the most Australians ever when 3 of us congregated for Marco's bday weekend celebrations.

On the weekend Marco, Jacqui (a friend of Marco's from WEHI who is currently Post Doc'ing in Paris at the Pasteur) and I went to Verona where we visited Juliet's 'balcony' and had some awesome Gelati. On the way back we stopped in at Desenzano, a beautiful little town on Lake Garda. It was definitely the cocktail hour so we had some aperitifs before heading home for Marco's feast. We had enough cheese to make an entire army feel unwell followed by Marco's pork sausage cream pasta. mmmmmm. pork sausage.

The following day we escorted Jacqui in to Milan to catch her plane back to Milan. Marco and I hung around and purchased him a beautiful jacket (see picture later with lamingtons) and visited Il Duomo of Milan. It was fairly awesome. By far my favourite Il Duomo.

The next day I took myself off to Venice which was very niiiiice. Had some lovely weather and toddled around enjoying the sites. Particularly enjoyed the Basilica San Marco. I'm quite convinced that Saint Marco Evangelista (for whom Marco was named) must have had something to do with cooking because I arrived home to more homemade delights from Marco. We then set about making lamingtons (using Italian teacake instead of sponge to cut time) for Marco's lab. We also made fairy bread in the morning and Marco took Vegemite to torture the Italians with.

On my final day in Italy I wandered around Brescia and then headed to Bergamo (an outer city of Milan) which is an ancient high city. You arrive on the train in the 'new' city and you catch a tram up the hill to the old high city. It was very very beautiful and there were some lovely sights to see. I narrowly avoided being attacked by pigeons whilst eating my lunch of Bergamo specialy ravioli. Of course I had a gelati chaser....

I was very sorry to farewell Marco on Wed morning - I had a great time sharing his birthday and his house. But I was off to visit Oli in Manchester.....

A final Ciao Ciao from Italia.