Weekly Photo Challenge: Change

Foreign Currency:

The euro is useful because it has simplified travel to Europe but I miss the old pre-euro currencies. To have a wallet full of romantic and exciting sounding notes made you feel like a true international traveller. I liked the French franc and the Spanish peseta and the Greek drachma of course but my absolute favourite was the Italian lira simply because you just got so many.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Home

Nice to be Away, Sometimes Even Nicer to get Back Home:

Conditions were really bad and things didn’t look good and the ferry was finding it difficult to even get out of the harbour but when it did then matters took a turn for the worse.  Officially, according to the Beaufort Scale, in a force seven, sea heaps up and white foam from breaking waves begins to be blown in streaks along the direction of the wind.  Well, it was certainly heaping up today and spray was coming up over the sides and once outside the protective walls of the harbour the ferry started to bob about like a helpless cork.

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Weekly Photo Challenge: Beyond

Beyond The Call of Duty…

The Medal of Honor is the United States of America’s highest military medal that is awarded for personal acts of valour above and beyond the call of duty.

The route to Le Touquet took us towards the old fishing town of Étaples on the river Canche and just outside the town we stopped to visit the largest Commonwealth War Graves site in France where nearly twelve thousand soldiers are buried.

Because of its strategic position Étaples was the scene of much Allied activity during World War One due to its safety from attack by enemy land forces and the existence of railway connections with both the northern and southern battlefields. The town was home to sixteen hospitals and a convalescent depot, in addition to a number of reinforcement camps for Commonwealth soldiers and general barracks for the French Army.  By all accounts this was a truly dreadful place and most soldiers buried in the cemetery died after treatment in the hospitals.  It is said that after two weeks, many of the wounded would rather return to the front with unhealed wounds rather than remain at Étaples.

It was also a particularly notorious base camp for those on their way to the front. Under atrocious conditions, both raw recruits and battle-weary veterans were subjected to intensive training in gas warfare, bayonet drill, and long sessions of marching at the double across the dunes.  There was resentment against the officers who enjoyed the better conditions of Le Touquet and from which the men were forbidden to visit and this led to a famous mutiny in September 1917 which was brutally repressed.

Apart from the solemn rows of white headstones there was no reminder of this unpleasantness today as we entered the cemetery through the impressive memorial designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and walked through the carefully tended graves.  I had never visited a war graves site before and it was poignant to read the inscriptions on the graves and sad to see how young so many of them were who never returned to England.  My granddaughter ran and skipped through the rows of graves and I was struck by the fact that she could only do this because of the ultimate sacrifices made by all these men.

 

P&O Mini-Cruise, Holland or the Netherlands?

I slept well for most of the crossing but woke early with a digestive system groaning under the weight of the unexpected quantity of food that I had forced into it at the eat all you can buffet and then at six o’clock there was a collective early morning alarm call over the ship’s public address system that announced that the ferry would dock in two hours time.

The ship was approaching Europoort which is an area of the Port of Rotterdam, the second largest city in the country, conveniently situated at the mouth of the rivers Rhine and Meuse and a network of delta channels.  With a hinterland consisting of the Netherlands, Germany, Belgium and part of France, Europoort is by certain measures the World’s busiest port and its strategic location on the North Sea and at the heart of a massive rail, road, air and inland waterway distribution system extending throughout Europe is the reason that Rotterdam is often called the ‘Gateway to Europe’.

After an unnecessary breakfast of last night’s stolen food that was tasty but only added to the heavy burden in my stomach there was an undignified charge to be among the first to disembark and negotiate passport control and customs before emerging into a car park and a line of coaches waiting to transfer us to Rotterdam.

Now we were in Holland, or were we? because for an outsider it seems that there is some confusion about the name of the country and although we tend to call it Holland it is in fact correctly known as the Netherlands.  Holland is a region in the western part of the Netherlands and although the term is frequently used to refer to the whole of the country this is accepted reluctantly by many Dutch people in the other parts of the Netherlands who resent the mistake.

To make it even more confusing for a visitor, Holland is divided into two, North and South and are actually only two of the country’s twelve provinces. Oh, and North Holland isn’t generally called North Holland anymore – just Holland!

It seems that this is a bit of a touchy issue for many people both outside and inside the historic Holland. For some people it’s just plain silly to use an unofficial name for a country, while for others it’s completely insulting.

The Netherlands is an artificially created country mainly as a consequence of its geographical position on the major European political fault line that more or less follows the Rhine and separates France from Germany.  It includes the independent states of the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland which are collectively a legacy of the old independent European state of Burgundy which ultimately failed to survive because of its vulnerable position lying as it did between the states of France and Germany (although not existing as we know it today until 1871) which from the fourteenth century onwards were always grinding horribly against each other.  It has been created out of several provinces with little more in common than more or less related languages.

The Netherlands has always been made up of many different native cultures, many of which proudly exist even today despite ages of repression. Several of these cultures cover areas that extend well over the national borders and many Dutch people have a lot more in common with their neighbours in Germany or Belgium than they do with their compatriots in other parts of their country.

This is a very varied country, and for many people the word Holland is an insult when used in the wrong context.  I made a mental note to be careful about this but considered it interesting that the Netherlands Tourist information website is called www.holland.com.

Between the tenth and sixteenth centuries, Holland proper was a unified political region, a county ruled by the Count of Holland and by the seventeenth century had risen to become a maritime and economic power, dominating the other provinces of the Dutch Republic.  The province of South Holland as it is today has its origins in the period of French rule from 1795 to 1813 at a time of bewildering changes to the Dutch system of provinces which has more or less with a few later tinkerings shaped the modern Netherlands that we know today.

The coach left the car park and leaving the rather bleak and unattractive port area entered a confusing motorway system and soon ran into heavy Wednesday morning traffic and this shouldn’t have surprised us because the Europoort area is very heavily industrialised with petrochemical refineries and storage tanks, bulk iron ore and coal handling as well as container and new motor vehicle terminals and we crawled past the stark industrial landscape and the forest of wind turbines at an agonisingly slow pace.

South Holland is one of the most densely populated and industrialised areas in the world. With a population of over three and a half million and an area of only three and a half thousand square kilometres the province has the highest population density in the Netherlands, which itself (except for tiny Malta, which seems to have an awful lot of people living on it) has the highest population density in the European Union.

As a consequence traffic congestion is common and the busiest Dutch motorway just happens to be the A16 in Rotterdam so we just had to grin and bear it as the coach made slow progress towards our destination across unremarkable landscape of low lying rain-saturated fields criss-crossed by a network of drainage dykes and a few infrequent sightings of the windmills that we incorrectly but romantically continue to associate with the country.

The coach driver ran through a well rehearsed list of do’s and don’ts peppered with little quips – my favourite being an instruction not to stand up in the on-board toilet when taking a pee as this results in a waterlogged cubicle and then he settled down for the forty-minute drive to Rotterdam.  When we arrived he ran through some useful information and he had plenty of time for this because there was a huge traffic jam all along the main roads and before we got off the bus he reminded us that traffic drives on the right hand side of the road in the Netherlands and to be careful getting off or else instead of sightseeing in Rotterdam we would be in hospital instead.

Review of the Year 2012

Please excuse me a self-indulgent blog to begin the new year.  The top ten most hit blog pages in 2012 on my Travel Blog have mostly surprised me but then I don’t understand how search engines work.  I say hit blog pages rather than read because I am neither conceited enough of sufficiently naive to claim that a hit equals a read.

In 2011 the blog recorded 151,493 hits and the upward trend continued until May when there were 17,845 in one month and I was optimistic that this number was just going to keep going up but then it stopped and fell back and has never recovered.  I have finished the year with 170,900 hits which is an increase of 13%.

A reason for this may be that I have been removing old posts and archiving them in a separate blog called ‘Another Bag, More Travel’.  The main blog was running out of space so being a skinflint and not wanting to pay for extra space this was my cunning solution.  This blog has recorded 43,600 hits so if I add them together then the annual increase on my travel blog pages is increased to 43% which is much more respectable.

This however is nowhere near as good as performance on my memories blog ‘New Light through Old Windows’ which has increased by 84% from 100,671 views in 2011 to 185,700 in 2012.

These are the Top Ten blogs of 2012:

No. 1 (for the second year running)

Norway, Haugesund and the Vikings.  

I travelled to Haugesund in January 2011 and visited a Viking monument and blogged about it.  This post has had 14,755 hits which is over 10,000 more than the post in second place.  Over 9,000 hits have been recorded from the single word ‘Vikings’ in various search engines!  I have concluded that this is because there are a lot of people using the search engines to find content about the Minnesota Vikings American Football Team and they are probably disappointed when they come across my page about a wintery day spent next to the North Sea in Norway. Without any shame I have exploited this opportunity by adding a paragraph about the Minnesota Vikings.

No. 2

Onyx UK and an Inappropriate Visit to the Moulin Rouge

Straight in at no. 2 with 4,416 hits.  I have written a few times about my recollections of working in waste management in the private sector in the 1990s.  All of the posts manage a respectable number of hits but this one gets the most.  I don’t suppose for one minute that people are interested in my stories of mismanagement, incompetence and rubbish collection but they do like to read about dancing on a nightclub stage in Paris.

No. 3

Krakow, Wieliczka Salt Mine

Dropping a place from last year at No 2 with 4,342 hits. I posted this in April 2010 after returning from a visit to Krakow in Poland.  It was a good trip but I am not sure why so many people would hit on it.  It is not as interesting as my trip to Auschwitz or the Crazy Mike Communist Tour.

No. 4

Norway, Europe’s most Expensive Country

3,975 hits and up from eighth to fourth place  This was a second blog about my trip to Haugesund in January 2011. It contains some interesting facts and figures which might explain the number of hits that it has received but I am not really convinced that this is the reason unless top European economists are using it for research purposes!

No. 5

Mount Vesuvius

3,326 hits and a second year in the Top Ten and up two places.  A bit of a surprise because this is the account of a day trip to Mount Vesuvius whilst on a holiday to Sorrento in 1976 with my dad.  From my memories of the same holiday I posted several blogs about visits to Capri, Naples, Pompeii, The Amalfi Drive and Rome but these have only achieved a handful of hits between them.

No. 6

Pula, Croatia

2,916 hits – twice as many as 2011.  A bit of a mystery to me how this one gets so many visits.  I have blogged two or three times about Roman Amphitheatres – Rome, Arles, Merida, Segobriga and about larger Croatian cities at Dubrovnik and Split but this one gets the hits and I don’t know why?  The Pula is the national currency of Botswana so perhaps they are intended as exchange rate enquiries?

No. 7

Royal Garden Party

2,625 hits and staying in the Top Ten despite dropping 3 places from last year at no. 4.  This one has always been popular especially around the Spring and Summer when invitations to the Royal Garden Party are going out and when people are wondering how to get one or what to wear if they have one.

No. 8

Travel Tips when Flying Budget Airlines

1,800 hits and new this year.  I first wrote on this subject in 2009 and it immediately started getting hundreds of hits and then in 2011 it just stopped completely.  I reviewed and reposted it and changed the title from the specific ‘Travel Tips when Flying Ryanair’ to the more general title that it has now and hey presto the hits started coming again.

No. 9

Onyx UK and the Dog Poo Solution

The third new entry in the Top Ten this year with 1,7066 hits and the second post about life in the Waste Management industry.  Some people have accused me of writing crap but others clearly like to read about it!

No. 10

Andrew – The About Page

The final new entry this year with 1,358 hits and which demonstrates the importance of an About page.

If you have read one of these posts or any of the 921 others on my site ‘Have Bag, Will Travel’, then Thank you very much!  I guess it proves that George Bailey (It’s A Wonderful Life) was right when he said:“The three most exciting sounds in the world are anchor chains, plane motors and train whistles.”  

Dropping out of the Top Ten this year were: The Colossus of Rhodes, Cofete Beach, Spartacus the Gladiator and Love Locks on the Ponte Vecchio

Around the World in Eighty Minutes – Part Eight

So, that’s it, I started off with a simple recollection post about EPCOT World Showcase at Disney World, Florida and then I took off around the World to compare Disney with the real places that I have visited.  I have taken a look at the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Norway and Morocco but I can’t post about Canada, Mexico, China or Japan because I haven’t been to those places yet.

In the course of writing, dragging up memories and doing some research I started to think more deeply about World Showcase and became intrigued by the rationale behind the concept, design and construction and in particular the reasons why these eleven countries in particular were chosen for inclusion in the park.

This is partly explained by the fact that the Walt Disney Corporation, strapped for cash, tried to find sponsors for the showcased countries and failed in all but one attempt – Morocco.  This in turn explains why some of the Pavilions are so disappointing, the absence of rides and attractions and the over reliance on shops and restaurants all designed to get visitors to part with their money.

But the failure to attract government sponsorship or private sector investment still leaves us with eleven countries and no explanation why these eleven so I have been giving the matter some thought and whilst at first the inclusion appears to be rather random I think there is a credible explanation for almost all of them.

The United States is of course obvious and requires no explanation for its inclusion or for the fact that it occupies the prime position on the World Showcase Lagoon and is the biggest and the most lavish and expensive of all the Pavilions.

  

Canada and Mexico are easily explained.  It would be rude I suppose not to have your nearest neighbours but there are some important statistics that reveal that it is not just about being neighbourly.  In terms of tourism by international visitors these two countries make up over half of all travellers visiting the United States and according to official data in 2011 Canada with over twenty-one million visitors provided 38% of all international visitors and Mexico with thirteen and a half million contributed 24%.  The inclusion of Mexico is even more easily explained by looking at population statistics that reveal that the second highest number of foreign born residents in the United States (by a very long way) is Mexican.

It is easy to see therefore that the inclusion of these two countries makes obvious commercial sense.  Strange however, and this is just a personal view, that the two Pavilions provide the contrast between the best (Mexico) and one of the worst (Canada).

   

And so we move on to Europe with five of the eleven Pavilions coming from the second smallest continent but why these five, why not Spain or Greece, Poland or Sweden and once again I am convinced that it is based on US ethnic ancestry and visitor numbers.

In terms of ancestry the top ten European nationalities (in this order) are Germany, Ireland, England, Italy, Poland, France, the Netherlands, Norway, Scotland and Sweden.  Germany (at 17%) genuinely surprised me and explained immediately why it is at World Showcase but (at almost 11%) why no Ireland? Why Norway and not Sweden? I suppose Poland, at the time of construction, was part of the Warsaw Pact alliance and that might have ruled it out but why not Holland because surely all of those windmills and canals would have made a great attraction.

Visitor numbers also explain why these countries are here because four of the five (but not Norway) are in the top ten of international visitors to the United States.

  

Japan and China must be explained by visitor numbers.  After Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom Japan contributes the fourth most visitors to the United States and China is firmly in the top ten. Conversely, in the top ten but not represented at EPCOT are Brazil, South Korea and Australia.

Of all the countries at the EPCOT World Showcase I suppose the easiest to explain is Morocco and this is in part due to the fact that the Pavilion was the only one in which the country’s government aided in the construction and they did this so that they could retain some measure of Islamist control over the design of the mosaics and to ensure that everything was as authentic as possible in the representation of the Muslim faith.

I cynically conclude that any country could potentially be included if the government of that country was prepared to stump up the cash.

So who is missing?  Well, there is nothing from South America but the United Kingdom itself provides more visitors to the USA than the whole of Latin America combined so perhaps there is a clue there?  And apart from state funded Morocco there is nothing from Africa which might be considered surprising when 13% of the US population are of African descent but (and here is the crucial commercial factor) visitor numbers from the African continent are the smallest of all at only three hundred and twenty-seven thousand in 2011.  There is a small African Trading Post and Disney excuses the omission by pointing out that there is an entire African themed park at the nearby Animal Kingdom.

Finally, I have been giving some consideration to an alternative World Showcase and here are my suggestions:

  

First, Australia with an IMAX film narrated by Rolf Harris and Kylie Minogue.  Russia  because now the Cold War is ended there must surely be space for Red Square and the Kremlin.  Brazil, with a ride based on the Rio Carnival.  Peru because Machu Picchu would be a good replacement for the Mexico Aztec pyramid. Egypt with a Nile Cruise ride.  India and a train journey ride to visit the Taj Mahal and the Golden Temple of Amritsar.  Equatorial Africa, which was once suggested but abandoned.  And from Europe:  Greece with a visit to Mount Olympus to meet the mythical gods; Spain and the legend of El Cid and the Conquistadors and the Netherlands with a cruise of the Amsterdam canals (leaving out the red light district as not being entirely appropriate).

And finally, wouldn’t it be fun to include the World’s smallest sovereign state – The Vatican – with a roller coaster ride around St Peter’s Basilica!

  

Whoops, Sorry, I nearly forgot Ireland, lets have twelve countries (it’s my list and my rules) and let’s  have a visit to the Giant’s Causeway.

Please let me know your suggestions, I would be interested in your views…

Freshly Pressed

WordPress seem to go to a lot of trouble to convince users that ‘Freshly Pressed’ is fair, impartial and based on critical selection.

Consider this then from a blog page I chanced upon…

It has been interesting to look back over 2012 to see which posts were the most popular. Bagni di Lucca and Beyond has been Freshly Pressed twice this year, which has been great fun. Thank you WordPress for choosing.

It is a nice blog but it isn’t brilliant (sorry).

I say no more…

Around the World in Eighty Minutes – Part Six, France

For people who imagine that Paris is full of men in berets and black and white hooped shirts playing the accordion and speaking like Peter Sellers in the ‘Pink Panther’ films then EPCOT  is wonderful but actually, I think I have to say that it is probably one of the worst representations of all in World Showcase.

That’s because I believe that  the only way to see Paris is to do it properly as I did when I visited the French capital in 2002 and rather like EPCOT, where you can see a whole country in just a few minutes, I saw the major sites in a foot-slogging, energy-sapping half a day and invented what my son subsequently called ‘speed-sightseeing’!

We started at the Avenue des Champs-Élysées where the traffic circle surrounding the Arc de Triomphe was extremely intimidating.  There are no lanes and none of the usual rules of driving etiquette as hundreds of cars race and weave in and out of each other like dodgem cars at a fairground.  The French have a ludicrous driving rule called priorité à droite where vehicles from the right always have priority at junctions and roundabouts.

This rule is in fact so ludicrous that even the French themselves have seen the sense of virtually abandoning elsewhere in the country but it remains the rule here at the busiest roundabout in France (probably) and cars entering the circle have the right-of-way whilst those in the circle must yield.  Braking is forbidden and the use of the horn is compulsory, there is no apparent lane discipline that I could make out and entering the roundabout is an extended game of ‘chance’ where drivers simply waited to see whose nerve would fold and who would yield first.

  

We approached the Arc from the Champs Élysées and as far as I could see there was no safe way of crossing and getting to the monument until we eventually found the underground tunnel which took us safely below the traffic chaos above and into the Place de Charles de Gaulle. We shunned the elevator and climbed the steps instead to the top of the fifty metre high building (the second largest triumphal arch in the World) and enjoyed the views of the boulevards and roads converging and radiating away from this famous landmark.  Close by we could see the Eiffel Tower and this was where we were going next.

The Eiffel Tower is an iron lattice tower located on the Champ de Mars and has become both a global icon of France and one of the most recognizable structures in the world.  The tower is the tallest building in Paris and the most-visited paid monument in the world.  Named for its designer, engineer Gustave Eiffel, the tower was built as the entrance arch to the 1889 World’s Fair.  It is 324 metres tall, about the same height as an 81-story building.  Upon its completion, it surpassed the Washington Monument to assume the title of tallest man-made structure in the world, a title it held for forty-one years, until the Chrysler Building in New York City was built in 1930.

The tower has three levels but we didn’t have time to stand in the queue for the first stage elevator so we took all six hundred steps to the second level and we would have climbed to the very top if we could but the third level is only accessible by an expensive lift.  I have visited the Eiffel Tower four times now; in 1979 on a Town Twinning visit to Evreux in Normandy, in 1990 on a weekend trip with some work colleagues to celebrate a new career, this occasion and finally in 2004, the last time that I visited Paris.  Unfortunately on every occasion the weather has been overcast and I have never enjoyed the clear views that should really be possible from the top.

Our next stop was Notre Dame Cathedral but as we had walked quite a distance already we took a Batou Mouche barge ride the short distance the River to the Ile de Cîte and as the vessel made its way through the centre of the city we soaked up the historic sites along both banks from the viewing platform at the back of the boat.

Although we had already climbed to the top of the Arc de Triomphe and half way up the Eiffel Tower we bought tickets and waited in line to climb to the top of the Cathedral but sadly by the time we reached the top and walked around the external galleries the mist had returned and wrapped Paris in a gloomy grey shroud again.

We were beginning to flag by now and as it was late afternoon we walked a little further around the streets of old Paris and then took a metro back to Montmartre where we walked along the boulevard with its seedy sex establishments and grubby shops and into the touristy cobbled back streets of the district famous for painters, night-life and a red-light district.  I found a shop to buy some beer and we rested for a while at the hotel before going out again in the evening when we walked to the Sacré Coeur Cathedral which on account of it being built on the highest point in the city involved an energy sapping walk which more or less finished Jonathan off for the day!

The plan was to find somewhere to eat but he was so tired that he preferred my suggestion of returning to the hotel and like all good Parisians I would fetch a McDonalds meal from around the corner and we would just stay in and crash! So we did just that.

The real Paris is a much better experience than the EPCOT version except in one respect – EPCOT has no dog shit all over the pavements which is something that really spoils Paris and most other major cities in France.

Around the World in Eighty Minutes – Part One

“Taking a trip around the world can be easier than you’d think at Walt Disney World’s Epcot World Showcase. Visitors can drink a margarita in Mexico, eat traditional German bratwurst in Germany and encounter Norwegian trolls in Norway, all within a few steps of each other. Eleven countries are represented in the showcase, each with a wide variety of food, rides, attractions, shopping and culture that can only be experienced Disney-style.”                                          USA TODAY (Angela DeFini)

Whilst it is true to say that I almost certainly wouldn’t go back again, twenty-five years ago I did enjoy three trips to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida in the USA.  The memory of these visits has mostly disappeared into a blur of credit card debt, white knuckle rides, the quicksand of commercialism and the exploitation by the Disney machine but one experience that I do remember was a visit to the World Showcase at EPCOT.

EPCOT, it has to be said, is an odd place – at the same time both intriguing and disappointing.  It was the vision of Walt Disney himself to build a new 20^th century city but after he died the Disney Corporation accountants gained control, declared it too expensive and everything was downsized until it became nothing more than an add-on theme park to Magic Kingdom without any of the investment.

Without Walt, Disney tried to turn it into a future world experience but couldn’t help sliding back into the present when they built World Showcase which promotes eleven countries from around the World. Eleven itself seems a strange number and I can’t help thinking why not ten or twelve which seems to make a lot more sense in a logical sort of way.

We entered World Showcase from Future World and for no real reason took a clockwise route around the countries and started with Mexico.  The entrance into the Aztec temple of Quetzalcoatl was through a display of ethnic artwork and then into the main exhibition, a twilight-lit Mexican marketplace, Plaza de los Amigos with a Mariachi band playing folk music next to a restaurant, the San Ángel Inn, overlooking an indoor lagoon and a boarding area leading to a boat ride El Rio del Tiempo which carried us on a slow boat ride through various scenes from Mexico’s history with audio-animatronic figures clad in authentic folk clothing, singing, dancing, and playing music.

We enjoyed our visit to Mexico and looked forward to more rides around the World.

Next we were transported to Scandinavia and to Norway which is designed to look like a traditional village that includes a detailed Stave church and a replica Viking longboat but then there was a restaurant and here things started to deteriorate because much of Norway was simply shops decorated with large wooden trolls and selling assorted Norwegian goods, including clothing, sweets and a bakery featuring assorted pastries. Luckily however not at traditional Norwegian prices!

But after the shops there was a water ride that took us back to a mythological version of Norway’s Viking days. Boats passed through scenes of seafarers and Vikings and then through an enchanted swamp and was then forced backwards down a waterfall by angry trolls. The boats floated rapidly past scenes of polar bears and living trees, before coming to a stop on the edge of another waterfall and after again rotating to a forward-facing position plunged down into the stormy North Sea then passed dangerously close to an oil rig before coming to an abrupt end in a calm harbour and after that there was an obligatory film about the history and folklore of Norway.

Next came China which we entered through a large gate that reminded me of China Town in London into a courtyard dominated by a replica of the Temple of Heaven, which contained the entrance to a Circle-Vision 360° film exploring China’s history and scenery, as well as a museum containing several ancient Chinese artefacts.  Decorated with ponds and crossed by bridges the courtyard was inevitably bordered by shops selling Chinese merchandise and two Chinese restaurants.

After three countries I was beginning to get both disappointed and bored in equal measures!

It was back to Europe next and on to Germany which was designed to look like a typical German town but with architecture from different eras and regions which made it all rather comical. The Platz was decorated with a statue of St. George and the Dragon and a clock tower and the Biergarten, at the rear of the courtyard, sold traditional German food. The pavilion also had inevitable shops selling German goods, including dolls and cuckoo clocks and outside adjacent to the pavilion was decorated by an extensive model village with working model trains.

Germany was a real let down and this is because the original design of the pavilion included a boat ride along the River Rhine that was to have focused on German folklore, in a similar way to the Mexico and Norway rides. According to the Walt Disney Company’s 1976 annual report, the ride was to be “a cruise down Germany’s most famous rivers — the Rhine, the Tauber, the Ruhr and the Isar. Detailed miniatures of famous landmarks will also be seen, including one of the Cologne Cathedral.”

Though the building was built, Disney did not complete the ride construction by opening day. It was announced to be part of “phase two” of expansion but to cut costs, Disney dropped all phase two attractions and decided that any expansion projects would only be allowed if a host country funded for it. Germany declined and the ride was never completed.

We stayed in Europe for the next stop which was Italy where the Disney interpretation featured a plaza surrounded by a collection of buildings rather badly resembling Venetian, Florentine, and Roman architecture. Venetian architecture is represented by a re-creation of St Mark’s Campanile and a replica of the Doge’s Palace

The original plans for the pavilion called for an expansion that would be built in Epcot’s “Phase II” of construction, thus leaving a wall with nothing behind it at the rear of the pavilion. The expansion would have included a gondola dark ride and a Roman ruins walk-through. When “Phase II” was cancelled, the pavilion was left incomplete and later franchised to a pizza restaurant chain.

Surely the USA attraction would have a ride?  Sadly not! Instead “The American Adventure”  is a colonial-style mansion based on the architecture of Independence Hall, Boston’s Old State House, Monticello and Colonial Williamsburg surrounded by gardens planted in hues of red, white and blue and with rose varieties all named for U.S. Presidents. It took us on a trip through America’s history narrated by Benjamin Franklin and Mark Twain and was little more than an outrageous show of unashamed  jingoism designed to make everyone else in the World feel grateful and inferior.

“Mr. Twain, pride is one of our nation’s passions.”                                                       Benjamin Franklin - The American Adventure

The show was presented in an auditorium with sets and characters rising out from the stage floor to represent scenes from different historical periods and the characters provided skewed historical insight into American life of the past through conversations in which they discussed the current events of their time all of which left me desperate to move on.

To Japan. The Japan pavilion is one of the original World Showcase attractions and had been in planning since the late 1970s. Many attractions have been proposed for the pavilion and one show building was built, but left unused because management thought that the Japanese film’s omission of World War II might upset many Veterans and it was dropped. The whole experience was becoming tedious but at least there was some entertainment in Japan and there were some traditional Japanese Matsuriza drummers who performed a time-honoured form of very noisy drumming.

By this time I was beginning to wish it would all end but there were still four countries left to go beginning with Morocco.  The Moroccan Pavilion, designed to look like a Moroccan city with a realistic Minaret, features the only pavilion in which the country’s government aided in the design. Guests to the pavilion are supposed to gain an insight on the lifestyle and culture of the Moroccan people through the Gallery of Arts and History and the Fes House showed what was supposed to be a typical Moroccan house but since going to EPCOT I have been to Morocco and I can tell you that it is about as authentic as powdered egg!

And so to France which had another boring film about how wonderful the place is and some external sets representing Paris with authenticity provide by men in striped shirts and berets playing the accordion.  My only recollection is that I was seriously underwhelmed!

Next to France was the United Kingdom, designed to look like a typical British village with shops, thatched cottages and gardens. The shops sold British goods, such as tea, toys, clothing, and Beatles merchandise. I was fed up with it all by now and bypassed Hampton Court and the Cotswold village and aimed for The Rose & Crown Pub which at least served English beer.  I ordered a pint and so did an American guest but he took one sip and his face distorted in agony at the taste (English beer has flavour whereas American beers do not), he said ‘What the hell is that?” and slammed it down on the bar and left.  I was tempted to take it but the bar staff, obviously used to this reaction, swiftly took it away and poured it down the sink.

Thankfully it was nearly all over and only one country left – Canada.  Sadly after the colourful entrance of totem poles and ethnic art all that there was another boring 360° film about the great outdoors and now I was really ready to leave.

Disney World Showcase might be better now (my visit was twenty years ago) but my assessment is that this was the worst attraction in my fourteen day holiday to Florida – and that includes Gatorland!

Weekly Photo Challenge: Delicate

A narrow graffited lane led from Piazza del Doumo to Piazza Della Erbe where to my horror there were even more market stalls but this was principally a food market with all manner of colourful items on display and I was particularly captivated by the fungi – especially coming from a country where we only eat about four different varieties of equally tasteless mushrooms and think that chestnuts are especially adventurous – because the woodland produce on display here was colourful, pungent, mysterious, dangerous, misshapen and a whole lot more interesting than our ubiquitous tasteless varieties.

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Other Market stories:

La Rochelle

Alghero, Sardinia

Palermo, Sicily

Tallinn, Estonia

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Varvakios Agora, Athens

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