Crazy, beautiful Naples...

What a day! It's 9pm and we've just sat down. We left Lubeck very early this morning, to arrive at Hamburg airport by 8 am, to catch our flight to Naples at 10am. Our timing was perfect and the flight to Naples only took around 2 hours 30 min. The flight with Eurowings (Lufthansa sister line) was very comfortable. Shannon got some great shots over Croatia and coming into Italy.

Baci from Italy

Baci Perugina: the Italian chocolate with the love note.

These chocolates are more popular than Ferrero Rocher or Lindt balls in Italy and are available in most Bars, Cafe's or Supermarkets.


We have found them in three varieties, Milk Chocolate, White Chocolate and Dark Chocolate. Katie prefers the white I prefer the dark.

They come in various packaging, in singular form or in multi pack also, but what makes them more interesting is the little slips of paper that are included in the foil wrapping.

Below I have included some of the love notes, unedited as they appear on the slips.

Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind.

Joyfully Love seemed to me to hold my heart in his hand.

A great friendship cannot be described, only experienced.

The greatest things are said in silence.

Love conquers all and we must yield to Love.

Love wells up from the hearts excess of liking.

One day I loved you tenderly, I love you now.

A loving heart is forever young.

Love me for the sake of loving, always and forever.

Never close your lips to those who opened their heart to you.

The soul is entirely defeated by love.

It is always a treat to receive Baci from a friend but more of a surprise to read the message.

Today we are leaving Rome and you are welcome to follow our flight.

https://flightaware.com/live/flight/CPA292

We expect to arrive in Hong Kong around 06:30 am local time (09:30 AEDT)

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Making magical memories

Up up and away. I'm writing this part whilst waiting for our plane to depart Heathrow airport.

This morning we had a fond farewell to our hosts. It was such an honour to participate in their family Christmas traditions over the last week.

There are just a few differences I have noticed that I would
like to mention. Christmas Bon Bon's are

called Christmas Crackers. These are also cracked all at once whilst each person is crossing arms and making a circle around the table.

Christmas morning presents are handed out and opened one by one, where with my family we hand them out and collect a pile each and then open in a bulk lot.

We sampled Brandy Butter for the first time, a mixture of butter, sugar and brandy. This is put on top of plum pudding along with whipped cream and vanilla custard.

Breakfast on Christmas morning consisted of bacon sandwiches and Bux Fiz. The bacon was sliced much thinner, almost shaved, then (as there was so much to be cooked) placed in the oven where it was cooked and become crispy. Jamie performed this task and then each was left to own to build each sandwich.  Bux Fiz is a commercially produced and bottled mix of champagne and orange juice. Very nice.

We have now landed at Munich, passed customs and collected baggage. It is now that Katie and I are on the train to Munich city centre, a 45-minute journey.

As the plane came into the airport, we were greeted with blue skies and a warming sun that was illuminating the snow-covered fields and villages. Now we are passing through these fields on a new and modern electric train. There are many conversations around, few in English many in German and others, well who knows.

W have now returned to our accommodation, but we have done much since the last photo and paragraph.  Katie and I disembarked the train at Marienplatz, the centre square of Munich and after a short walk over the icy streets found our Pension (German for B&B).  It is very clean, we have our own bathroom, TV with all German-speaking channels and good WiFi.

As we were in awe of Munich's nighttime beauty whilst walking to our accommodation we immediately dropped the bags after check-in and were out in to the icy streets to explore. The inner city is so pretty at night with may Christmas lights in place.

 After walking around for about 1 1/2 hours we went to our pre-booked dinner at Donisl.  This family-friendly beer hall was lovely and provided Katie and I some relaxation and a good chance to sample some Barvarian delicacies.

And now after a brief walk around after dinner we are back at our pension. I'm typing my memories of the day and wondering what will come tomorrow. 

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Smart Passports

Melbourne airport has some really smart technology that can speed up getting through passport control.

The process is, open your passport to your photo page, place it upside down on the scanner, the scanner then sucks it in and process your data, the machine then returns your passport, you then take the passport a little gate opens and you proceed to where your face is photographed and compared with the digital images and your profile.

It can be a little stressful and anxious in these areas of the airport and I'm sure this is why Katie was
distracted and flustered.

I went first and had no issues, thinking in the back of my mind, could get rejected as my passport photo does not have a beard.

I then, as a good husband should, waited just past the screening gate and watched Katie place her passport in the scanner and then wait, she waited for a while, the people behind appeared to get pushy also, but she waited patiently, but the little gate wouldn't open giving her access to the next section.  I wanted to go back through and see what was wrong but, once I had passed my screening I couldn't return. 
There are Border Protection officers who oversee this process and thankfully the lovely girl realised Katie's mistake, she had mistakenly left the passport in the reader, thinking it is like a ticket machine at the train station that would send the passport through as she passed the gate.

Thankfuly after removing her passport the gate opened for Katie and she was able to proceed to the nextion section for facial scanning.

It is little things like this that often get overlooked in testing new systems and often real users, real people with no technical background are used to test. Little things like this could be resolved if the machine simply spoke, or we could even replace the machine with a human simplifying the process further.

(sorry for no pictures, but photography is banned in this section of the airport)