Italian vacation – some salient features of Italy

From the industrial Milan down to the eternal city of Rome, onward to the birth place of Renaissance Florence and then to the island city of Venice. The above sentence sums up our Italy trip this Thanksgiving. While a travel log is in process, I figured I will highlight some of the key takeaways from the trip related to culture and general stuff about Italy.

• Download the App “Rick Steve's Audio Europe”, it has detailed talks and explanations of a lot of locations in Italy. Listening to the audio before and during the visit to a location helped us immensely with understanding Italy better
• Lots of public bathrooms but no free bathrooms, usage costs varies from Euro 0.80 to Euro 1.50. Another interesting thing is that there are no urinals per se in the men’s restrooms and only sit down toilets. All the rest rooms were pristine and well maintained. As a tour guide pointed out, you are better off buying a Gelato or a coffee and using the rest-room rather than paying the fee for rest room usage.  
• Restaurants charge a cover-charge for getting you seated. typically about Euro 2.00 per person. While on the topic of restaurants, unlike USA, there is no free water and they sell water in bottles. Come to think of it, I couldn't understand the fascination of Italians about carbonated water aka sparkling water.
• If your hotel provides breakfast either included or at a charge (typically euro 3,00-5,00 per person) blindly take it. Keep in mind, kids eat free in most hotels.   
• One of the great things about Italy is the coffee and cafe's. Cappuccino at an Italian cafe beats the Starbucks coffee any day any time. Here also, if possible just order coffee for drinking at the cafe instead of to go. Unlike America the to-go coffee (if available) costs about 2x the price of in cafe drinking
• We mostly used public transport in Rome and very little to nothing in Florence. If you are in Rome for 2-3 days and you don't intend to visit all museums I still recommend the Roma Pass. 
• The high speed trains are amazing and they run on-time, the train platform numbers are assigned 15 minutes before scheduled time. If your budget allows I recommend upgrading to slightly higher level tickets instead of barebones cheapest ticket (just a personal choice).      
• We climbed up 3 domes while in Italy and it was all well worth it. It is a tough climb but worth the time. 
• Vatican museums, if you can afford take a guided tour, it is expensive but in our experience we appreciated the museum exhibits and Michael Angelo's work at Sistine Chapel much better thanks to our tour guide. The guide was so good that she managed to keep our 9 year old also engaged throughout the tour 
• All 3 cities had a flavor of its own, Rome had the big city and the things that comes with big cities. Florence had the small town feel and Venice was Venice.  
• Again, unlike USA, the default way Pizzas are given uncut and many a times we had to request the restaurant to get it cut. Also, there is no thin and original crusts in Italy, most everything we saw were thin crusts and very few thick or regular crusts
• There are 2 transport buses from Venice island to Marco-Polo airport, one is ACTV and other is ATVO. ACTV is the company that operates vaporetto (the grand canal public boat) and ATVO only transports to airport. Tickets to ATVO bus can either be bought online or from driver. Both services cost $8 but I recommend using ATVO for it is a non stop bus to airport and only 20 minutes ride.
• For rest of Italy, kids under 10 have free bus rides and train rides but for Venice where the age drops to 6      
• Bread in Florence is baked with no salt, the reason being a historic fight more than a few centuries ago with neighboring port city of Pisa, when city of Pisa refused to sell salt to Florence and from then on restaurants in Florence are baking bread without salt. 
• The only place we encountered where Google Maps were almost useless was Venice, they work in terms of showing the locations but don't trust their driving/walking directions fully. They apparently have come a long way but feel they still have a long way to go. 
• Read this in Frommer's guide to Italy, apparently you can be fined for buying contraband leather goods. 
• Talking of leather goods, we found Venice to be a better place to shop for leather than the capital of leather Florence. 
• Subway system in Rome runs on time, smoothly and granted bit crowded to my desire but it works. I can't say the same for bus system in Rome. Rule of thumb, if a place you intend to visit is 15-20min walk, just take the walk and don't wait on the buses. 
• Uffizi gallery in Florence is one of the few museums we visited. Recommend to buy tickets at least a day or so in advance that way you can schedule a time to get into the museum. 
• Talking og Uffizi, they have some strange rules. They will not allow you to carry back packs into the museum and have to be stored in the museum storage area. Next one if you rent audio guides they want to keep your passport as collateral. They check tickets both going in and coming out. So, don't throw your tickets once you are inside the museum.  
• Don't know if it is specific to Florence or for Italy in general, the milk we bought in the grocery store had an expiry date 2 days from the selling date and there were no gallon sized but liter size. 
• Breakfast cereals unlike our local HEBs there were only 3 choices or may be 4 :) 
• I cannot end this without mentioning a word about Gondola's; its not worth the money :)   

The instant era

It’s one thing to watch and record your kids performance on stage and another to share the same with friends and family. 

Yesterday was the event of Rajyothsava and Deepawali organized by our very own Austin Kannada Sangha (AKS). Our kids practiced a lot, parents (read moms) worked hard behind the scenes and made the entire performance a grand success. 

Now, the dads on duty were given the task of recording the onstage performance and thanks to our high end smart phones it was not a tough job to accomplish. All that mattered was to find the right location nearest to the stage to sit and hold the phone still to record a good video. It was an easy task, the tough task that none of us (primarily Windows user) didn’t foresee was the problem of sharing the video with our friends and family. 

Considering the act was exactly 12 min long, recorded at the rate of 40-60 FPS with 18 megapixel cameras the file sizes were larger than we had ever imagined. Considering the high speed internet that we all are so used to, we rarely pay attention to file sizes and come to think of it  it’s the fault of the phones too which doesn’t let us know the file sizes. 

So, the traditional method of sharing on WhatsApp petered out for the file size was too big for their network. Then it was decided to go home and upload to Google Drive. That’s where the challenge started which none of us really foresaw. Apple’s iOS was working seamlessly to backup the phone to the Windows PC but try downloading a file either through the traditional windows explorer route or through windows photo app or even through Picasa it would throw an error saying device is unresponsive and hence can’t copy the file. 

So, windows was a no go, next step direct upload to Google Drive from the phone but that was taking so long to even process; It was not worth the wait. After almost an hour of fighting with the iOS ecosystem I had reached a point of giving up. At this point by sheer luck I decided to upload the video to iCloud Drive and that worked like a charm and few moments later when I logged into my iCloud Drive, I could see the file there. Surprisingly it allowed me to download the same. That’s how the file was transferred to PC and finally put up to Google Drive/YouTube and shared.

Moral of the story, If the video you are trying to share is more than 5-7 minutes long and WhatsApp has petered out and your options are windows PC or laptop then the best way and possibly the only way would be to upload video to iCloud and then download from there . 

Chronicles - Cursed - Online - Barnes and Noble

I will admit at the very beginning, I am as guilty as anyone else of the thing I am about to write.

Yesterday, to entice Avni to come with me to Costco I promised her the box book set of “Chronicles of Narnia”. While in Costco we realized they were out of stock but the book set was available on their website and could be delivered home in a few days. Being still slightly old school and considering yesterday was Father’s Day, I decided to call my old time/all time favorite bookshop Barnes and Noble on Brodie Ln and they said they have it in stock.

When we arrived at Barnes and Nobles, it was as though old memories were gushing through all at once, the times I used to spend there picking out the classics, enjoying the coffee and even waiting in line for the final book of Harry Potter. Some how the fresh book smell was quite intoxicating. The place in itself hasn’t change much at all and as always has been the staff was very friendly and they had the book set we were looking for but the cost was almost 3x of what Costco was selling and one can argue that's the reason they are not growing and may go out of business (that would be a sad depressing day when it happens). Since we were in the bookstore and I wasn’t ready to spend 3x over a box set of books I had no idea if either me or Avni will read the books I asked them if they had a copy of the book “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”, a long time ask from Avni and I had been delaying for reasons unknown. They had and we bought the hard bound book and left the store.

I want to end the blog post with an appeal to all my book reading friends, Kindle and other reading apps and Amazon prime and all are great and wonderful but there is definitely great value in keeping a brick and mortar bookshop open. For one it is a great asset for the future generations and also a place where we spent our time exploring our interests and maybe even stumbled upon something that was totally unrelated to what we wanted but it expanded our horizons in other ways. Yes online is cheap and Amazon does a fine job of delivering in 2 days or even 1 day but considering books are such a tiny fraction of ones living expense the savings we make from this alone will not make you a millionaire or conversely will not break the bank either. If one plays the card of save the planet, I am sure both of us know that there are ten thousand better ways to do the same :).   

Freakonomics Dr. Raghu Rajan

I admit, I am a huge fan of Freakonomics radio and never miss their podcast (listening for the past year or so). I like the way host Stephen Dubner asks questions and doesn’t hesitate to put the guests in an uncomfortable situation during the interview process and in general always adds a different perspective to the topic at question.

Full disclaimer, I am did not live in India during Demonetization and quite frankly nor did Dr. Rajan.

So, this week Dr. Rajan was interviewed on Freakonomics radio and as with all things one of the topic discussed was the big Demonetization effort that happened in India 2 years ago. The nation was shocked at the sudden move and me personally thought that was a bold move and a much needed move to increase the tax base and make economy more transparent. Dr. Rajan did go on saying he was consulted and he had voiced his opinion strongly against the program for he was concerned about killing the parallel economy that runs on cash with people who do not even have bank accounts and also people would find a way of turning their stashed away money without paying taxes. He went on to say that the effort did destroy the economy of the cash transaction and 10-15 million jobs were lost in the process and a lot of them haven't been regained.

I agree with your comments Dr. Rajan but in what way will it be beneficial for the country to have 2 parallel economies? one formal where the government collects taxes and provides services with the money collected and other entirely out of the governments hand and no tax collected from that but only services availed? The question I believe Mr. Dubner failed to ask is about the widened tax base due to the Demonetization and didn’t the tax rates reduce in India overall? Also, what about the effect on counterfeit currencies and reduced naxalite activities (I am not talking of Pakistan supported terrorism in J and K)?, granted Mr. Dubner was interviewing Dr. Rajan with the point of view of the man who called the great recession of 2008 back in 2005 itself. Another point I didn’t really understand was when Dr. Rajan says the world has too many strong leaders and that somehow is bad for the world economy. Last one was Dr. Rajan claimed credit of his policies as RBI Governor for the current rate of inflation in India, I am not a financial expert but I thought when he was the governor the inflation was close to 7-8% and only in the last year or so inflation in India is 3-4%; Not even a paltry credit to the finance ministry Dr. Rajan?.

One last thing I believe Mr. Dubner should have realized is along with Demonetization came  with couple of other tighter controls on financial transactions, which I personally can vouch has made a difference. Example: the sky rocketing costs of real estate in India took a grinding halt and things started to become more realistic.

Maybe I am wrong, if I am then I know the one person who will enlighten me :).    

ps: I hadn’t heard him speak and I admit he has a great voice and now I know why media houses like NDTV love him.