Melbourne - Dubai - Rome

Monday 22^nd July ~  Melbourne –Dubai - Rome

We got to the airport in plenty of time to catch our flight at 9:25pm. We left on time and had a pretty uneventful flight to Dubai. Lots of movies - The Sapphires, The Place Beyond the Pines, Killing Them Softly, A Late Quartet, something with Bruce Willis and that’s just the first leg.

There was a four hour wait for the connection to Rome, so we wandered the concourse and tried lots of perfumes and looked at make up, (well Mary did)  and marvelled at the amazingly low price of Bombay Sapphire - $US20 a litre!!!!!!! and drew up a shopping list for the stopover on the way home.

The Hong Kong Children’s Symphony Orchestra  is also waiting nearby. Children everywhere.  Very lively and noisy. I don’t feel as if I’m on leave yet!

More movies on the flight to Rome, and uneventful, which was good.

Tuesday, 23^rd July - Rome                                                                 

We stepped out of the Rome airport to bright sunshine and heat! Our hotel organised a chauffer(!) to collect us and the drive to the hotel was thrilling. It is obvious that speed signs are merely advisory – while the sign displayed 100, the driver went 200. That’s a 22 minute drive from Fiumincino to the centre of Rome with a little bit of sightseeing on the way.  Basilica di San Paolo, Circo Massimo, Coliseum, Quirinale -  Presidential Palace, Constatine’s Arch. The WOW! Moments have begun.

Freshened up at the hotel and showered off 28 hours of planes and airports and went for an exploratory walk of our neighbourhood – crazy, crazy Roman traffic and tourists everywhere. We strolled almost to the Trevi Fountain and then detoured towards an enormous (of course it’s enormous, it’s Rome) church –Santa Maria de Miracoli, but couldn’t find an entrance.  The Piazza di Spagna, the Spanish Steps and the house where John Keats died were just around a corner or two. Halfway up the Spanish Steps, I thought I was going to die, and as Dick said, if I was to die, it was a pretty fabulous place to do so. The heat, the steps, the heat, the steps, being awake for about 40 hours, absolutely no fitness whatsoever and the heat, and the steps nearly wiped me out. However a restorative gelato, a rest in the shade and the promise of a lie down in the cool hotel room had me rallying, sort of.

There are 13 Egyptian and Roman obelisks in Rome and we have set ourselves the challenge of finding all of them. Two, so far, Piazza di Spagna and Trinita dei Monti, above the Spanish Steps.