This blog commences with my departure from Australia for Egypt. The trip is a work trip but this blog is not about work, but rather the places and people that I encounter….. how I react to them and, I guess, they to me.
I left home at 5:30pm on Tuesday, 31 October 2006. My first stop was Rome where I arrived at my hotel at around 9:30pm on the following day, Brisbane time (12:30pm local). With a 90 minute transit at Dubai, I was 27 hours door to door and just over 24 hours airport to airport. This is not only tiring but says very clearly that, although all roads lead to Rome, we are a long way from this city.
The travel all went very smoothly. This was my seventh trip through Dubai airport in the last 11 months but the place continues to fascinate me. I arrived just as the dawn glow was creeping over the horizon to illuminate the desert haze. This, and a port side window, provided me with a wonderful view of the lights of Muscat and Dubai and the incredible street-light equipped highways that run between them and all over the desert.
My first entry to Dubai airport in December ’05 was stunning – the huge domed terminal full of people from seemingly every nation in the world. Subsequent visits have been less busy but no less interesting. This time we had chaos again – crowds and crowds of people – more westerners than middle-eastern people but moving through the duty free area was a time consuming process.
Our route to Rome passed north from Dubai across the Gulf and over Iran, which we traversed south to north, skirting Iraq. There was a good deal of cloud but the same port side window gave me magnificent views of the very mountainous Iran, showing clear indications of a long history of earthquakes (and of a couple of craters that spoke of visits by extra-terrestrial rocks). But I was really surprised by the extensive snow coverage of the mountains to the north of Iran to southern Turkey. I had expected some snow capped mountains but this was on a massive scale – hundreds of square miles of just pure white snow. Was this the last of the previous winter or the start of this? Maybe a bit of both but a number of towns and villages were nested in the valleys, cropping the flood plains of the rivers that flowed from the melting snows and some of these were adjacent to the snow line. I wondered what the area might look like in a few months time.
The “track was rough” across the Black Sea – only cloud below and an interrupted food service due to “bumps”. Then we flew over the Adriatic and across Italy. Landing in Italy is a very smooth process with an express trip through immigration and customs. A black Mercedes spirited me down the autostrade peaking at 150 km/hr. It might have gone faster but I couldn’t always read the speedo as my eyes were shut for some of the time.
My hotel in Rome is delightful – an old building on the hill adjacent to the Palatine Hill – a few streets back the buildings would look over the Tiber. This is a quiet residential area but only an easy 15 minute walk to the Colosseum. When in Rome … do as all the other tourists do. After a much desired shower and shave, and despite my body telling me that it was actually around midnight, I set off on foot to do some walking.
I walked past Circo Massimo, the Colosseum and forum, past the Monumento a Vittorio Emmanule II. By then I was so far from home that I just followed signs that give no indication of how far. I went on to the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. We had visited all of these in 1997 but, maybe because it was the summer then, everything seemed “bigger”. Except, thankfully, the Pantheon. I had been disappointed in ’97 to see the thing I so much admired in my art texts as a young boy, in a little square with the forecourt being excavated (an archaeological dig) and the unique golden arches of a McDonalds about 30 metres away. Now, no dig, a seemingly bigger piazza and no arches, although it seems from the signs leading to it that Ronald is still active in the area. The multitudes were being entertained by a somewhat extravagantly dressed Germanic marching band (that wasn’t marching but had set up in front of the portico). They played very well but they were a distraction for me to pondering the great antiquity.
In Navona, the Bellini fountain is being restored and the church opposite is scaffolded. The whole of central Rome was crawling with tourists, more that the summer of ’97, yet the weather is a bit ordinary right now – the hotel says it is still a high season.
I was starting to head spin from the jet lag so I took a shortcut home, crossing the Tiber twice via the Garibaldi and Sublicio bridges and buying some Coke and water en route. This area is definitely off the tourist map (perhaps not mentioned in the Dan Brown books) – a relief in many ways. Back at the hotel – no interest in dinner – I hit the sack at 5:30pm (local) and slept like a baby until midnight. I rested until 3:00am and arose to capture the events so far on this text so I can later post it to “thedouglasreport”.
Later this morning, I start the real reason for coming here and will be departing the ancient city in two days time (for an even more ancient city).
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