Ciao Roma! The start of the Tour.

Not best viewed on a mobile phone

John Sidebotham – The Final Tour?

Or, Cattargh in Qatar

A lot of people have asked that question. Particularly those on the receiving end!

But sorry, my holiday blog is here again, even if I am typing this at 5 am! So much has happened (all good) that I'm going to have to keep this to a minimum.

Qantas747 at Sydney while I was waiting for my plane

The A380 seating was divided into five zones for seating. The aircraft is so big they could be time zones. But it makes every cabin a reasonable size. The flight was good_I had three seats to myself – 14 hours in the air in the dark just to Doha, or DOH as it said on the baggage label. The exclamation mark was missing. As we were descending to land we were treated to a double sunrise. The sun started to rise, we descended until it just set in the east, and then when we were about to land it rose again to greet the day to reveal the Doha as a place of industry and sand. A cross between Manchester and Margate.

All transfer passengers (ie everyone) had to have a second security screening. Three Arab families attempted to go on the down escalator taking strollers and kids with them!. The escalator stopped, we used another escalator and headed for the bus stop called gate 24. It was in a different part of the UAE. To get there we had to travel by monorail and walk a lot, in order to catch a bus past a whole flock of Boeing 787s. Ours, though interesting, was not very comfortable. We flew over Iraq, Iran and Turkey to avoid Syria which added almost an hour to flight time to Rome. The straight line would have been over Saudi Arabia and Cairo. Why didn't we go that way?

We were late getting to FCO, as Rome is known in baggage labelling circles, to find that others in our shuttle bus group were even later. Off we went to our big black van. The driver had forgotten where he'd parked it. We tried FOUR little BVs before we found the right one! And off we went to Via Rasella to the Night and Day accommodation, which will be the next entry in the blog, because it is FABULOUS!