Easter in Rome

Hey People,

I know I am the slacked person when it comes to emailing. But screw you all, I been busy.

I am getting happy at the moment spring is springing here in london. And how can I tell spring is springing? Is it the fact that the sun is still up when I leave work now, that the trees are green and there are big bright flowers in all the gardens. Is it that the weekends have been nice and sunny park weather? Or is it that I've gone from sneezing three times in a row to fifteen?

So what I have I been up to? Mostly working and making lots of plans for holidays. I am working for a company called chameleonnet (www.chameleonnet.co.uk) doing lots of cms kind of stuff, and it's all .NET no more java. Chameleon is a small company, but have heaps of work on and are planning to expand so we have to move buildings. We were supposed to move a couple of weeks ago but it all when wheels up and we didn’t move. Sound familiar fuj people? Then we had a new guy start and now I am stuck squished in between to people which is poo.

I’ve been doing a few fun things of late. I went and saw Xavier Rudd. He’s damn funny to watch. He’s playing about 4 different instruments, so arms and legs are flying everywhere and head is still attached to the didgeridoo so he looks like a thunderbird.

I also went to the Grand National which is kind of like the Perth or Geelong Cup but a lot crapper. It was cold and wet and most people didn’t dress up and the Liverpool locals all looked like they’d been belted with the ugly stick on the way in. But it was a good day out. The bus trip was about 4 hours each way, so 7.30am we get on the bus and the tour guide says ‘the bar is now open’. It was all good from there. When we finally got back to London we went to a pub with a few of the people on the bus and Rikki & I taught them how to drink strawpedoes.

The best thing I’ve done recently is over Easter when I went to Rome. It was fantastic, I got off the plane and it was warm and there were blue skies, I almost felt like I was home. So Rikki and I spent the 5 days over Easter wandering for site to site doing the touristy things, eating ice-cream by Fontana de Trevi and pizza and beer on the Spanish Steps.

Yes believe, I actually drank some beer. And quite enjoyed it too. I’ve decided that if I am going to make the most of Oktoberfest I should get in some practise now.

I’ve also discovered that Rome is also know as ‘the city of queues’ I have never spent so much time standing queues in my life. Which is kind of ironic seeming the Italians themselves don’t actually know how to queue. They just crowd at bus stops out into the middle of the road and then push and shove into the bus.
But we tourists will spend and hour queuing to get into the vatican and an hour queuing to stick our hand in the bocce della verita. However, Rikki and I are clever cats so after the first day or so of queuing we started getting up early and beating everyone there which was good.

Really Rome is a beautiful city and has a wonderful relaxed atmosphere (unless your trying to cross a road, the drivers don’t stop for no-one), and the only thing that really is amiss is all the beggars. They are everywhere. And it’s not like in London where every suburb has their couple drug-addict or alcoholic bums asking for 20p. In Rome they are everywhere and they are all amputees or women with babies and they all are either praying or have the ‘oh please I’m gonna cry’ pathetic face all worked out. I even had this little girl who was about 3 or 4 coming into a store and asking people for money, it was horrible. She kept going out and coming back in crying because her mother must have kept sending her back in.

And all this is going on while you’re wandering about to places like the Vatican and St Peter’s where the monumental displays of wealth are just jaw-dropping. (Check out my photos, there is a good one of Rikki with the jaw-dropping in action).

But Rome was not all sunshine and lazing away. We put in the hard yards doing our touristy duty with great zeal. Being keen as mustard we got up at 5am to go join a queue for two hours so we could get seats for the Easter Sunday service at St Peter’s. So we got to see Pope Benedict deliver his easter message from his window. It’s funny I thought that window was huge before he came out, but when he did you could hardly see him over the banister. The whole atmosphere of the service was not what I was expecting, there was a lot of cheering and excitement and everytime the pope spoke in a different language the people in the crowd who spoke that language would yell and cheer. Good fun, but it was all worth it just to get to see the swiss guard in action. They had a real cheery marching band and with those outfits it reminded me of when I went to see Alegria with Circ de Soleil. I'm pretty sure that Michaelangelo must have been taking the piss when he designed them, it's not exactly fade into the background kind of security gear.

So I had a great time in Rome and lots of lucky things kept happening to us. The day we were going to Fontana de Trevi we went to the Palatino and I found some coins in the grass when we sat down. ‘ohh lucky pennies,’ I said, ‘I’ll put these in the fountain’ and then I went to take a photo of some ruins and this big green lizard came out and was sunning himself. I got up really close and he didn’t run away and then another one came out. I said, ‘that’s a lucky sign’.

But all good things must come to an end, and karma always evens things up, so when I left Rome, obviously everything turned to crap.

I was half-way to the airport when I realised I had left my torch behind (sorry jed, I loved that thing). So I send Rikki telepathic messages for an hour hoping she would go back and get it for me. Then I got to the airport and my flight had been delayed for an hour. An hour later it was delayed two more hours. Which if I’d known 3 hours in the beginning I could have gone back and fetched my torch. So I finally get on the plane and am so tired I fall asleep. When I wake up I am starving hungry but have slept through when they were serving food.
When I get to the Charles Des Gaulle airport I have missed my connecting flight. So I go and sort out a new flight, but there is no more til the next day. So they sort me out with a hotel with dinner & breakfast included and then I go to fetch my bags. They tell me it will take half an hour or so to find them.

At this stage it is about 7pm, I’m starving hungry and tired because I’ve been up since 5.30. So I think, I’ll wait half an hour for my bag and then go and eat at the hotel and go to bed. Three hours later I am still waiting for my bags. Then this baggage guy comes up and in dodgy English is asking me about my bag and what does it look like? But his English was so bad he couldn’t understand me. But he kept asking questions and saying stuff. And he kept talking to me about the hotel. Finally, it dawned on me that he wasn’t here to find my bag he was just a dodgy baggage handler hitting on me. I was so tired and pissed off by then I thought I was going to cry. So I went into the real baggage people and said where are my bags. They didn’t know. So I said I don’t care, I’m going to the hotel. Will my bags be on my flight tomorrow? They didn’t know. So I gave up and left. By this time it was 10pm so I was like ‘great, the kitchen will be closed when I get to the hotel’.

But I was wrong. The restaurant was still open so I got food. Yay. It was crappy meatloaf, my mum’s meatloaf is 50 times better, but I ate it in about 10 seconds anyway. And then for desert they had jelly slice, which was yum, but I found a little freaky because I had had a dream about jelly slice just a couple of days before that. Wow – sometimes I really think I must be psychotic. And then I went to bed and it was a big nice bed and 45 time more comfortable than my one at home, so I was all happy again.

Luckily my baggage arrived back in London with me. The first thing I had to do when I got it was find my jeans because I was still in shorts from Rome and with was about 10 degrees in London.

Anyway, since I’ve got back I am all excited about holidaying again. This week I am moving house to somewhere a bit cheaper. I also have a heap of things in the pipeline. I bought my ticket for Download. It’s a 3-day heavy metal festival where I will get to see Tool & Sevendust (checkout the rest of the lineup http://www.downloadfestival.co.uk/lineup/index.asp). This weekend is a long weekend and I am going with some friends to Thorpe park which is like adventureworld or something like that. This month I am also going out to Stonehenge and the Brighton Big Day Out and I want to go see One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest at the theatre.

I am also planning a couple of bigger trips, one will involve diving in Egypt and maybe a detour to spain for la tomatina and the other trip will revolve around Oktoberfest.

I've also started playing netball, but it's not the same as playing with my old team in Perth. Over here they play outdoors (even in the middle of winter!!) which I find weird. I'm an indoor sports kind of girl. And I am also going to start playing gaelic football, it's chicks non-contact version which should be fun.

Make sure you check out my photos http://www.flickr.com/photos/kellys_phab_fotos/ and hopefully i will email again within the next month (or two)Well, keep in touch kids - most of you are just as slack as me.