Travel Diary – To Italy
I have finally worked out where I neglected to go in London – The British Library. I forgot that they often have cool stuff. Next time.
The same next time when I go to Bletchley Park. Turns out that the person who picked me up to go to the funeral had worked there at one stage too.
Also, and please don’t laugh at this – At the London Science Museum, there was a computer based test to determine if you are male or female. Mostly with shape and colour tests. Anyway I took this test and got 5 out of 5. Saying that I am a female. And I really was trying.
Terminal Two – Heathrow.
This airport will never cease to amaze. No wireless access as far as I can tell anywhere. Very Strange. I would have thought that a modern airport would have wireless everywhere. But not Heathrow. Then again who said Heathrow was a modern airport. But then again it is not as bad as Washington Dulles. There they have spaces for payphones where it looks as if the payphones have been ripped out by a thief leaving bare wires – but this was in the secure zone.
In London, I have finally seen a bigger road. The A4 from London to the airport is often three lanes each way. I think this is the widest road in Brittain. I am not sure what the road toll is in Brittain, but whatever it is, it should be worse. I cannot believe how the people drive, and I have yet to see a single accident.
The roads are not wide, and seem to really be a rabbit’s warren. You need to know where you need to go, and need to be aggressive with turns. Yet no accidents. I have seen so many occasions where the vehicle missed another vehicle on the side by inches.
But having written that I am now in Italy, and I feel that the Italian drivers are worse. They also stop in strange places and then do weird things. I think I would be happier closing my eyes than traveling with them opened. Thankfully I was in a vehicle with air bags and a seat belt, meaning that I would most likely survive any crash. It also helps that the guy driving me was appeared a better driver than most on the road – he would actually use his indicators. With all this, very few Italians actually wear a seat belt. So Strange.
Flying to Italy, I had my first experience with an Airbus plane – an A321. I must say that I am impressed although I have definite reservations about the avionics. I have no real problems with the airframe, just the avionics. In fact I think the A321 is quieter than most similar planes, and is quite comfortable. [If you want to ask my why I don’t like these planes, I will send you a report on one incident.]
The Alitalia plane is what I imagine a plane would be if it was decorated by the NSW Department of Education. The floor carpeting and the seats have that brilliant green color popular in schools. The headrests are the most comfortable I have every felt. The armrests were about 5-6 inches wide and seem to be leather.
I believe that there was a video program on board. There was certainly something on ceiling mount LCD panels, but there was no instruction that said that I could listen to it on my own headphones. Then again I did not have an inflight magazine so that might have been what I missed.
I was surprised flying in. I thought I needed to fly in over the Mediterranean. Actually the route is almost purely south-east, and apart from the English channel is all over land.
The best way to describe Leonardo Da Vinci (FCO) airport is to compare it to Orlando. Very similar thanks to the train from the outlying terminal. Having said that it is MUCH smaller.
On getting to Passport control I went into one of the lines for non-EU people. The person before me needed about 3-4 minutes. When he saw my Australian passport he stamped it without even looking at it further, or doing any data entry. I am sure that I could have got into the country with a woman’s Australian passport.
Baggage collection was a bit slow but it could have been FAR worse. Maybe 15 minutes after I got off the plane I picked up my bags. And they were among the first off. Alitalia refuses to believe that I can earn Qantas Frequent Flyer points on an Alitalia flight. The speedy bags may be compensation for them being wrong.
I was picked up at the airport by Nicola and his girlfriend Michol. They took me to lunch/dinner by the ocean near the airport. As far as I could work out by looking at the map this was Bastianelli al Molo restraunt on the northern inlet to the Tiber River. There were lots of fishing boats moored on the river. The restaurant had what I would call classical al fresco dining, with a beautiful view of The Mediterranean.
The food was apparently up-market, and I have no doubt that it was. To start we had a seafood platter which I tried – although it mainly included calamari. There was some white fish there, as well as some orange prawns which were not too bad.
More enjoyable was the main course which was spaghetti with some prawns – which was quite nice. I had the option of having it also with clams which I declined. Following the main meal we all had a desert platter. This was really nice, although I have no idea what I had.
Nicola then took my to the Hotel. This is a nice place called Hotel Degli Imperatori on the Tivoli side of the city just inside the ring road. This is really modern with lots of what is probably Italian styling. Low voltage down lights. Well layed out. Most everything you would expect.
Well, except for a hotel directory in any language that is. They expect you to know what services are available. Internet will probably need to be dialup. It never ceases to amaze me that hotels do not offer internet access in this day and age.
On checking in they needed my passport. This is a requirement in Italy for some reason, so I was expecting it. Still it is strange. They returned it the next day.
One thing I do need to point out. The front desk had clocks for various international cities. The Sydney clock was off by an hour. I suspect that they had the version with Daylight Saving.
As you might expect there is not much in English available on the TV. Right now on the TV is what I believe is the movie Kate and Leopold, staring Meg Ryan. Not much use with me watching it though since it is dubbed in Italian.
Which brings up another issue – language. I am starting to pick up the occasional word… It is hard to work out which words I know – it is much easier for me to read Italian than to hear it – with reading I can generally understand the meaning. Not bad since I do not know the language at all. I think my vocab at the moment is
Si, Bambino, Arivaderchi, Bonjourno, Ciao, Sinester
Italian TV never ceases to amaze me. They just advertised a Philips CT scanner. I am sure that this is something that every house needs. Seriously if I was given one I am sure I could find a use for it, but not for what they charge for one [They can be used to basically do a 3D scan of a physical object… which is sometimes useful]
[Now a few hours later there is another travesty on Italian TV – StarTrek ‘Enterprise’ is on in Italian. Or should I say mostly Italian as some of the sound effects have voices in them. Some TV should only ever be in the original language. Enterprise is like that. So is ‘Life is Beautiful’ – although the original language for it is of course Italian. They also killed the closing credits, playing about 1 ½ seconds of the theme song before about a second of the translation credits before the adverts started]