okay so that last entry, about the photos... i obviously slightly exaggerated the timing of when they would appear on the web. i had every intention of having them up and running before leaving for rome. but then, a combination of a variety of events slightly altered my initially well meaning plans. apologies. and now, the guy who has all the photos on his computer has headed to greece for a week or so, so you will all just have to bear with me for a little bit longer.

okay so last week i went to italy. because i can. because i am no longer in the middle of the pacific and it no longer takes 37 hours to get to europe. because there is no such thing as jetlag when you take a plane ride to another country. because the airfares are so cheap that to not go would be ridiculous. yes, living in europe has some very good incentives.

and i had a wonderful time. for a start, the weather behaved in the appropriate manner and the sky stayed bright blue and the sun stayed in the sky (until it was night time of course) and the temperatures allowed me to wander the streets in a singlet and feel the need to squint - not just because of the marble ruins surrounding me, but because of the bright sunlight beaming down on me, as it should have done. i was able to escape the cooler climatic forces dominating beligum, and have a mini summer retreat, in one of the most beautiful cities in the world.

the trip itself began when i stepped on the train to head towards the airport. due to my brilliant planning, i wanted to be in rome bright and early on monday morning, so opted for the 6:50am flight out of belgium. the hiccup in this plan was that the earliest train to get me to the airport would arrive too late, so i had to take the last train the night before, and spend the night trying to get sleep on the uncomfortable chairs that airports generally have to offer when you need to spend the night. i should have learnt my lesson after my 12 hour stopover in bangkok last year. alas, i thought this airport might hold more luxurious seating arrangements and that bangkok was just a once off mistake. it seems however, that the airports i decide to spend the night in have one thing in common. seats that were not made for sleeping on, much less sitting on. please remind me, next time i have a valiant plan of heading overseas, not to organise my flights so that i sleep in an airport.

arriving in rome was a crazy experience because the central station seems very hostile towards tourists - odd, seeing as rome is a large tourist destination, and the central station is exactly that - central - and they did not have anything helpful to tell me, except that the best way to get to the vatican was by taxi. ha. i was on a strict budget, that allowed for no taxi rides, and i couldn't figure out why the metro would not head in the direction of the vatican. so i walk down into the metro anyway, refusing to believe the taxi lady, to find myself in the middle of what seems to be some huge riot, with police running everywhere, and exits being closed off with huge caged gates, and red tape making the place look like a crime scene. i retreat towards the entrance i had walked down, to find that caged off and have to leave by another route, just in time as the police are locking the gates there also. later i discover that the metro went on strike. okay, so there was no mass murder, there was no criminal on the loose, and no one has fallen onto the tracks and been run over. just a strike. had the lady in the central station told me this, all would have become very clear.

and that marks the start of my 15km a day walking mission. of course the metro were only on strike for a few hours, but i was no longer interested in seeing the tunnels beneath the ground, and wanted to see rome itself. plus the sun was shining and it seemed pointless to go from one place to another by an underground system packed with commuters and tourists. and i like reading maps and getting lost and refinding my way through the streets.

i met my friend russ outside the vatican and we spent two days exploring the city of rome. what an amazingly beautiful city. i took far too many photos and will spend a fortune getting them developed but it will all be worth it. from the pantheon to the circus maximus, the tiber river and the capitaline hill. all the places i had read about and thought about for the 4 years that i did roman history in new zealand. and finally i was there, and able to imagine claudius up on the rostra in the roman forum, and julius caesar issuing statues to be put up in his honour. fantastic.

naples was quite a different experience. the city was chaos. it seemed like it was in the midst of being reconstructed or torn down. it was dirty and dusty, huge holes opened up in the ground on every street, construction work was paramount. the streets were too narrow for the traffic, and no rules of the road code were obeyed. i thought that buenos aires in argentina was bad in terms of traffic. i was wrong. i ened up adopting the 'follow a local' whenever i crossed the road. there were dodgy stalls everywhere, that immediately closed whenever a police car approached. there seemed to be a lot of police, and yet you never got a feeling of being safe in naples. not a place to be wandering about late at night.

however i didn't go to naples for naples. i went so that i could go to the museum and see all the mosaics found in pompeii, and i went to see pompeii. wow, now that is one amazing place. a whole city. i still can't explain or comprehend how big it was. usually you go to places, like rome, or athens, and you see ruins of a temple, or of the marketplace. but here, streets and streets and streets - with houses, and schools and shops. with temples and theatres. it was a real city. and everything was so well preserved. i could eat my banana inside someone's house. i could sit on the edge of the road and know people had walked there. it was a very surreal feeling. i felt like i had been shrunk down and was walking through a child's toy city, that had been abandoned because it was lunchtime and they had left in a hurry. nothing was out of place. to see people, frozen in time and space - see them covered in plaster - their last movements before they died - right infront of me. to see dogs, curled up, their heads down towards the ground. you could see the anguish on their faces. you could almost feel everything taking place. and then to turn and see mount vesuvius, the only active vlocano in europe, looming behind - a menacing reminder that all of this could happen again. it wasn't just a once off occurence in 79 AD, but it sits there, a ticking bomb, long overdue to erupt again.

after two nights in naples, i returned to rome and finished off all the things i had wanted to do, including getting a tour through the largest catacomb in rome, with over 20km of tunnels and over 500,000 christian graves. i stood in the colosseum and imagined the gladiator fights and the lions. i walked up the palatine hill where the she-wolf was meant to have suckled romulus and remus before rome was founded. i had the luxury i walking numerous times through the roman forum and being able to recapture life in the 1st century AD. everywhere i walked i could remember stories dr stevenson had told me in class. and it was a wonderful experience.

travelling alone has advantages and disadvantages. i met a lot of people, including about 5 kiwis which was exciting because i am yet to meet a kiwi in belgium, though i have heard rumors that one does exist somewhere... i was shocked at how clearly i could distinguish the accent. i went out with some boys from liverpool, got to share breakfast with australians, and heard a variety of stories about stolen wallets and passports and people being ripped off in shops. all of which i managed to escape. i think though, that next time i make a journey, i'll make it with friends. for one, i'll then be able to be in some of the photos i take. but mainly, i'll be able to share memories and experiences with people who live near me, as opposed to people i met in hostels who will all be in different parts of the world now.

this has been a long entry. and there is so much more i could say. but i will leave it there for now. hope you are all well.