Florence to Rome

We’re sitting on the plane from Rome to Hong Kong (listening to Matthews Southern Comfort “Woodstock”: Mum has gone shopping) writing this blog which is completely mind blowing - ask Brendon about this song.


Florence was the usual brilliant experience with extra bits! Noticing that there were all sorts of temporary things being erected in piazza della Signora (you know the one where all the 1,500 year old statues are and you’re not allowed to sit on them for some reason). Turned out that the ballet Don Quixote was being held that evening at 9.00. It was absolutely wonderful and we went to bed in a haze: well me normal but Mum alcohol free.

Rome for two nights with a pizza in our favourite restaurant followed by meeting Prue our second favourite athlete. Lovely couple of hours and we got to bed at around 11.30.

I will always remember the last full day we had in Rome! Prue had recommended we go to (vialle/cassa/della/whatever) Borghese so we did.

I suggested to Liz/Mum that we hire a four wheel bike. These bikes are amazing things. They sound like a milk van and everything rattles - hang on: the plane is bumping about like mad and I’m spending all my time correcting mistakes. OK: fine. The one we got was electrically assisted which means you can actually got to a top speed of around 6 kilometres an hour. It has two steering wheels and two lots of pedals. The brake is a metal stick on the steering on the driver’s side … Me…. would you trust anyone else?

We took off from the hire place doing about 2km an hour. Mum/Liz was absolutely terrified and screamed at me to slow down. After about 300 metres and 10 minutes later I decided to go offroad and take the speed up to 4km an hour. By this time mum was nearly crying with fear so I had to stop while a discussion was made about why old cripples, tortoises and 8 year olds were overtaking us on both sides.

We did have a good hour on the tandem thing and saw all the turtles and huge fish in the Lago Borghese along with lots of icecream shops. It was even more interesting because wherever I decided to go Mum was frantically turning her steering wheel all over the shop to go in the direction she wanted rather than the one I was going in, ie if I saw a decent opening on the left Mum would frantically turn the steering wheel to the right so I’d just go along with that plan so as not to cause problems. It was great and I personally had a fabulous time.

I have only now told Mum the following fact which is:

“Your steering wheel was disconnected and didn’t actually work”. … It’s now approximately 12 hours since Mum actually talked to me.

Watched Australia beating Serbia where I had most of the Italians and French watching the Oz game rather than the Germany one because I was making so much noise. Close but no cigar eh?

This morning we find that Rudd is no longer! Not sure about this but with a bit of luck common sense will prevail and Queenslanders will get rid of the Blight woman in the same way: I hae ma doots though!

Four nights in a Nikko Club room in Hong Kong.

Anyone got any suggestions where we should “definitely” go in Hong Kong? We’ve done the usual tourist things and would like to go somewhere different. Aberdeen Harbour or whatever.

Also: would anyone particularly like us to get something in Hong Kong? Ie watches, chess sets, Armani suits, Lamborghini copies, Renoir originals?

Arrived in Hong Kong 2 hours ago and although knackered we're up and about so with luck we won't get the jetlag we had last time.