This one time, during my gap year...

I, love Rome. Apart from the all the death-defying you have to do when you want to cross a road.
Seriously though, if you like old ruined things, which were once very grand, or old ruined things which are still very grand, Rome is the place for you.
For example, when in Rome, one can see (as I did);

The Colosseum

which was once extremely grand...colossal...you might say, if you like terrible puns that is.

The Forum

as it is known, is actually more of a complex of smaller forums (fori? fores?) built by successive emperors, each in order to prove that despite the greatness of the previous one, they were in fact, 'the big dawg'.

The Pantheon

is still extremely grand, on the inside anyway (its golden roof tiles were looted by some...err..looters sometime in the 600's) and is worth a visit even if just to marvel at the engineering of the Rotunda (dome), and admire the pretty circle of light on the floor made by the sun shining through the Oculus (central hole in said Rotunda). This is also where the painter Raphael is entombed (below the Madonna by Lorenzotto - go in the door and turn right. Or left, it's a circular building, you'll get there). The inscription reads;
"Ille hic est Raffael, timuit quo sospite vinci, rerum magna parens et moriente mori." Meaning: "Here lies that famous Raphael by whom Nature feared to be conquered while he lived, and when he was dying, feared herself to die."
If happen to be standing facing the Pantheon, there is a small cafe/restaurant on the right corner of the square (behind you). Bruschetta, pasta or pizza and a beer for 12euros. Try the linguine al pesto.

Vatican City

The Very Seat of the Christian Faith. Woohooo!
I could lie here, and tell you I had some kind of Epiphany in the spiritual centre of the world, but I just didn't. To be honest I was more awed by the art and the architecture than the sanctity and sacredness.
It's a real shame that my mum (with whom I was visiting Rome) hadn't read Angels and Demons - I had some killer material on flaming priests and antimatter bombs while we were in St Peter's square.
The basilica itself is pretty breathtaking, and the view from the Cupola (top of the dome) is well worth a look (and a great opportunity for an excellent photograph of St. Peter's Square). The Vatican museums are also pretty breathtaking, if only because everything is so ornate and old that you're scared to breathe in case you damage something. For me, the highlight of my visit to the Pope's crib was The Sistine Chapel, though ye be warned - it is the most packed tourist attraction in the known universe. Again, there was no epiphany or moment of illumination here, but damn those Renaissance guys knew how to paint! Take a second to look up 'The Last Judgement" fresco by Michelangelo (the painter, not the teenage mutant ninja turtle), the detail in that is just astounding, and even more astounding in real life, I assure you.

The Trevi Fountain

is pretty grand, as far as fountains go, and worth a stop, and is the second most packed tourist attraction in the known universe. I mean really, they'd need to extend the Piazza De Trevi just to give all the tourists enough elbow room to take a photo of it. (They have avoided this problem in The Sistine Chapel by not allowing you to take photos of it.)

The Spanish Steps

to be honest, are just some steps. I suppose you could say they are quite grand, and there are quite a lot of them, but since they were only really built to link the basilica at the top to the road at the bottom, I personally don't see what all the fuss is about. If you do make it there though, the steps themselves are flanked by Babbington's Tea Rooms and the Keats-Shelley memorial, so once you've walked up and down them you can do something productive with your time. Like have some tea and scones and discuss the work of a dead poet.

Rules for staying in Rome:

1 - When in Rome, one should enjoy Peroni beer - this is the only place it tastes good.

2 - When in Rome, one should say "Carpe diem" at least once, even if you don't intend to.

3 - When in Rome, one should try and eat a pizza with a knife and fork like the locals, and then give up halfway through, because it's a bloody pizza.

4 - When in Rome, one should go and see some churches, or basilicas. Religious or not, those Romans know how to do their places of worship.

5 - When in Rome, one should be extremely wary of the traffic, as Italian road users of all varieties skillfully demonstrate a complete lack of adherence to any highway code.

6 - When in Rome, one should take a map. Do it, you'll look out of place if you don't. I'm pretty sure even the locals use maps to get around the place.

7 - When in Rome, one must buy some sort of tacky souvenir with a picture of The Pope (or at least A Pope - as in, one of the popes, not Alexander Pope) on it. Next time I'm there I will find papal shot-glasses.

8 - When in Rome, one should, eat some pasta.

9 - When in Rome, one should, make some kind of hilarious joke about Italian words being the same as English ones, but for the addition of an 'i' or an 'o'.

10 - When in Rome, one should, get the lift up and view the city from the top of the Capitol museum.

And, most importantly,

11 - When in Rome, one must use the phrase 'When in Rome...' as much as is humanly possible.

(N.B - When in Rome, one should also try not to end up in a different terminal from your luggage upon arrival. I Imagine that would save quite a bit of time.)

And so, having lived through the 29th May twice, once over the Pacific ocean, and once over the Atlantic, I arrived in London. Glorious sunshine and two of my closest friends greeted me at the airport.
On no, wait, they were still in bed. It was gloriously sunny though.
An hour later, I met Laura and Jess at Paddington station, in London town, and thus began the most productive day which a jet-lagged person has ever survived.

Having showered and breakfasted at the lodgings in Hampstead (nice little village - worth a look in. Good organic chemist aswell I'm told) we headed back into town, where a not-so pleasant due to the heat tube journey preceded an extremely pleasant stroll which led us to Buckingham Palace, via St James's park and some kind of government buildings (MI5).
There was some kind of charity run on in London that day, so they'd put up a load of barriers and signs, completely ruining anyone's chances of taking a good photo of Buckingham Palace -inconsiderate buggers - so here's a nice one I found on the internet instead.

After the palace, a quick stop for refreshments in the very English 'Pret A Manger' and then on to The Tower of London, where you can marvel at The Crown Jewels, the Beefeaters, the architecture, and fall down some nice historical steps. Oooooohhhh.

In the evening, being in London, we just had to go and see a show. And alas! What luck! Three seats left for Dirty dancing, at a third of the original RRP (and they say London is expensive...pfft...the view wasn't even that restricted).
Obviously this was a live theatre show, so you weren't allowed to take photos - but here's a nice one I found on the internet instead.

Having touched down at 6.30am I finally got to bed...well, got to air mattress on the floor at around 1am. And had the best sleep I have ever had.
I woke up refreshed, invigorated and ready for another day of intrepid sight-seeing. Which actually turned out to be a day of intrepid shopping on the famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Oxford Street - home of what must be the biggest Topshop in the world. And the most hectic Primark.
At around midnight that night we headed out for milkshakes (as you do) at a place called Tinseltown, which Tinie-Tempah (or some such 'rap-artist' apparently references somewhere), and I added another experience to my list of 'firsts' for this trip. First cherry bakewell milkshake. Yes, you read it correctly. A cherry bakewell milkshake. And I know what you're thinking now. 'Well, what's that? Just a food processed cherry bakewell and some milk?'
Yes. Yes it was.

The next day, the other two integral parts of the troupe; Amy the physicist and Ali, the sarcastic, arrived. After a pleasant stroll through Covent garden in the a.m, we went out to celebrate. Funnily enough we were not celebrating their arrival, but the birthday of someone completely different, called Rachel. Anyway, the point is, We Went Out.
First stop was a cocktail bar called the Dirty Martini, where you can get two cocktails for eight pounds. Oh no, wait! You can get two cocktails for seventeen pounds and eighty pence, but two martinis for eight pounds. (I hasten to add that this was obviously not explained clearly enough on the flyer. The b*stards.) Having finished the most expensive drink I've ever had (in the UK), we moved on to a place which I believe was called The Dublin Port Company, or something to that effect, and which looks like a ship inside - don't ask me how, it's difficult to explain, it just does, ok? - and, which more importantly, sells Australian beer. Unfortunately they happened to be out of it that particular evening....
The night came to a slow and shuddering halt in a just darling little hovel in Soho called 'The Moonlighter's club' or, more affectionately (on a Wednesday) 'Cheapskates'. Never before in my life have I beheld so much mirrored walling. Still, it was 90p a drink. Beggars and choosers and all that.

On my final full day in London (it really was a 'flying' visit ahahahah, see what I did there? because I flew in and out, and it was really quite short?) we braved the fantastical London Tombs.
There are no words to describe what you see in that place, other than to say it's a bit scary.
Après ça, we of course had to go to The London landmark, the London Wheel. I mean Eye.
I didn't actually have a camera with me that day, however, I found this nice picture of The Wheel...I mean Eye, on the internet for you, instead.

Friday saw us enjoy a plesant lunch in Hampstead before I headed to Gatwick, to embark on the heavenly two hour flight (I flew for 25 hours to get to London. Which was most definitely not, heavenly.) from there to Vienna (where I am now). Two hours! A mere skip - I didn't even have time to watch a whole film!

'Twas a grand old time we had there in London there, so it was.'
Oh, pardon me, I mean;
"Chaps, that was a bloody marvellous jaunt eh?'

I daresay I'll be back in London. (Probably in a couple of months, once 'Ghost- The Musical' comes out). It'll certainly be easier to plan (and finance) that than my next trip to Australia....

Remember that book you read in first year, 'A Town Like Alice' ?

No, me neither.

Alice Springs is the second largest town in the Northern Territory (I'm assuming the first is Darwin, but it doesn't say on the Wikipedia page I have open in the other window). Now, don't let that shiny 'second largest' tag fool you, Alice is not, a large place. You can walk across it in about half an hour (although you would get a taxi if it was dark, as it's quite a dangerous place at night).

It has its share of tourist attractions, including many Aboriginal Art Galleries (none of which proclaim to be the 'only' authentic one in the town - which in my mind increases the likelihood of them actually being authentic quite significantly), The National Pioneering Women's Hall of Fame (in the old Alice jail - you can try and suck some irony out of that if you like, I tried, but all I achieved was a headache and this terrible joke in parenthesis) The Royal Flying Doctor Visitor Centre (The RFDS was one of Kate and Willz' chosen charities for their marriage donation, or whatever the term for that is) and the Mbantua Aboriginal gallery and cultural centre.
There is also a reptile/insect/scary creatures of the desert centre, but I did not go to it as I was going to be sleeping rough in the desert for the next two nights, and would much rather remain ignorant of the horrible things which could run over me while slept.

It is worth noting that none of these attractions take a particularly long time to 'explore'; I managed to do The Pioneers, The Doctors and the cultural centre before lunch on my first day. So much for spreading it out so I didn't end up sitting at the hostel watching Gossip GIrl. Which I did. The whole first season.
I reckon here I should give the hostel a mention by name, lest anyone reading this should end up bedless in The Alice - The Alice Lodge Backpackers. Clean (apart from the mice - but they are dealing with a plague at the minute, there was nothing they could do about that), friendly staff, free tea and coffee and free breakfast. Win.

Whilst enjoying one of many free cups of tea at the lodge, I noticed a poster for camel rides in the desert. 'There's something I've never done before' said I.

I can never say that again.

The first day of The Rock Tour, took us roughly 700km from The Alice, and to King's Canyon.

As the name suggests, this is a large canyon, formed by the movement of some kind of prehistoric seas and/or an ice age (also quite a long time ago). It was about a three hour walk - up the hill of death on one side of the canyon (Note to self: join gym when I get home), along that side, down into the canyon itself with a stop at The Garden of Eden (a kind of oasis on the canyon floor - I doubt it's the actual, famous one...) and up more stairs of torture to return along the other side.
Our bush camp (literally - you should've seen the dunny...although it was probably cleaner than some of the portaloos at Oxegen last year...) was a further 200k's from the canyon, inside a cattle farm the size of Holland. The size. Of Holland. (And that's a small one). A pleasant evening we spent around the camp fire, before wriggling down into our swags, for -for me anyway- a surprisingly comfortable night's sleep.
For any non Aussies I shall here describe a swag, hopefully in a much more detailed way than our preplexed bush guide did;
Guide; "Right guys, we'll grab the swags and bed down"
Us; "What is a swag?"
Guide; "A swag....it's a....it's a swag!"
Us; "Yes, but what is a swag?"
Guide; "It's a swag!" etc.....

As it turned out, a 'swag' (Aussie invention) is like a large, heavy duty sleeping bag with a built in mattress, which one then sleeps inside, within a normal sleeping bag if it's cold. And it was bloody cold, being the desert and all.

On the second day, God said, 'There shall be a sky in the middle of the water, and it shall divide between water and water.'
Oh no, sorry, that was a different trip...
On the second day, we went for another (less hilly, but equally death-trappy due to all the loose rocks on the path) walk through/around/among (I'm not sure what the correct term is here...) the Olgas, or Kata-Tjuta. The Olgas, as you can see from the above picture, are some huge and interestingly shaped rocks, once again, in the middle of the desert - which only serves to enhance their huge and interesting appeareance. At (one of) the highest points, they rise 500 and something metres above ground level, and, before a massive underground volcanic eruption/plate-shifty type event thousands of years ago, they would have been completely buried. (The force of said event forced the rock up through the surface - see, google.)
As I say, this was a much more pleasant walk, and, Cooper, the guide, bought me a beer for leading the group round in good time. Beautiful scenery and free beer. Win.
That evening, we had dinner and a few beers while watching the sunset over Uluru.
Now, what can I say about that? Well, truth be told, there are many things I could say, but I am going to say just one - Wow. Really, the most vivid description and professionally taken photographs can not do this sight justice. Seeing the rock change colour before you is just phenomenal.
Go there and do it.

(But don't climb the rock while you're there. It is, to the Aboriginals, equivalent to....pfft, I don't know.... going into the Vatican in the nude.
And you wouldn't do that would you?)

Night two was also spent in swags, around a fire, in slighty less bushy surroundings, at the Uluru national park camp site. We even got to shower before getting up at 5.30 to go and watch the sunrise over Uluru (that's the traditional name for Ayer's rock by the way, in case you didn't recognise it from the picture...). Again, just wow.
After sunrise, we did a base walk around The Rock - finally, a pleasant walk; flat, cool because it was early morning, and you'd have to be literally blind to get lost!, before setting off, on the road again, back towards The Alice, with a nice stop at a camel farm on the way (as you'd expect).

Doing a roughly 1400k round trip in a minibus, you really get to know the people you're travelling with - and a great group they were - I'm really going to miss Cooper, and Lenny, and Canada, North London and Jill, red Jacket Guy and Cowboy Hat Guy, and Veggie...and Gluten free.....

I haven't been that pretentious and gap-year-y up to this point in this blog (hopefully), but this really was one of the most amazing experiences of my life, and was the perfect ending to my time in Australia. Ayer's rock is such an iconic sight, it really signified to me that I'd made it, which is a fantastic feeling (somewhat dulled by the fact that it also signified I had to go home soon...)

Australia, I bid you adieu. It's been great.

By the way, you can also go and see the Old Telegraph Station in Alice, it's about a 6k walk along the side of the river. Take water.

"We're on our way from misery to happiness"
said the bus driver as he pulled out of the parking space at Cairns airport and turned towards the city. (Seriously)

This actually turned out to be a pretty apt analogy, as I realised after spending my first couple of days at Dreamtime - Traveller's rest, a tropical oasis, if you will, just behind Cairns Central - a tropical oasis that is, until the French Canadians arrived.

Dreamtime, along with a number of other Cairns hostels work in conjunction with 'The Woolshed', who provide free meals for the backpackers each evening on presentation of a voucher (provided by the hostel), after the purchase of a drink (so not technically 'free', but you know what they say about beggars and choosers - or, backpackers and a meal that doesn't involve reconstituted pasta...). The Woolshed is probably what the folk back in 'Norn 'Iron would call 'cheap and cheerful' (although being in Australia it isn't really cheap...), and its clientele consists mainly of hungry, beer swilling backpackers - therefore an interesting night out is almost guaranteed.

On my first night, in addition to The Woolshed, I was introduced to the staple card games of the backpacker culture - Shithead, Bullshit, Egyptian....something, and Aids (which I have a feeling is also known as Old Maid). If you ever plan to go travelling,I would advise you to learn these, or at least make up your own variations of them (or even just re-christen any game you already know with a swear word, and teach it to others under that guise) - it will come in very handy. (Also, take a pack of cards with you....the games are much easier to play with cards....)

Now, two weeks is quite a long interval to blog about at once, so I'll just tell you about the 'most exciting' (from my point of view, anyway) of the 'activities' that I got up to.
To be honest, there is not much to do in Cairns itself, except lie by The Lagoon,

but there are a massive number of 'activities' to enjoy, in the surrounding area...

N.B.To build up a more full picture of this trip in your mind, simply insert 'drinking beer and playing cards at the hostel', 'sitting at The Lagoon' and 'being at The Woolshed' around the following activities.

• The Skyrail, Kuranda village and scenic railway.

I was advised by a Dutch guy I met in the hostel not to do this trip because 'all you do is look at the tops of trees'. I'm not sure what he was expecting to see from a cable car, above the rainforest, but, there you go.
Kuranda itself, a village in the rainforest, is fine, but a little...how to say.....tourist-y for my liking. (I would like to remind the reader at this point that I am a backpacker, not a tourist). It has a couple of nice cafes, some good forest walks and thirty souvenir shops all with signs outside proclaiming that they are the only one with authentic Aboriginal artifacts in them. (A likely story...)
I took the Skyrail (cable cars) up to Kuranda - there are a couple of stops on the way so you can get off and observe the waterfall (Baron Falls) attempt to take photos of bush turkeys, and be terrified by huge spiders and the like - and the railway back down. (They also stop on the way down so you can take three hundred more pictures of Baron falls from the other side.) The Dutch guy had a point but, call me old fashioned, I quite enjoyed looking at all the exotic trees. Maybe there are more rainforest canopies in the Netherlands than there are in Ireland.....

• Bungy Jumping at AJ Hackett's.

Bungy jumping, with a live band on Sundays. Do it!
'Nuff said.

• Road trip with Room 24. (Which is the room I was staying in.)

First stop was the Babinda Boulders. As the name suggests, these are some large boulders, situated in what the danger signs which are placed every ten feet around the site must be the most dangerous place in the world. Very picturesque though, if you can manage to position yourself to capture the natural beauty of the deadly rapids, crocodile infested water and deathly slippery rocks, without getting any of the danger signs in. In fact, just at the start of the 'scenic walk' path, is a memorial plaque (which is just what you want to see at the beginning of a scenic walk) inscribed; (and I'm not making this up, the comic effect is there to be found...) "Say a prayer for Pat McGann, came to visit and stayed forever".
Second stop was Josephine Falls, (less danger signs here) again unbelievably picturesque waterfalls surrounded by the type of tropical rainforest seen (in Europe) only in encyclopedias and on postcards.
After lunch in Innisfail it was on to Millaa Millaa falls (picture above). Much entertainment was added to the natural beauty here by the spectacle of a gay French couple photographing each other in front of the falls. And beside the falls. And under the falls. In the water by the falls. Out of the water by the falls. Swimming through the falls. Standing on the rocks behind the falls... All without smiling! Maybe it's a french thing.
On the way home, we stopped by 'The Curtain Fig' and 'The Cathedral Fig'. Which are exciting big fig trees. ( You have to see them in person really, to understand. Or should I say...in...wood?)
Wouldn't advise hitting fig tree territory at dusk though - this is prime mosquito time...
We also discovered the windiest road in the universe, down through the Tablelands on the way back to Cairns. About 20K of constant winding back and forth - I've never felt seasick in a car before, but there's a first for everything.

• Rafting the - 'Foaming Furies' - on the Baron River.

(I was too busy paddling and generally trying not to drown to take any photos of this)
Despite nearly being killed by the hike - carrying a deflated kayak on my back - through the rainforest to the starting point, this was a lot of fun. (I probably would have found the forest 'walk' extremely interesting, had I been prepared for it - the leaflet for the trip made it look like a casual meander over some long grass, not a kilometre long trek through Rambo country). And I managed to avoid falling out of the boat, although I did end up in a couple of rather compromising positions with my Aussie/Austrian co-kayaker when we became wedged around a rock in the middle of a rapid. It was all good though, a quick 'honeymoon shuffle' and we were in the clear.

*Snorkeling The Great Barrier Reef

Was just, awesome. In fact, so awesome was it, that I realised after my first ten minutes or so in the water I was literally saying 'Wow' out loud as I snorkelled along. Very few things have made me say 'Wow' out loud before. And pronouncing the word is quite difficult with a snorkel in your mouth.

*Cape Tribulation Bus Trip

This was a sort of 'oh dear I'm leaving in two days and haven't seen the much talked about 'Cape Trib' yet' last minute idea. It was definitely worth seeing 'where the rainforest meets the reef', however, spending the majority of the day in a minibus did deaden the wonder of it ever so slightly. On the way, we stopped at Port Douglas - holiday destination of the likes of Daniel Radcliff and Kate Hudson (woo-hoo) and the site of Four Mile Beach (above). Guess how long the beach is? Go on. Guess!
Well you're wrong! It's actually seven miles long!

Not really, Four Mile Beach is four miles long.
We also stopped at Mossman gorge, which is a gorge through rainforest with a river running through it - rare in Cairns....., and did the Marrja botanical walk, where we saw, and heard, some cassowarys in the wild - they make a noise like somone playing the bongos- weird man- and I tried my first lime ant. They are actually pretty tasty.
Our last stop of the day was at the Daintree river for a bit of croc-spotting, and as it happened, a good dose of 'getting stuck on a sandbank in the middle of the croc infested river because the water level has dropped since this morning' was thrown in just for funsies.
I slept well that night.

And that ladies and gentlemen, apart from getting my dates mixed up and checking out of the hostel a day early, (proof that 'it' really can happen to the best of us) was Cairns.

I also bought a boomerang from the alleged great-great-great granddaughter of Sir Daniel O'Connell.

So I did.

Ah, Freo. What can I say?
I loved it.
And that's not just because of the great company at the hostel (Pirates Backpackers) or the copious amounts of alcohol consumed with said company (two of my roommates were Irish, it was obligatory...) - Freo is one of those places which, in my humble opinion anyway, just has a great atmosphere about it. Maybe it was just the relief brought about by a comfortable nights sleep in an actual bed, with AC, after suffering through three nights sleeping on tree roots in Rotto, but for once I actually appreciated the apparent tourist slogan emblazoned on all the over-priced and badly made t-shirts in the tourist shops - "Relax, it's Freo". Do you know what? I did.

In between the relaxing and the drinking, I had to do some touristy things of course. Call me old fashioned, but I feel like a bit of a failure if I return from a place and can't say things like, "Oh yes I was actually in the oldest public building in Western Australia" (as I may have mentioned before, the Aussies are really into 'The Oldests').

The oldest public building in Western Australia is in fact, The Roundhouse, which is in Freo.

See?

I also visited the Western Australia Maritime Museum, which was great. Or at least, I presume it would be great, if you like boats. I like boats as much as the next person, but in a much more 'let's-hop-on-this-boat-and-go-somewhere-exciting' type way, rather than an 'oh-look-there's-a-boat-hanging-from-the-ceiling-I-wonder-what-the-history-of-it-is-and-how-it-was-built' type way. But each to their own.
You do get to go on a tour of a huge WW2 submarine though, the HMAS Ovens (I have no idea, maybe because it was really warm inside?), which was actually quite interesting.

Here's a picture of the submarine, because you can only take a good photo of the museum, which is cleverly shaped like a sail, from around the middle of the entrance to the port, and I can't tread water and take a photograph at the same time. (I also imagine, of all the places one could try to do this, the middle of a busy shipping lane would probably not be the best.)

The counterpart to the WA Maritime Museum is the Shipwreck Galleries, which, as the name suggests, is basically a series of rooms filled with glass encased artifacts recovered from shipwrecks, and even the occasional piece of shipwreck - including a reconstructed portion of The Batavia, which is a particularly famous wreck. Apparently.
Again, I'm sure this place is just fan-tastic, if you like looking at old broken/eroded/cracked/rusty things, but in my opinion, once you've seen one old broken/eroded/cracked/rusty thing, you've seen them all. The place is air conditioned though, so it's not all bad.

North Beach is one stop on the train from Freo.

So it is. Good place to catch up on some sleep, and watch the life guards do interesting things with surfboards and beach buggies.

As for going out, well, we only made it to two different places. The Newport bar/club (just round the corner from Pirates) is quite nice - (despite the fact that it closes at twelve and they charge you $12.50 for a pint of Guinness. Which isn't even poured properly...)live bands in the back and a DJ in the front - we ended up here three nights in a row I think. Next door, behind three huge tribally tattooed bouncers, and through a doorway which leads into a passageway of the kind your mother tells you not to walk down when you're away traveling by yourself is 'Clinks', which is open until three on a Wednesday. Serve you well to remember this it will.

It was with a heavy heart - and an even heavier rucksack - that I had to abandon my new Irish companions at lunch on my last day - I had just received a call from the man who drove the airport bus saying he would be picking me up early. Seriously. When does that happen?

The irony of this was not lost to me when I arrived at the airport to discover that my flight had been delayed. For seven hours.
Seven hours
Seven!
This was in fact, the worst type of delay known to man - the delay which occurs when you are two hours early for your flight, and which lasts for longer than the actual duration of your flight. Grrr

So after an uncomfortable four hours of 'sleep' on the plane - I got a full row to myself - take that noisy English gap-yahhs who jumped the queue - I made it back to Melbourne. And after a further bus journey and two more trains, I made it back to Somerville, alive, in one piece, but very, very tired.