Rome; Tuesday, 20 February, 2007

No trip to Italy would be complete without taking in the full Italian experience, which includes the customary "Air Traffic Control Dispute". The first warning should have been when I was in the departures lounge at Heathrow at 11:30 and saw that the 10:00 Rome flight has only just gone to "Go to gate", despite this 30 minutes before departure the gate number for my flight came up, I walked down, straight onto the plane and settled into my seat.

At 12:35, on time the doors were closed, the air bridge retracted and then the pilot let us know that we would be waiting for about another 90 minutes as the Air Traffic Controllers in Rome were on strike until 4pm, so we couldn't leave until we could be certain they would be back at work by the time we reached Italian airspace. After 20 minutes Heathrow decided that they needed the gate so we were sent off to the middle of the airfield and sat there for 40 minutes. Eventually we got the all clear, and for once made a very quick getaway from Heathrow. From the engines starting again, to us being in the air was less than 4 minutes, and we didn't stop at any point, just queue jumped everyone else and took off.

After an eventless flight we landed in Rome, where any annoyance at the delay was put in sharp focus by the fact that the previous BA flight (2 and a half hours before ours was supposed to depart) had only arrived minutes before ours. We may have had an hours delay, they had closer to four, and my bag appeared to come round before any of the earlier flights luggage!

I caught the "Leonardo Express" into the city centre and walked the short distance to the hotel, checked in and then went for a wander.

After 10 minutes random wandering I came across lots of ruins, turned a corner and was greeted by the site that pretty much defines Rome, the Colosseum. I spent quite some time taking photos of it from various locations and angles, before it suddenly dawned on me that it was almost 8:30 and all I had had to eat since breakfast were a couple of BA sandwiches and a chocolate bar, so I wandered off to find a restaurant, and then back to the hotel to sleep off what in the end was a big meal.