mandalar blog

Lately, I went holiday in Rome. It was just over 2 hours flight from London Stansted to Rome’s small airport, Ciampino. (Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport is the largest one). And then, I took the shuttle bus from airport to Termini station, which is situated at the centre of Rome. I booked hotel near it.

Roma Termini, main rail station in Rome

Fiume Tevere (River Tiber)

Colosseo

Vatican square, next to Vatacan city

Pizza € 11, Red wine € 18 : Tourist area price

During my stay, I did site-seeing, shopping and enjoyed Italian foods. People are friendly. Not like in Paris, they answered in English, which is nice for me.But I think they smoke too much. Everywhere outside the buildings, they were smoking. Some people smoked inside public places like Termini station and at airport toilet. I know Londoners also smoke, but too much in Rome.

My new cap bought from Ferrari shop in Rome (€ 30)

A view from a famous church

One strange thing is graffiti works are everywhere across the city, which is tasteless to me. In London, we may see it along the suburb rail line. I suspect they officially allow to do so, but not sure.

Lovely flowering plants and ugly graffiti, which are normal for buildings in Rome

Graffiti place in Main rail station for public

A municipal police (For different types of police, see here)

A tram

I noticed that many orientals are running fashion and jewellery shops in Rome while they are mainly doing Chinese take-away shops in London. I saw a small number of Indians and Afro-Caribbean origin people.

Basically Rome is much less crowded and much less traffic congestion than London. Many people are using scooters like Honda Supercub popular in Burma. But here much bigger and more powerful, I think.

I can say the overall trip was nice and smooth except in last hours. The flight time was 22:30. So we tried to leave Termini station at 19:00 for airport, giving an extra one hour for shuttle bus which run a direct route between Termini staion and airport. But it did not appear until 25 minute past time-table time. So I had to run and get the rail ticket for the Ciampino airport’s nearest rail station, from which a bus took me 20 minutes to get to airport. I was pleased as time was quite young.

But I leant that there would be 1 hour delayed flight. I did not care. Fine for me. Just need to sleep when I arrived in London.

One hour later, it was announced that flight “cancelled”. All passengers ran to rebook ticket again. The next available flight was 10:30AM next morning.Time had been early hours of morning. So I decided to stay at airport. I slept on the floor like other passengers.

The plane landed East Midland airport at mid day. I had to go to Derby by bus, from where I took train to London Stansted airport. It took 3 and half hours, costing me £42 (my budget flight return ticket to Rome was only £40) . Finally I arrived in London Stansted at 6PM , where I left my car at long stay parking.

Here is the full set of photos in slide show taken in Rome. 430 pictures Click here.

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A few weeks ago, Ma KOM published some cloud photos. So I just try to follow her way. Well, today I came back from Roma which is a fantastic place. Later I will share more photos. Until end of November 2008, my plan for this holiday was to go to east. But I had to change for some reason. Anyway I had a good time in Italy.

Cloud over Monument to Vittorio Emanuele II

Cloud over Fiume Tevere (River Tiber) in Roma

I was just over the cloud in Italy

Mediterranean cloud

France cloud (above Paris)

British cloud (above London)

Icy Alps mountains

Part of Alps and Mediterranean

Sharing some photos as I got to Weymouth and Portland today. I was chasing a bargain boat.









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“clebrtes”

I spotted that word on google news page, wondering if it is a new vocabulary. So I clicked the link, showing me that Nadal won in the Australian Open after beating Roger Ferder.

It is obvious that people have been 100% relying on auto spelling checkers which is not normally work in the title box. In fact, it is the rare incident for a commerial medium like Sky.com. So I just recorded on my blog.

Today, I am free before doing 4 night on-call which is a hell to me. I went to nearby Vue to watch a film. Basically I am not a movie fan. But I enjoy quality films. I prefer to watch at home where I set up 37 LCD with a surround system. I don’t support poor quality download movie or pirated DVDs that Chinese-look people normally sell on the street in East London town centres. What happened last time was I had a chance to watch Mama Mia together with my friend in his place. I don’t know from where he got that DVD. But it was very poor resolution and terrible sound quality. As a result, I felt tasteless on such a fantastic movie and went back in half show. Since then, I never try DVD if I don’t buy properly from the shop.

At O2 Vue, I chose Revolutionary Road starring Kate Winslet and Leonardo as I heard on TV that she won Golden Globe award recently for her role in it.

Here is the breif story available on Wiki

Set in 1955, Frank (Leonardo DiCaprio) and April Wheeler (Kate Winslet) move to Revolutionary Road in a Connecticut suburb, and have a daughter and a son.

April is an aspiring but unsuccessful actress who is dissatisfied with her life as a suburban housewife. Frank despises his dull job at Knox Business Machines. From time to time they have bitter arguments. Frank has sex with a young secretary from the office in celebration of his 30th birthday.

April proposes a move to Paris to make their lives more exciting; she will have a job (she heard that secretaries of government agencies are paid well), while Frank can figure out what he really wants in life and start doing that. Frank agrees, and they tell colleagues and friends, who react politely, but find the idea rather immature.

In the meantime, Frank is offered a promotion, and April gets pregnant. April wants to have an abortion and has bought a device to do that herself; it is safe up to pregnancies of 12 weeks. Franks is against that, and emphasizes that there are still two weeks time to think about it.

They are friends with local realtor Helen and her husband Howard. They visit them sometimes with their son John Givings, who stays in a mental institution; he was a mathematician, but as a side effect of 37 electroshocks he forgot everything of it. He has no inhibitions to ask Frank and April direct questions and tell them his explicit opinions about the dull life in this town and about their marriage, to Helen’s embarrassment. First Frank and April agree with John, but later Frank gets angry, after which John says that he feels sorry for them and their unborn baby. During an argument Frank tells April he wished she had had the abortion.

The emigration is cancelled. Later April has sex with neighbor and Frank’s friend Shep Campbell. While Frank thinks the abortion is cancelled too, April carries it out in too late a stage of the pregnancy, and she dies. Frank moves away with the children. Helen talks negatively about the couple to Howard, but he turns his hearing aid off.

If you watch the movie, you will discover it is much more than that.