We managed to get around the Colosseum, Roman Forum, Palatino and the Capitalino Museum. God bless Rome, everything was free. Somehow we managed to perfectly time our visit with Culture Week (the week following the anniversary of the founding of Rome), where all the admission fees to state owned sites are waived.

Last of all, on the day we are due to get the night train to Paris (which sounds heaps like the title of a short film) we decide we will spend the day in the Vatacan City. By yet another fluke, the Vatacan is also free on the last Sunday of the month. We get up at 5.30 to mission over there to make sure we are at the head of the queue for the 7.30 opening of St Peters Basilica. We arrive about 7.00 and there’s a few people ahead of us.

7.30 rolls around. It doesn’t open. The queue behind us grows.

8.00. Not open. More people. Some have banners.

8.15 Not open.

8.30 Not open. I am becoming increasingly frightened by the number of banners and people. Many are clutching orange tickets.

8.45 Guards start turning on the x-ray machines and metal detectors.

9.00 Open. Mass rush on gates. Zoe and I are told off for running.

It is at this point that Zoe and I work out we don’t know why we are running, or what to. But the crowd remains at our heels, so we go with it. Someone gives us each a book in Italian. But there is no time to read that now. There’s hurrying to be done.

As we erupt into the square in front of the basilica, we see a huge set of chairs. Not wanting to be left out, we grab a few in the front row. We still don’t know what is happening.

9:25 A woman sitting next to me turns and asks me a question in Italian. My puzzled expression encourages her to try again in English: “Which Saint are you here to support?”. This question confuses me. I didn’t realise that we needed to pick a horse to back. I thought they were all good in the Gods book. I explain that we are from New Zealand and don’t actually know what is happening. The woman laughs and turns to an older woman sitting on her other side and says something in Italian, to which the woman also laughs. It is at this point that I turn over the book I have been holding and look at the cover. Cannonizaztion. In a blast of religious knowledge from my childhood, I recall that if someone is cannonised they are made into a saint.

We have absent mindedly wandered into a ceremony where four people will be admitted to the register of Saints. And we have kickass seats.

The ceremony itself is a bit like a football rally. Everyone is messing around and making noise and taking photos, then the Pope comes out. People cheer.

The ceremony kicks off, and as the Pope mentions the name of each saint, a different area of the seating cheers and waves banners and flags. The Italian woman’s question about which saint we were supporting suddenly starts to make a lot of sense. The people here have come a long way just for this. There are Germans and Brazilians alongside the Italians. The whole thing is pretty entertaining to start off with, but by the time we get to about the 90 minute marker it’s all starting to wane. We hang around for another 60 minutes (partly out of fear, the Pope is speaking, and that is a man you don’t walk out on). I spy in the program that there is a ‘moment of personal reflection’ and Zoe and I reflect that it’s time to get out of dodge.

We had a look around the bookshop and then wandered out.

It’s a good thing we had a spare day in Rome at the end, cause I didn’t make it inside the Vatacan or St Peters that day. The best laid plans and all that.

Still glad we stayed though, it’s not every day that you see that kind of thing.

I regularly comment on the traffic when ever I go away from home, but I think that this time I’m starting to understand it a little more. There are far fewer concrete rules (like traffic lights and pedestrian crossings) and far more unwritten guidelines (if you want someone to get out of the way so you can pass, you give a short blast of the horn, every time they have obliged often with a smile and a wave – which seems more practical than the rage I have seem people get in when they are stuck behind a campervan for 30 kms). I got to thinking about it as we have been on the road a fair amount, and given the staggering number of cars that appear in rush hour I’m not convinced that the a more traditional system would actually work here anyway.

This place has been nothing like the crater riddled, anarchistic, post war bullet fest that the news would have you believe. The news that we see is taken from the worst of the worst, the tiny percentage of situations where bullets are literally flying over head, and bombs have just gone off. The vast majority of the time, this isn’t happening. There isn’t an attack just around the corner, in fact, given scarcity of damage and ruin I’ve seen while here, I’d suggest that a much more likely threat is crossing the street (the traffic may be under control, but I’m still not all that sure about the way pedestrians interact with it).

On an unrelated note… everywhere we go there are these blue and yellow boxes. They are really really everywhere, on street corners, inside monuments and restaurants. They are for a single, nation wide charity. Rather than having lots of different little charities, there is one big one that helps everyone. And people contribute significantly. Sajjad (our tour guide) explained that he contributes to it because he can actually see the good it does, they money donated is used for the purposes in which it is collected. We saw one guy on a small motorbike come, open the box, take out fistful after fistful of money and just tuck it into a bag he was wearing. He had no security, not even a car. Just a heap of cash and a satchel.

We just stopped for a coffee on the side of the road about an hour ago, and there was an elderly man and a younger woman sitting in the rest stop, dressed mainly in rags. One of the drivers took over tea and gave them some money, and the car in front of us pulled in too. The driver got out, gave them some money and drove off again. This guy stopped solely to give them money.

When I compare the comments I got from people when I said I was coming here (mind out you don’t get shot / various comments about bombs etc) with the reception we’ve received from the Iranians and the experience, they are pretty far apart. These are a truly lovely people, in a beautiful country that has had people settled in it for over 7000 years. In one of my earlier entries I mentioned that everything in Turkey is seems to be at least 1000 years old, Iran puts that to shame. The depth of history here has on many occasions left me wondering how New Zealand has even managed to establish running water in our meagre 250 years. We visited a tree that is 16 times older than our whole country. Nuts.

All in all, this place has been pretty ace.

One of the (many) rulers of Persia decided that roads were ace. And with roads come travellers, and travellers need a place to sleep. So caravanserai were placed every 60 kms (which apparently is how far you can get on a camel in a day) along the main roads.

The one we went to is one of the few remaining operating caravanserai and it is amazing, It’s a little oasis in the desert with cool rooms and a courtyard. The whole thing is built in a series of concentric circles, starting with the speakers podium in the very centre, then a place to tie up camels, then a small circular river/lake thing (which I suppose was originally intended to be a place for camels to drink), then a walkway, then a bunch of rooms that face the speakers podium etc etc etc. There’s also a really steep stairwell which leads to the roof. From the roof you can see for miles in all directions, and there’s nothing there. Just sand, dirt and mountains.

I think the most important bit of the trip comes next. We were done with lunch, and heading back out to the bus, when someone pointed out there was a camel being led around. Needless to say, everyone heads over to take photos and our tour guide has a chat with the guy leading the camel. And it turns out, that for a meagre NZ$10, you can ride it!!! The offer is extended to all of us, and although I was a little apprehensive at first, with a bit of encouragement from Zoe (she has already ridden a camel in Egypt on a previous occasion), I got amongst it. It was pretty cool, and I didn’t fall off once. Which is lucky cause it’s actually bloody high. Check it out.

1. Private cars are only allowed to purchase 80 litres of fuel per month
2. Taxis are only allowed to purchase 650 litres of fuel per month
3. For private cars: if you have an odd numbered licence plate, you drive on odd numbered days and the same for even numbered

Some other things about cars in Iran:

Women have only been able to drive legally for two years Allowing women drivers has seen the creation of a ‘for women, by women’ taxi service

Up until March 21 this year, private cars were able to act as de facto taxis. If you are driving to work and you seeing a guy thumbing a lift, you can pick him up, arrange a price and take him in with you. Once the law banning this was enacted the government gave anyone wanting to keep acting as a taxi one month to get a taxi license and paint their cars the taxi colours. If the car is over 5 years old, a new car must be purchased.

As I think I mentioned earlier, our tour bus has two drivers. It’s been explained to us that there is a strictly enforced law that drivers can only drive for 8 hours a day, so our two are to make sure that we don’t exceed that quota. Each driver has a digital recorder that they plug into the GPS system on the bus, and this measures their speed and time driving. We have frequently stopped at checkpoints where this information is checked to ensure they are not speeding (going over 80kmh) or driving too many hours. We asked why these rules were so strict, and were told the following:

5 years ago, a bus crashed into truck because one (or potentially both) of the drivers were exhausted after driving long haul. Many people were injured and rescue teams worked to get them out of the wreckage and lay them on the road to wait for the helicopters to airlift them to hospital. While they lay there, another truck driver, who was asleep at the wheel, drove through them, killing 40 people. Iran entered a 3 day period of national mourning and the new driving rules were enacted shortly after. Pretty good reason for the rules.

My favourite thing from the National Archeological Museum (Iran flavour) was the salt man. It seems that about 1700 years ago a guy got in a fight with another guy and bashed him in the face with some kind of mace, killing – or at least severely wounding him. To cover the crime, the basher threw the body down a salt mine. The preserving nature of salt dried the body out and kept in in fairly good nick, until someone found it in the winter of 1993. Carbon 14 dating provided the age of the corpse and DNA testing gave the interesting (although somewhat useless) information that he is blood type B+. His head and boot (with leg still inside it) are on display in the museum, and in my pictures below.

Enjoy!

Have undertaken a wide range of activities while here, mainly eating and sight seeing. I tried a traditional yoghurt drink called doogh at lunch the other day. It was described as being a salty yoghurt drink, which I couldn’t comprehend. Full of post eyeball eating bravado I gave it a shot, it’s fair to say that I couldn’t imagine it because I’ve never had anything like it; this was a good thing.

I think my first problem was that it was warm. In the same way that you can drink coke when it’s warm but it isn’t as good as coke when it’s cold, heat made this particular drink that much more unpalatable. I had a go at putting ice in it to see if it was better cold, the ice melted and then the water separated from the rest of the drink and sat unappealingly on top. All in all not a pleasant experience. For those who have not tried this, the best way I can liken it to something at home would be to warm, watered down, salad dressing with added salt. Feel free to try that one out.

The other thing I’ve noticed is the traffic, or more specifically the pedestrians. Zoe tells me that the guide book said you cross roads at your own peril, even on pedestrian crossings. Locals either hold their own lives in very low regard or the skills and breaks of resident drivers in very high regard. Even on 6 and 8 lane roads they casually saunter out without a care in the world, and like Moses parting the sea the traffic opens up to accommodate them. I had a crack at it on a two lane street and got across ok, but my casualness was hampered by Zoe clinging to my elbow quietly screaming in my ear to hurry up. On a side note, fatalities on Iran roads per year: 26,000.

I think the thing that stood out for me most was the people, especially those in shops. It wasn’t like other places I’ve been, the people there genuinely wanted to have a chat and sell you something, rather than have a chat to sell you something. That was a massive difference for me. My favourites where the front of house guys for the restaurants and cafes.

We had one cafe that we went back to about four or five times, run by these two guys who were probably only a little older than us.

Every time headed back there as soon as we were in sight of the place whoever was doing front of house would come charging over to ask what we were doing. When we replied that we were headed into their cafe, they looked genuinely shocked (this happened over and over from the second time to the last time). This was quickly overcome with a round of hugs and backslapping as they bustled us into seats.

By about the second time they were giving us freebies, and on the last time we went there Zoe and I were playing backgammon.

After soundly defeating her in every other game that day, Zoe started to have a comeback. By a comeback, I mean she slaughtered me about 6 times in a row. The two guys were watching this and laughing and giving Zoe hints and by the time I had thrown up my hands in despair at the end of the sixth game, one of them came over to shove me out of the way and take Zoe on.

After one of the longest games I think I’ve ever seen, Zoe beat him. And he was a broken man. It was hilarious. He slunk off to the shadows to nurse his clearly ailing pride. Don’t get me wrong, she beat me too, but I’m used to it.

Such a good ending to the Istanbul leg of the journey.

Istanbul is full of treasures of all sorts, from the people to the architecture to trinkets. It’s an amazing place and I’d love to go back there sometime.

If you get the chance to go, do it. It’s ace.

Turns out it’s quite the process, lathering up alone took about 6 or 7 minutes. I got shaved twice over and then cleansed, mositurised and offered aftershave, talcum powered (at least I think that’s what it was), and had my hairline around the back of my neck tidied up. Then he played with my hair a little to make sure I was looking my best and sent me on my way.

All in all, a good experience. I’d recommend it.

On the walk back to the hotel, we passed numerous detours (no traffic is allowed in the area we are staying while Obama is roaming about), tanks, riot police in full gears, APVs, the aforementioned rooftop snipers, blacked out four wheel drives like on the West Wing, and no Obama.

It also meant that we had to detour around about a million blocks, which made me a little cross. Not that fond of additional walking.

I wanted to take pictures of the rooftop sharp shooters, but Zoe suggested that probably wasn’t a good idea. I suppose she’s right. So no pictures.

Went to Gallipoli - This tour was run by a guy who seemed pretty keen to keep the tour party reminded that the ANZACs failed to get the high ground during their 8 months at Gallipoli. The guide did tell some quite touching stories about the relationships between the Turks and the ANZACs, but only when he got bored of telling us that we lost, but were all friends now so it didn’t matter. But just for those keeping score, the ANZACs did loose. And so on and so on.

The site itself is amazing, the trenches are still there and we went around the top of the hills to see where the fighting took place. There are a couple of places where no-mans land (the space between friendly and enemy trenches) is only 7 or 8 meters. The way it’s been built is that there is now a road on that 7 metres. Seeing it relly gives a sense of how pant wettingly frightening it must have been. There is no doubt that each side could hear the other talking and moving around. 

Also, it’s bloody cold up there. I got to go in a nice warm tour bus, as opposed to jumping into the ocean and charging up the hill. It would have sucked big time. And that doesn’t even take into account that someone was shooting at you.