In Rome

Landed in Rome at midday today and immediate thoughts...

• the airport looks very new and somewhat design like Washington Duelles only the terminal to terminal movement at the latter is facilitated by "cars" rather than a "sky train" at the former.
  
• immigration took all of 50 seconds to check me in! That's not compared to all of 10 seconds to EU nationals! Now that is what one calls efficiency.
• met a cab driver as I walked out of the airport, quite friendly only his English vocabulary (or so I found out 10 minutes into the journey) was all of 5 words. That did not stop him from showing me at least 10 sites in the city going on and on in a mixture of Italian and French (both of which I don't speak) and all I could say is "Si"
• the hotel am staying at has very small rooms and is quite on the expensive side but is definitely not surprising considering that all the places I have stayed at in London, Newcastle, Liverpool and Paris are almost the same size.

Am planning to take a walk and will write some more later.