Rain

I know what you did last Sunday and you should be ashamed.

No real Italian would fall asleep during the telecast of the Monza GP.

I think you should have been there battling through the pouring rain on what seemed like someone´s farm. Picking your way through a pitch black underpass where the local fans (who had been camped out for weeks to get the best spots on the northern curves) were living in shelter on either side of a 2-foot wide passageway for the visiting racegoers to trip thier way to the track. Of course, Ferrari came first, Minardi didnt.

Speaking of trips, I made the journey from Dubrovnik to Milan in a record 34 hours on a catermaran made in Australia. I dont normally share hostel dorms, but next time, I´m really looking forward to another room containing an obese man with a chest infection who snores, and a drunk, pungent italian who mutters to himself in his sleep.

Ancona is just Another Nondescript City Offering Nothing Amusing. Its the sort of place to which my Grandmother would say "What would you want to go there for".

This weeks facts.

If you talk with your hands too much and look behind you at the same time you will fall down the stairs on the Milan Subway.

If you take all of the tourists out of Verona, there would be no one left there for the homeless people to sell plastic Llamas and clothes pegs to.

If you took all of the Nigerians selling fake Louis Vuittion(?) handbags out of Milan it would probably just still be Milan and it would still cost AUD$15 for a beer.

Now in Madrid and what an amazing place. Here for 3 days and then off to the Paralympics in Athens. Milan was a little nondescript although the shopping was great (new sunglasses). Unfortunatley you needed a 7 figure bank balance to buy anything. Including Beer. The race was wet.

For some reason in the last two weeks I have ben approached three times by church of scientology worshippers trying to get me to buy something. Should I be nervous?

Have rejoined Julie for a few weeks and will probably now change my itenerary to take in some parts of Turkey and attempt to return to Rome by 15th October to head for whats left of Miami and Cancun.

Adios for now.