Buon giorno!

Hello everyone! This blog will chronicle my (admittedly short) one month odyssey through Italy, Greece, Turkey, and Spain. I named it Ciao Melbourne because I live in Melbourne and "ciao" means both hello and goodbye in Italian (at least I think it does, my Italian is really not that great and has been tested to its limits already). Plus if I name it something ambiguous I can keep it and use it again for future travels! Hopefully.

Firstly I have to apologise for any spelling errors because I'm typing on an iPhone and despite having owned it almost a year I'm still not good at the whole lack of a tactile response thing.

So I got on a 15 hour flight to Doha, Qatar on Monday, then a 6 hour flight from Doha to Rome, Italy on Tuesday morning. I have to say, Qatar Airways has some awesome meals. For dinner, I had spicy fish cakes with sambal sauce, turmeric rice and sauteed broccoli. Then breakfast was vegetable frittata with a croissant, yoghurt and lots of fruit. The good food definitely made up for the screaming children. I think I spent most of my time on the planes sleeping. My advice is, if you want to sleep on a plane, don't listen to the Spirited Away soundtrack on your mp3 player. I thought it would be a relaxing choice but there were way more cymbal crashes than I remembered.

The view into Doha from the plane was amazing. It seemed like thousands of low, flat Middle Eastern style buildings, stark white against the beige sand and rocks. And then a massive, sprawling city skyline off into the distance, coveted by what looked like a dust storm, fog, or maybe pollution. As we landed, we were told it was Ramadan and not to eat or drink in public. Luckily there was a little cafe in the airport cordoned off for non-Muslims, but I don't doubt that some of the employees would have been fasting. I got a bottle of water and had a mildly embarrassing currency moment where I thought the register lady said it cost 60 instead of 6 Qatari riyals. Anyway, it seemed like minutes passed and then I was on a plane again, and that was my first and (as yet) only Middle Eastern experience. Definitely somewhere I want to go in the future. It was 40 degrees Celsius at 8:30 in the morning!

Now I'm in Rome, about to check out of my current hotel room and into another one to start the Contiki tour. I got here at about 3pm yesterday, checked in, put my stuff down in the room, and went outside to wander the streets to get a feel of the place. Then my back started hurting because of my awkward seating position on the plane and I came back for a nap with the intention of going back out for more discovery. My nap turned into a 9 hour sleepathon and I woke up in the middle if the night, alert and ready to look at more stuff, still fully dressed. Then I had the idea (actually Melpo's idea!) to start a blog and here I am, almost 10 in the morning, nerdily excited about everything I see out the window.

I thought I would do an introductory post, and there it is. Next time I update, I might have done some incredibly touristy things. Today I'm going to walk to the Vatican and have a look in there, look at the Castel Sant'Angelo and lots of beautiful bridges, take some pictures. The tour officially starts at 4pm. Exciting!