Mr Mist’s Blog

When they say that something is “too good to be true”, it probably is. And it’s not just limited to how chocolatey your cake is, either. It turns out that the giant’s footprint sequence in the Chinese Olympic opening ceremony was shown to viewers as a computer-generated set of images, rather than the real thing. There was a real set of footprints set off, but it was not recorded live due to safety fears, and because it was thought that a helicopter would not be able to properly track the footsteps. So, basically, it was pre-generated CGI designed to look good. I suppose you can’t blame them for that, but when so many other things looked good, too, how much of that was not real?

So we are returned from our holiday in Rome. We stayed at the Hotel Milton Roma, which was a neat hotel with friendly staff. The room itself was pretty functional, but clean. The hotel was situated right next to a metro station (handy for getting across town) and around 15 minutes walk from the Colosseum. So pretty convinient really.

There was a lot to see around Rome. Much walking was done every day to get from one amazing sight like The Pantheon to another like the very impressive St. Peter’s. (Obviously not all at the same time, though!) We found that the best thing to do was to get out early, then take a break around midday, then go out again in the evening. Otherwise it was just far too hot. Visiting again we would suggest to go at a slightly cooler part of the year, maybe around Easter.

You can see some more of the Rome photos in the gallery. Laura also has some in her gallery.

Whilst in Rome, we took in the Colosseum (of course), the Forum, some of the many, windy, atmospheric streets of the city - strewn as they are with both assorted vehicles, and on-street restaurants - the wonderful scale of St. Peter’s, and the refreshing tranquility of the Spanish Steps and Trevi fountain. This whilst experiencing some of the best pizza and pasta. (And some of the worst, incidentally. Should you be planning a visit, my advice is to avoid the restaurants directly outside some of the major venues, as they seem to survive on the passing tourist trade rather than their quality.)

Rome is a very exciting city and has a lot to offer. It was a most enjoyable holiday.

Here’s a little something that we brought back from Rome with us, obviously reflective of the strong culture and history of the area -

This cow is pretty cool, it feels weird and is squeezy.

It’s like a large cow stress toy.

We’re back from Rome! Also, our luggage has managed to make it back from Rome just now, too. It did not make it back with us yesterday. We almost did not make it because our first flight out was delayed a lot. We had to run across Frankfurt airport to get the next plane. I guess our cases were not running quickly enough. Some photos to follow, once they’ve all been sorted out.

The Chinese Olympic Games opened today with an amazing opening cermony that was an incredible spectacle. It defies belief as to how the London show will be able to come up with anything anywhere near as impressive. Some useless mish-mash showing how “multi-cultural” the UK is will just pale into insignificance compared to such a lavish display of Chinese cultural passion. It was very easy to forget the bad press happening around China and simply stare in awe at the opening ceremony. Most impressive.

Hello, I’ll be back online again around the 8th August. Enjoy yourselves on the internent until then!