Entries about public transport

I awoke at midday on 11 November 2019, my first full day in Rome. I am not ashamed of this fact. I needed the sleep. It was also raining rather heavily outside. And Rome kind of sucks and the city could wait. Yes, Rome has an impressive list of must-see sights that ought to be on every traveller’s bucket list. But that doesn’t change the fact that Rome still kind of sucks. I needed to recharge in the cosy, elegantly minimalist confines of my room so that I could summon the strength to face whatever crap the city could throw at me.

I eventually shuffled out of the Empire Suites, had breakfast – lunch, really – at a nearby organic eatery that had the most confusing system of ordering one’s food that I have ever seen, and walked the short distance to Vatican City. Even in the driving rain, St Peter’s Square is a wonder to behold. It is massive and makes you feel like an insignificant ant, yet the circular colonnades that almost completely enclose the square give it an intimate air. The obelisk in the centre of the square serves as an anchor, a point of reference that helps to make the lonely individual standing out in the open square feel not quite so lost.

Standing watch over the square is St Peter’s Basilica, the mother church of the entire Roman Catholic Church, the most powerful religious institution the world has ever known. There was a lengthy queue winding around the square in the shelter of the colonnades with thorough security screening before you could enter the church.

And what a church! There is no other building anywhere on Earth that is so expertly designed to inculcate in the visitor a stunned, unavoidable reverence for a Supreme Being. I was so awestruck that I had to restrain myself from begging one of the many priests to baptise me into the Christian church right then and there.

In my daily life in Australia, my attitude to religion oscillates between “apathetic indifference” and “trenchant hostility”. When I think of religion, I typically think of people like Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Reverend Fred Nile, Lyle Shelton, Cardinal George Pell, Margaret Court and other hypocritical, self-serving, sanctimonious Bible-bashers who pervert the words of Jesus Christ – the great man who they claim to worship – and try to impose their twisted, deformed beliefs on the rest of society to justify bashing the poor and unemployed, discriminating against LGBT people, oppressing women, and exalting the wealthy and privileged. Nothing would give me greater pleasure than to see religion sent to the bottom of the sea. It’s fairly safe to say that religion and I are not close friends.

When I travel, something weird happens. I become not only interested in religion but appreciative of it. I love visiting churches, temples, mosques, and learning about the history of the religions in the countries I visit and what those religions believe. I even occasionally pray in some of the places of worship I see. That’s not like me at all. The last time I prayed while not travelling was on the day Donald Trump was elected – sometimes prayer is all we have.

St Peter’s Basilica was no different. I ambled around the immense space of this chief church of Catholicism for a long time – I lost track of time, it was several hours, I believe. There are so many chapels off to the side, so many paintings, so many grottoes, so many murals, so many tombs of dead Popes, so many altars, so many gilded ceilings, so many inscriptions.

Taking pride of place in the Basilica is the Baldachin, a structure over the Papal altar and the tomb of St Peter that looks a bit like one of those old four-poster beds. This bronze shelter is so elaborately carved with impressive fluted spirals billowing up each of the four posts that it would make a famous tourist attraction in its own right.

Closer towards the entrance to the Basilica is a chapel containing one of the world’s most famous statues, Michelangelo’s Pietà. This harrowing depiction of a mournful Mary embracing the corpse of her son Jesus is pure perfection in brilliant white marble. Even the stigma on Jesus’s right hand looked so realistic that I half-expected it to start bleeding.

While I was looking at all the magnificent art and trying to decipher the many Latin inscriptions a procession entered the Basilica and slowly went up the aisle. There was a priest carrying a large crucifix at the head of the parade but most of the people behind him were laity. I am guessing they were from the Latin America. The look of devotion and of ecstasy beaming from their faces as they chanted a Spanish hymn while their hands were clasped in front of their chests made me wonder if my irreligious life and upbringing isn’t missing something.

I left St Peter’s Basilica shortly after sunset and had a late lunch – or possibly an early dinner – at a nearby restaurant. It was yet another tourist rip-off joint serving microwaved pasta and stale fruit cake with an exorbitant service charge that didn’t appear on the menu added to my final bill. I wish there was an easy way of telling apart these places from the genuine Italian trattorie.

I caught the metro to the Spanish Steps. I don’t get it. They are just steps! Yes, they’re somewhat more ornate than most steps, and they have appeared in a lot of movies – but they are just steps! I climbed the steps anyway and promptly climbed back down them. I can get exactly the same experience just by climbing up and down the steps in my apartment building. The nearby Column of the Immaculate Conception, a pillar topped with a copper statue of the Mary the Queen of Heaven crowned with a ring of stars dedicated in 1854, was far more interesting.

Also far more interesting was another sight not far away, the Trevi Fountain. Now this is something worth seeing. What a wonderful fantasy in stone and water with billowing carvings of rocks, of vines, of horses, of angels. The surging throngs of tourists couldn’t detract from the magic of the Trevi Fountain.

As I walked away from the fountain up a side street, one of the teeming hordes of scam artists, pickpockets and beggars accosted me. He was at least six foot six tall and intimidating as hell itself. He stepped into my path.

“Hey, man! Your shoes! They’re black! Black, just like Africa. Where are you from?”

At the best of times I don’t like strangers on the street trying to strike up conversation with me. Perhaps it’s my British ancestry that makes me so reserved. But considering Italy’s reputation for rampant petty criminality, I was on high alert. I guessed that he was trying to draw attention to my shoes so that he could pick my pockets while my gaze was directed down at the ground. “No thanks, I’m not interested,” I said firmly.

“Why? Why don’t you want to talk to me?” I tried to sidestep around him but he kept blocking me no matter which direction I tried to go.

This pushed my buttons. “FUCK OFF!” I shouted as loud as I could with a decidedly un-British lack of reserve. The street was crowded with tourists and I hoped that drawing attention to him might stop him from proceeding with his nefarious intentions.

It worked. He was visibly shocked. Perhaps not many tourists have given him the expletive-laden ear-bashing he so rightfully deserved. As I walked away there was mock outrage. “What? Fuck you too, man! What did I ever to do you?” he shouted at me with the most unctuous air of fake offence.

God damn it, Italy. A First World country would have at least a half-competent law enforcement system that would effectively deal with these thieves and liars and scammers. Perhaps Italy is not a First World country.

I get the feeling that Italy, along with other similar countries on Europe’s dysfunctional Mediterranean fringe, trades upon its past greatness. Look how great Rome was two thousand years ago! Look how great Florence was five hundred years ago! This is all well and fine. Perhaps it would be finer if Italy tried being great now.

I tried catching a metro to Termini station to explore a bit more of Rome’s public transport system, but the metro station was closed for repairs. Apparently it had been for many months. I found a bus stop with a large crowd of other people waiting in the rain. I waited forever and ever. I looked at the list of bus routes on the bus stop sign, there were at least half a dozen going to Termini. I waited. I kept waiting. After about fifteen minutes a bus finally appeared. It was so full that hardly any of the people at the stop could get on. Stuff this for a joke.

I ended up walking to the next metro station in the heavy rain. I’m glad I did, otherwise I wouldn’t have come across the circular Piazza della Repubblica with its centrepiece fountain and gently arcing colonnades surrounding the roundabout.

From there I caught a jam-packed Line A train to San Giovanni and changed to an even more crowded train on the new Line C that serves the south-eastern suburbs. I got off the driverless train at Mirti in the suburb of Centocelle. I emerged from the underground station into a pleasant working-to-middle-class neighbourhood of peach-painted apartment buildings and buzzing squares. The rain had cleared, families and friends were ambling through the neighbourhood in large groups chatting loudly and amicably – the famous passeggiata, the evening stroll that is such an integral part of Italian urban life.

I stopped at a gelateria and bought the yummiest gelato ever, two massive scoops and a cone for only two euros. It would cost me about three times as much in Sydney. People on the street greeted me with a smile. I stopped at a real estate agent and looked at the window. One-bedroom apartments in Centocelle were selling for €120,000; two-bedders for €180,000 – about one-third of the price of apartments in my part of Sydney. I found a cosy little tavern and had an entirely creditable beer and pizza, not microwaved trash, for a very cheap price and served by friendly staff. I couldn’t believe I was still in the same city as the scoundrel who assaulted me the night before with his baby’s stroller, the restaurateur who charged me a small fortune for microwaved fettucine carbonara or the pickpocket who wouldn’t get out of my way. Perhaps the bad things I was thinking of Italy were unfounded to an extent.

It was getting quite late and it was time to get back to my hotel. There was another railway line nearby – the Giardinetti Line. Rome has three railway lines called “local railways”, they are isolated lines that connect outer suburbs to various points on the metro network. The Giardinetti Line feeds into Termini station from the south-eastern suburbs and is operated by ancient little yellow and white trains – more like trams, actually – on narrow 950-millimetre gauge track. My train back to Termini was noisy, draughty, a little bit sketchy but great fun. Who needs transport museums when you have Rome’s decrepit public transport system?

St Peter's Square

Nave of St Peter's Basilica

The Chair of St Peter

Dome of St Peter's Basilica

Michelangelo's Pietà

St Peter's Baldachin

Tomb of Pope John Paul II in St Peter's Basilica

The Spanish Steps

Column of the Immaculate Conception

Trevi Fountain

Piazza della Repubblica

Gelato in Centocelle

Giardinetti Line train at Centocelle station

On board the Giardinetti Line train

My train to Rome was not due to leave Firenze Santa Maria Novella station until 12:17 on Saturday the tenth of November 2019 so I had plenty of time to squeeze in some more Florence sights before I left.

Or so I thought.

I was silly, I thought seeing things would be as simple as rocking up to the venue in question, waiting a short while in a queue, buying a ticket and going in. Hardy har har. Combine the dysfunctional organisational skills of Italians with the insane numbers of tourists that would put even the famous efficiency of the Swiss or the Japanese under unbearable strain and you have the recipe for hordes of disappointed visitors who should have been smarter and bought their tickets online.

First, I tried the Palazzo Vecchio, the fourteenth-century castle-like building that was the administrative centre of the Republic of Florence. Apart from the magnificent apartments of the Medici clan, the chapels and the banquet halls, the Palazzo also has a reputed art gallery. I eagerly joined the long queue. After several minutes I realised the queue was not moving. I thought that perhaps the Palazzo was not yet open, but I peered over the shoulders of people in front of me and the ticket counters were indeed open, it’s just that the staff were so slow and inefficient that the queue never moved.

I decided to give the Palazzo Vecchio the flick and head to a nearby church, the Orsanmichele Church. The front door of this significant fourteenth-century place of worship was open. Yay! So I went in, but couldn’t go any further than a couple of metres because the church was closed for renovations. Bugger. At least I got a few glimpses of the stained glass windows and the back of the splendidly Gothic tabernacle.

After having no luck getting into the Duomo the day before, I thought I might have a better shot today. But of course, it was Sunday! And the Duomo is a cathedral. Which means it is a church. Which means that people use that church for worship. The Duomo was closed to the public all day for what appeared to be a never-ending succession of Masses, as were the Basilicas of San Lorenzo and Santa Maria Novella.

There was one sight I managed to experience before catching my train – the Mercato Centrale (Central Market). This is a two-storey affair, not especially historic (I am guessing it was built in the late nineteenth century) but attractive enough. The bottom floor is Florence’s wholesale produce market. Being a Sunday this section was closed but it was just the same grotty collection of forklifts, pallets, carboard boxes and the overpowering stench of rotten cabbage that you find in wholesale produce markets all over the world. Upstairs was open though, and what a great place it was! There were rows of fancy food shops – delicatessens, butchers, gelaterias, wine bars, cheese shops – underneath an impressive glass canopy.

The Mercato Centrale was a foodie’s paradise and I regretted that I had already eaten a distinctly crappy breakfast at yet another rip-off restaurant. I had enough space in my stomach for a cannolo though. Cannoli are reasonably common at cake shops in Australia, a doner kebab-like roll of pastry with a sweet cream filling, but the cannoli I have had back home cannot compare to the one I had at the Mercato Centrale. The dusting of crushed pistachios made what was already a superior cannolo simply divine.

Time was fleeing so I went back to Tina’s apartment, fetched my backpack from my room, exchanged heart-felt farewells with Tina, and hauled my pack the short distance to Firenze Santa Maria Novella station.

I didn’t have to wait too long until my train appeared. There are two companies that run high-speed rail services in Italy – the government-owned Trenitalia with its Frecce services, and the privately-owned Italo. My Italo train, a sleek, stylish thing the colour of Sangiovese wine, glided silently into the platform, came to a stop, and I waited while a scrum of people trying to get on were pushing against plenty of other people were trying to get off. God damn it, Italy!

I finally settled into my seat in the Prima ambience. Italo trains don’t have classes like normal trains, but ambiences. The marketing guff is that no ambience is better than one another, they are just different, and passengers get to choose which ambience suits them the best. It just so happens that some ambiences are more expensive and have more room than other ambiences – in descending price order, Club, Prima, Comfort and Smart. It’s a load of advertising industry bullshit if you ask me.

Despite the cringeworthy wankery of Italo’s “ambiences”, it was an awesome train. The service was great, the carriage was antiseptically clean, the seat was comfortable, the Wi-Fi, USB ports and power points were greatly appreciated. An attendant came around with a trolley and served a free and entirely creditable cup of espresso coffee with an apricot pastry as I watched the scruffy Tuscan countryside speed past at 250 kilometres per hour.

The Italo train arrived at Roma Termini on time at 13:50, only ninety-three minutes after leaving Florence. Roma Termini is not the most pleasant station I have ever seen, but it is enormous and rather dizzying. In terms of size, its bland glassy modernist architecture and the kinds of retail and fast food outlets that clog all the corridors, it reminds me more of an international airport than a railway station. It took me forever to find the Rome Metro platforms.

I finally found my Line A platforms – the signage in Roma Termini was nothing short of appalling – I bought a weekly Rome public transport ticket and I boarded my dirty, crowded metro train for my six-station trip to Ottaviano. I know it was very early in my stay in Rome but I disliked the city already. There was a harshness of manner among the people I encountered at Roma Termini and on the metro that I found a little disquieting. It seemed as if many people had a chip on their shoulder, a hardness in their eyes, like they were just waiting for the opportunity for someone to look at them the wrong way so they could punch them. The clashing scrums of people trying to get on and off the train at the same time at the various stations seemed like further evidence that Rome wasn’t going to be a nice city.

I basically had to fight my way off the train at Ottaviano. I emerged from the grim, dim, brown metro station onto the street above. This neighbourhood wasn’t too bad. Prati is an affluent suburb of neat late nineteenth-century apartment buildings on broad tree-lined avenues; this neighbourhood was built to house all the public servants who moved to Rome when it became the capital of the unified Kingdom of Italy after the Risorgimento. Prati seemed in a way more Parisian than Roman.

I found my hotel – a large apartment divided into about five hotel rooms, really – called the Empire Suites. The elderly owner greeted me like a long-lost friend. Perhaps I was wrong in my first impression of Rome.

“My-a son, he-a leeve in Ow-strah-lia,” he said.

This happens a lot in Italy. Every man and his dog has a close relative who lives in Ow-strah-lia. “Wow, that’s nice.”

“He-a leeve in Seedanee. Where in Ow-strah-lia you leeve?”

“I’m from Sydney too.”

“My-a son, he-a leeve in Manly. You-a know heem?”

I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Sydney has over five million people, a population greater than even Rome’s, and that unfortunately I had yet to make acquaintance with each and every Sydneysider. “No, sorry, I don’t know him. Manly is very nice though. It’s expensive. It has a very nice beach. Lots of pine trees along the beach.”

He seemed pleased that his son had made enough of a success of himself to live in such an agreeable and wealthy suburb.

After checking in and dumping my backpack in my room I went for a walk. It was fairly late in the afternoon on a Sunday, I wouldn’t be able to explore any museum or major sight. I decided to indulge in my love of geography instead.

The Empire Suites was a fifteen-minute walk from the State of Vatican City, the world’s smallest country. There aren’t many countries where you can walk around the entire country in a leisurely ninety-minute stroll. I had yet to walk around any country. I was determined to change this.

I started at the north-eastern corner of Vatican City and walked clockwise around the country. The country is only forty-nine hectares, about twice the size of Australia’s largest shopping centre. The border is quite easy to follow, the vast majority of it consists of a very high brick wall enclosing the church property within – the Apostolic Palace, St Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican Gardens, the Pope’s personal railway station and heliport.

Many people think the State of Vatican City is ancient, as old as the Roman Catholic Church itself. In reality it is a twentieth-century invention. For over a millennium the Pope was not only the spiritual head of the Catholic Church but also the ruler of the Papal States which covered most of central Italy. When Garibaldi and his troops invaded the Papal States in 1870 and reunified Italy in the Risorgimento the Pope refused to recognise the new Italian kingdom. A succession of Popes for six decades refused to leave the church’s headquarters on the Vatican Hill – they described themselves as “prisoners of the Vatican”.

In 1929 the Pope and Italy’s dictator Benito Mussolini came to an agreement, the Lateran Treaty. In return for the Pope recognising Italian sovereignty, the Catholic Church would have its own sovereign state, the State of Vatican City, which would likewise be recognised by Italy. This sovereign state, as miniscule as it is, would at least allow the Holy See to conduct diplomatic relations with other countries and provide a secular base from which to manage the entire Catholic Church worldwide, just as the old Papal States did. It is no coincidence that Vatican City has the same flag as the erstwhile Papal States.

After one and a half hours and four kilometres I completed my circumnavigation of Vatican City. Hooray! How many countries have you walked around the entire circumference? I’ve walked around a whole country and you haven’t. So nur nurny nur nur.

The sun was setting and I decided to explore some of Rome’s public transport system. It’s not very good. To be honest, most Australian cities have better public transport than Rome, which is a rather unusual thing to say about a European city. Only a small part of the Rome metropolitan area is covered by the three-line metro system, the trams are dirty and ancient and also only cover a very small part of the urban area, the buses are infrequent and difficult to navigate, signage is abysmal and transport services are often so crowded you can’t get on board.

I caught a route 19 tram from Piazza del Risorgimento to the Policlinico hospital on Rome’s eastern side. Route 19 travels in a long arc from just outside Vatican City in the west through Rome’s northern suburbs and then out to the east. The tram was battered, filthy, ugly, slow, rattly, draughty and uncomfortable.

After what seemed an eternity I alighted at the tram stop at Policlinico. The tram stop was a narrow platform squeezed between the tram tracks and the traffic lanes of a busy arterial road. A pedestrian crossing was at the far end of the tram platform. The tram I was on was occupying the track. In front of me was a wizened, hunched old woman – perhaps deaf, perhaps demented, perhaps both – standing in the centre of the platform. I kept asking politely if she could move so I could get past her. “Scusi? Spiacente? Umm ... hello? Buona sera? Could you move over a bit, please, so I can get past? Umm … ciao? Scusi? Hello? Can you hear me? Per favore? Hello?” No matter what I said, the old woman wouldn’t budge.

I soon felt a series of very sharp jabs in my calves. I turned around to see a young father pushing a stroller with his baby in it against my legs with his wife just behind him. “Scusi!” he snarled.

I snapped. Like most people, I don’t take too kindly to being physically assaulted. “What? Are you f#$%ing blind, you dumb c#$t? Can’t you f&*%ing see that there is this old bitch in front of us who won’t f@#%ing damn well move? For f*$!ing f*#&’s sake!” It’s very hard to be angry in a language you don’t know well so I reverted to English.

“No! No! No!” he shouted at me, assaulting me even harder with his baby’s stroller. He looked like he was about to smash my face in. Thankfully a small gap in the traffic suddenly appeared and I was able to jump off the platform onto the street and run across to the footpath.

Stuff Rome and stuff Italy.

I took the metro four stations on Line B from Policlinico to Colosseo. The Colosseum wasn’t open being well after sunset but it was pleasantly lit in a soft golden hue. I reflected upon the absurdity of how the Ancient Romans built a stadium and it is still standing two thousand years later while the government of my state of New South Wales is wasting $2.3 billion on knocking down two perfectly good stadiums built twenty and thirty years ago and building new ones to replace them. I would have to return in the daytime when it was open.

I then caught a bus back to Prati. Without an Italian SIM card (thanks a bloody lot, the Gorizia TIM shop), it was hard to find public transport information. The bus stop signs just showed a list of routes with no maps or timetables. After stumbling around the neighbourhood for ages I finally found the stop for the bus route I wanted. I then waited forever for the bus. In most European cities the buses, trams and trains are so frequent that you don’t need timetables, the vehicles just seem to magically appear as if your mere presence at the stop is enough to conjure it from thin air. Rome is not your typical European city. I was grateful when my bus finally appeared so I could grab dinner and retreat to my hotel room. I had the feeling that I would need to recuperate in order to strengthen myself for whatever Rome might throw at me over the next few days.

Orsanmichele Church in Florence

Mercato Centrale in Florence

Cannolo at the Mercato Centrale in Florence

On board the Prima carriage on the Italo train from Florence to Rome

High-speed Italo train at Roma Termini station

Antique 1940s tram in Rome

Pontifical Swiss Guards on sentry duty at the Vatican City border

Most of the border of the Vatican City is a very high, sloping brick wall

Tram at Piazza del Risorgimento in Rome

Train on Line B of the Rome Metro

The Colosseum at night

Qatar Airways has been judged the world's best airline by Skytrax five times, and I concur with their judgment. The seats are comfortable, the service was professional, the interior was decorated in tasteful maroons and restrained creams, nothing went wrong. I can certainly recommend flying with Qatar.

One thing surprised me though - just how generic and international Qatar Airways is. I knew that a large proportion of their crew were expatriates, but I wasn't expecting all of them to be. Asians, Africans, Europeans, Australians - but not a single Arab was to be seen among the cabin crew. Much the same can be said for the menu - penne pasta with Mediterranean vegetables, omelettes, focaccias, chocolate mousse, sausages; all decent enough but scarcely a window into Qatari culture. I admire how many airlines are essentially an introduction to their country's culture. Think of AirAsia's nasi lemak or Asiana's bulgogi or Qantas's Aboriginal dot-painting uniforms or KLM's safety video produced using stop motion photography of Delft blue chinaware.

As pleasant as Qatar Airways' A380 was, fifteen and a half hours is far too long to sit in one seat. I am jealous of people who sleep easily on aeroplanes; I only got about three and a half hours of extremely interrupted sleep. I was hoping that I would sleep far longer as I only got about three hours sleep the night before with my eye trouble.

It was with great relief that I left the plane at Hamad International Airport shortly before six in the morning, a very nice and nearly brand new airport. Even though there were only five people in front of me at my immigration counter, I still had to wait forever. It wasn't because the immigration officers were lazy and inefficient, but because they are extremely strict and thorough. As an Australian citizen I had it easy but they still demanded to know every last detail of my stay and I had to show my hotel booking. In front of me were some Chinese citizens and the officer was putting them in the star chamber.

I withdrew some Qatari riyals from an ATM and caught a nearly empty bus to my hotel. You need to buy a fare smart card for ten riyals (note: one riyal equals forty Australian cents) and add as many more riyals for a balance to pay your fare (in my case, the fare was three riyals). Luckily there is a smart card purchasing machine in the airport bus terminal.

While I was waiting for my route 747 bus (747 bus? To the airport? Geddit? Hahaha), I saw an unusual pedestrian crossing sign. It featured a woman wearing a long dress. I've never seen women represented on road signs before. I never knew that Qatar was such a paragon of gender inclusiveness. I took a photo and a security guard went crazy, he said all photography was strictly forbidden. He didn't make me delete it, so you get to see it for your enjoyment.

I was hoping that the Concorde Hotel would give me an early check-in at eight o'clock, but no such joy. I had to come back after two. This is probably a good thing - if I had gone to sleep at eight, my body clock would be out of whack for days afterward. So I started exploring. My hotel is right next to al-Doha al-Jadeda station on the brand new Doha Metro, the most bizarre public transport system I have ever encountered.

There are significant similarities betwen the Sydney Metro and the Doha Metro. They both opened in May 2019 (though Doha's is eighteen days older) and they both consist of driverless trains operating along a single partially completed line.

That's where the similarities end. So how bizarre is the Doha Metro? Let's see. There are three classes of travel - Gold, Family and Standard. Three classes for a metro line with only thirteen stations. At most stations the railway staff outnumbered the passengers by orders of magnitude. I know it's a Saturday but it was uncanny just how empty the trains and stations were. The entire system stank of hospital-grade disinfectant, the kind of stuff the World Health Organisation would use at a field hospital in the Congo after an Ebola outbreak. The security was extremely officious and intrusive, and they are everywhere. At one station I was feeling a little hungry and I saw a nearly empty vending machine in an alcove in a distant corner. I walked over to the vending machine and a security guard intercepted me to ask what I was doing. I said I wanted to buy a snack and he insisted on standing with me and watching like a hawk as I decided to decline to buy a pack of peanuts, the only product on offer.

The trains are tiny little three-car things, but the stations are six cars long so provision has been made for the day when people actually use the trains. Of the three carriages, two carriages are Standard class, half of one carriage is Family (for families and lone women only) and the other half is Gold class. I bought a 30 riyal daily Gold class ticket and I was the only Gold passenger on every train I took. The station staff are so numerous and so bored that all you have to do is look slightly puzzled and you will have a crowd of polite yet smothering employees asking if they can help you.

I rode the entire length of the red line and back, and then went to the Museum of Islamic Art. A bus took me part of the way from Msherieb metro station and I walked the rest of the way along the Corniche, a waterfront boulevard and parkland that hugs Doha Bay. It was hard work. It is extremely hot and humid here. Today was 35 °C. I was expecting it to be hot, Qatar is desert, but I was not expecting humidity. I have never heard of a humid desert before. I don't understand how the air can have so much moisture but it never falls as rain. There is no vegetation in Qatar at all; the view of the countryside from the outskirts of Doha presents a bleak prospect of nothing but bleached sand stretching to the horizon.

I had a good view while I was walking. The new Doha city centre, West Bay, is on the other side of the bay. I have never seen a more impressive skyline. Not even Singapore comes close. A collection of dozens of super-tall skyscrapers clustered along the bayfront as if they were competing against one another to be the tallest and most ostentatiously extravagant. I fail to see how a country with a population of two million can generate such an amazing skyline. Brisbane has a population of two million but doesn't have a skyline one tenth as dense.

The hard walk in the torrid heat was worth it. The Emir of Qatar is a keen art collector and has put part of his collection from the Muslim world into a museum open to the public. The museum is housed in a large octagonal palace jutting out into Doha Bay with tinkling fountains inside and out. It was a majestic building for a majestic collection. Calligraphy, jewellery, ceramics, utensils, scientific instruments, some over a thousand years old and showing the most exquisitely intricate handiwork. You couldn't buy jewellery half as good at Angus & Coote nowadays.

White nationalists and some conservatives claim that Islam is an inherently backward religion incapable of innovation. Let them come to Doha. Islamic civilisation gave the world a wealth of scientific knowledge. Modern psychiatry, astronomy, mathematics, chemistry owe a great deal of debt to the Islamic Golden Age.

By the time I finished with the museum, it was almost time for me to check into my hotel. It wasn't that far, about three kilometres, and by the time I found a bus stop and waited for a bus I could have walked there. The heat and humidity toned down a bit in the early afternoon so I resolved to leg it.

I set off on my way. After about a kilometre I reached a construction site that was blocking the footpath. So I crossed the busy four-lane arterial road but the other footpath was also blocked by a construction site. The road was too busy to walk on, so I walked along the median strip, only to find that the median strip was also blocked by a construction site a few hundred metres down the road. So I had to double back along the median and find a detour. Every detour was also blocked by construction. I ended up taking twice the time I expected to get back to my hotel.

I checked into the hotel, rested for a while and got hungry so I decided to head out in the early evening to grab a bite to eat. It is curiously difficult to find a place to eat in Doha. I had imagined that due to the presence of hundreds of thousands of South Asian expatriates that there would be yummy biryani restaurants on every street corner. Perhaps those places do exist, but they were hidden away, because on my travels through Doha so far places to eat are conspicuous through their absence.

I didn't feel like paying fifty Australian dollars at my hotel's restaurant so I headed for West Bay, Doha's brand new central business district north of the old city centre. I got off the metro at DECC station and found myself in a forest of skyscrapers lit up in a discotheque of dancing colours. There were plenty of people around, and people need to eat, so I reasoned that there must be restaurants in the area. I saw a shopping mall across a major multi-lane highway with a restaurant on an upper floor, but there was simply no way to cross the road. No pedestrian crossing, no traffic lights, no subway, no footbridge.

I decided to follow all the other people to see where they were going. Many were crossing this side street that led to a car park entrance. They were walking through the car park into another shopping mall. The City Centre mall was doing a roaring trade, every shop was still open at 7pm on a Saturday and the place echoed with the plaintive cries of hundreds of babies and toddlers being pushed around in strollers. So this is how Qatari families spend their spare time. I am rapidly reaching the conclusion that Doha is Desert Singapore.

I ended up buying dinner from Arby's, an American fast food chain that specialises in roast beef rolls of astounding blandness, and for dessert I tried disgustingly cloying doughnuts from Tim Horton's, a famous Canadian chain that thankfully has not yet reached Australia.

I left the City Centre mall by another entrance and got lost. I found myself on streets where it was impossible to cross the road. Footpaths would end forcing me to return the way I came or walk on busy highways. A couple of times I had to walk on garden beds. It is obvious that the huge numers of highly paid town planners and civil engineers who designed West Bay never stopped to consider that people might need to walk two blocks and cross the roads while doing so. At least I got to admire all the dizzying colourdd lights on all the buildings while I attempted to find my way back to the metro station so I could have a well-deserved sleep in my hotel.

The Forbidden Sign at the airport

Gold class on Doha Metro

Train on the Doha Metro

Museum of Islamic Art

Arabic calligraphy at Museum of Islamic Art

Mediaeval jewellery from Syria

Battle standard with Arabic calligraphy

Doha skyline

West Bay at night

West Bay at night

West Bay at night

I have probably had worse starts to holidays. It's just that right now I can't remember them.

I went to bed at about half past midnight after a productive, busy night of packing, laundry, tying loose ends and my customary pre-holiday housework binge. My intention was to get up a little bit earlier than usual to finish my packing, ensure that my apartment was secure and in good order, then take my backpack into the office and work my usual hours. My flight isn't until 10:15pm and it would not be worth going to the office, doubling back home to pick up my luggage, and then going from home to the airport as I would have to pass through Central Station opposite my office again.

I fell asleep unusually quickly at about one o'clock, and then I woke up at a quarter past three in agony. It felt as if a shard of glass were embedded beneath my left eyelid. Every blink, every eyeball movement, resulted in wincing pain and watering eyes. I turned on the bathroom light and spent half an hour with my head under the running tap or the shower head trying to flush the damned thing out of my eye, but it only made things worse. I went back to bed, and every time I fell asleep, ten minutes later I woke up again due to my eyeball moving.

Instead of going to work at my usual time, I went to my local general practice clinic. The doctor had to turn my left upper eyelid inside out and she scraped out the offending item with a flattened cotton swab - a tiny, flat, dark orange piece of debris, shaped like a Google Maps location pin, no more than a millimetre long and a third of a millimetre wide. Neither the doctor or I could identify what it was, but if I had to guess, I would say a tiny little timber splinter. It was amazing how much pain and irritation something so tiny could cause.

I went back home and rested for a couple of hours - I was delirious with fatigue after getting so little sleep - and caught the bus to work, arriving a bit after midday. A few of the boys in the office and I went out for dumplings in Chinatown for lunch. Some decent company and great food made things a little bit better.

I finished work, bought antibiotic eyedrops at a pharmacy, and did the same Urban Reverie's Tightarse Method of Travel to Kingsford Smith Airport as I described in my Sri Lankan blog - namely, catch a train on the Airport Line to Mascot one station before the airport and then change to a 400 or 420 bus to the terminal. For maths nerds, here's the comparison:

TRAIN DIRECT FROM CENTRAL STATION TO AIRPORT: $2.52 off-peak fare × 50% Opal weekly travel reward + $14.87 "airport station access extortion... ahem, fee" = $16.13

URBAN REVERIE'S TIGHTARSE METHOD = ($2.52 off-peak train fare + $2.24 bus - $2.00 Opal transfer discount) × 50% Opal weekly travel reward = $1.38

So, $16.13 versus $1.38. Worth the inconvenience of the transfer, I reckon. The fact that I have reached my weekly Opal travel reward of half-price fares due to making more than eight trips by commuting to and from work makes it even better. The weekly reward discount does not apply to the "airport station access armed robb... ahem, fee".

I spent forty-five minutes in a typically glacial check-in queue, and then endured an equally irksome security screening queue. I then paid five dollars for a bottle of water for the privilege of having to use this extortionate claustrophobic cesspit called Kingsford Smith Airport. I cannot wait to board Qatar Airways Flight QR909 in a few minutes time. Believe me, I cannot wait.