POPMART Leg 5: 1998, Australia, Japan, South Africa

Rome. Show Day.

Woke up to big demo in the main street, right outside our hotel.  There were flags and smoke bombs, barking tannoys, police vans and riot gear, quite the event.  I had no idea what it was about, but they were mostly students by the look of it, pelting riot police with paper darts.

Fascinating though this was, it was rather inconvenient for getting our runner bus in and consequently everything ran late.  Fortunately when our bus showed up ti was being driven by a Roman with serious attitude, determination and driving skills to match.  He roared through the traffic, dodging and weaving in a most impressive manner though sadly did eventually manage to crash into a smaller minibus.  Happily this happened when we were within walking distance to the stadium so we all just go off and hoofed the rest of the way.

End of term things consumed a lot of the day, packing items to take home, getting receipts reimbursed, checking travel plans, all the usual.  One highly unusual element though, was a  €˜fan initiative€™ of epic scale.  During Still Haven€™t Found about three quarters of the people in the stadium grandstands picked up coloured cards (a la Soviet Olympics) forming a giant Italian flag at one end of the stadium, a giant Irish flag at the other and the word 'ONE' in ever such big letters down the side.  Fair play to you, Rome.

The band did a runner back to Nice (possibly?) after the show, and I chose not to join them, but happily my companions and I managed to get back to Mrs Miggins B&B in only half an hour or so.  Being the last day of school we couldn€™t just go to bed so walked out into Friday night Rome.  2am came quickly and the place we were in closed, so we strolled on through alleyways and picturesque squares thronged with people.  It appeared though, that everywhere closes at 2am so we wandered a while longer before drifting back to the hotel.  People going home, looking for buses, cabs, litter blowing€¦ it felt like the end of something, appropriately.