Out in the city: Richard Dennen on the super moon
Going to Rome was a really intense personal journey. It was the first time I'd been on holiday, you see, on my own.
I was fine to start off with. I rose, got high on really strong coffee in the room which overlooked the gardens of the Quirinale Palace, and headed, guide-book in hand, to the Villa Borghese, or power-walked to visit Raphael's grave at the Pantheon, listening to the Stones' Brown Sugar on the pod.
Or looked up, like Lord Byron, at the moon reflected on the Colosseum.
But like all intense personal journeys, this one had to end. And on the third day I left. Being on your own can be fun. But three days of this Roman holiday was enough.
An hour-and-a-half away from Rome on the Eurostar Italia is Florence, where I arrived in time for the 150th anniversary of the unification of Italy on Wednesday night. I've got a bunch of friends who are studying there, spending their days smoking on the steps of Santo Spirito, the artistic hood.
The Ponte Vecchio was lit up in the red, white and green of the Italian flag. Fireworks went up from behind the Piazza della Signoria, while Verdi boomed out from huge speakers and the Florentines filled the square fit to bursting.
"It's just like the Pyramid stage at Glasto," one of the blondes said as five of us linked hands to form a chain to push through the heaving, mad crowds of Italians. The statues in the colonnade to the right of the Palazzo Vecchio, meanwhile, were also lit up in red, white and green and, with the intense opera in the background, seemed to be snarling.
We pushed through the Piazza della Repubblica. Here there were guys in medieval dress in the red and white of the Medici throwing swords into the air. Bottles of red wine were going round and people were dancing.
On Thursday night I chose a polar-opposite third leg of what was becoming some sort of Grand Tour and flew to Dubai - my first time there. Dancing on the beach looking up at the Supermoon shining down on the 21st-century sci-fi skyscraper skyline was cool. While I was speeding up one of the skyscrapers back to my hotel room, the porter turned to me: "What do you want? You want girl?"
I said I was OK, but thanks. He kept asking, insistently. Eventually I interrupted, reverting to intrinsically posh Hugh-Grant-in-Four-Weddings mode, "Well, actually, I'm into boys." He looked aghast and scared and started pointing urgently at the camera in the lift. "Sh, the microphones can hear everything." Perhaps it was time to head back to London.
