Head to the souks for shopping as competitive sport

"I'll be honest, we need your money."

That was the most refreshingly honest of all the lines I heard enticing me into shops in the souks of Tunis. I had a marvellous time, though it didn't take long for me to decide that the difference in shopping styles is perhaps the biggest gulf between Arabic and Western culture.

The souks are little more than winding alley ways, perhaps 8 feet wide. They are all covered, most with high barrel vaults with small, occasional holes to let in the light. You realise the wisdom of this the moment you step into full sun. There was a 10 to 15 degree difference between inside and out. Stores are mostly small, some no bigger than an American walk-in closet, the biggest perhaps the size of a two-car garage. And outside each shop is the keeper, always male and doing his utmost to get your attention and lure you in for a browse.

I will admit to being a sucker for a flirting man in any culture. So, unlike Lisa and Hillary who'd perfected their "ignore everything and stride straight ahead" stares, I was ready to exchange words with anyone who told me I had pretty eyes. This did not lure me into any unwise purchases, but I did talk to more people and admittedly slowed us down a bit. The banter rarely bothered me and I never felt threatened. The only times the attention got mildly uncomfortable was mostly when the younger shopkeepers were directing their attention directly at Lisa. There are few circumstances in which being thin, blonde and beautiful can be considered a disadvantage, but I think wandering the souks of Tunis is probably one of them.

So what is there to buy in this warren? Tunics, robes and belly dancer costumes of every design. Pottery. Tiles. Hammered brass and silver. Gold jewelry (like gold sellers around the world, these guys had the prettiest shop interiors, some with really ornate carved ceilings.) Lanterns. The tacky triumverate of chicha pipes, tee shirts and stuffed camels. Perfume. Spices.

It was the last two that were my objective today. One of the souks is actually called the souk of the perfume makers, and though there's more than that there today, there are still many shops selling scents. I picked a tiny, beautiful cubbyhole that ONLY sold perfumes. No stuffed camels here. I negotiated a third off the price. Which, frankly, says little for my bargaining skills. But 1/3 off was already so far below London prices that I didn't bother. My percentage of discount on the saffron was much better, starting with 12 dinars a pack and buying at 3 packs for 10. In comparison ... 10 dinars is about £3.50. A tiny box with approximately a teaspoon of saffron in it is almost £3 at Waitrose. Each of these packets had about 10 times the Waitrose portion. In both cases, I wished I'd bought much more after I left. But the souks meander and there was no going back.

At the heart of the souks is the Great Mosque. As both infidels and women, there was no chance of us seeing the interior of the prayer hall. But you can pay 2 dinars (about 40 pence) to get into one of the arcades to see the courtyard. If shopping emphasised our differences, the mosque made me contemplate our similarities. Swap the marble courtyard for grass and the architectural decoration for gothic, and it could have been a cloister in any monastery in Europe. Columned arcades formed a square around the central court. The minaret stood high over one side, serving exactly the same calling to worship purpose as a medieval bell tower. On the other side, doors opened into the prayer hall, clearly magnificent from the elusive glimpses we got through the doors.

The crowds were intense on the main route between the old town gate and the Great Mosque, but fell away to almost nothing the moment we tried another route. We were the only Westerners in sight when we were invited upstairs to the tiled roof of a shop that overlooked the sprawl of the whole souk area. The same applied when we took a break in a tiny coffee shop walled in vivid tiles and topped by a towering arabesque dome.

In addition to the regular tourist souks, we purposely took a wander through local areas. Used clothes markets, shoe makers, junk recyclers: the cheerful heckle of shopkeepers immediately fell away in these areas, where it was obvious we did not fit and were not potential patrons. Eventually we found ourselves wandering through entirely residential streets. Not the wealthy suburbs of Carthage but a decrepit, narrow, garbage-strewn district of breath-taking antiquity. The architecture crushed in layers like geological strata. It was obvious people had just been building on, up or around for centuries. We kept going through covered passageways supported by columns that were only 4 feet tall, topped by corinthian capitals almost worn away, implying that the street level was at least 4 feet further down when the passageway was originally built. We felt perfectly safe in these backstreets. In fact, everyone just ignored us. But it was a pleasant validation of our map reading skills to emerge from those native passageways into the tourist hum of the Place de la Victoire.

The final shop on our excursion was Mains de Femmes, not in the souk but on Avenue Bourgiba, the so-called Champs Elysses of Tunis. No tourist could ever stumble upon this shop without being directed here specifically. As we were by the Lonely Planet guidebook. It barely has a sign and is on the second floor of a non descript office building. The appeal? This is the outlet for a fair trade cooperative for women artisans. And it's fixed price. It's lovely, after the relentless masculine hard sell of the souks, to be able to let your guard down, have a nice chat with the women running things while knowing that the money we spend goes directly to the women who make the stuff. This seemed particularly relevant in light of the one thing we haven't liked about Tunisia: the women seem to be absent (at home?), running errands or working, while scores of men pack the coffee houses doing absoutely nothing for hours at a time. The only shame about Mains des Femmes is that their selection is so limited: most women's desire to spend money here will probably outstrip the small selection of cothing, rugs and knitted toys on offer here.

Back to the hotel in a taxi. Now that we've figured the system out, we realise that the three of us can get to Sidi Bou for less than £5. So while we're glad we had the early experience of taking the second class train with the locals (3 for less than a pound) we've settled in to treating ourselves.

And on the subject of taxi drivers, I should relate a salutory tale. Even though I feel it's almost a rite of passage to be ripped off by a taxi driver in every country you visit, it's still good to be warned. Tunisian dinars are made up of millimes. Not 100 of them, as is standard in most Western currencies, but 1000 of them. Which means there are three numbers behind the decimal point. You may not notice this the first time you get in a taxi. And when the meter reads 02875 your brain will immediately put the decimal point between the 8 and the 7. You'll round up to 30 dinars, do a quick calculation and realise you've gone all the way across town for £12, which seems reasonable in comparison to London. It's only after you take a few more rides that you realise the fare was less than 3 dinars and the driver let you overpay him by a factor of 10 without giving you a hint of your mistake. C'est la vie. I hope he's saving to send his kids to college.

Back at the Dar Said, we had a late lunch at the pool while waiting for our transfer to our next hotel. At 4 we set off, driving for an hour down the coast. A bit like yesterday, we drove through miles of exansive, gentle hills covered with olive groves, mountains in the distance. But today the sea was always to our left, and long miles of landscape were flat, marshy areas.

We were prepared to enter a different world at Port el Kantaoui, and we were right. It's a bit like Florida with Arab architecture. After settling into our room we walked over to the port and had dinner at the recommended Le Mediterranee. Good food, good views, not exceptional.

I'll refrain from describing the hotel today, as I suspect we won't be moving far beyond it tomorrow.

Dougga delivers on promise of spectacular ruined city

Today, away from beguiling coastal views and into the interior.

Our objective was Dougga, legendary for being one of the finest Roman sites in the world. It's about 80 miles from Tunis and quite literally in the middle of nowhere.

We hired a driver for the day for 200 dinars (about £75). He was cheerful and attentive but neither his English, nor his French, was up to communicating that we were taking the longer, but much more picturesque, route out to Dougga and would take the shorter route home. This might have made us a bit more relaxed about the seemingly interminable, but in fact 3 hour, ride. It was enjoyable nonetheless.

We drove through vast agricultural valleys with wheat fields spreading to distant horizons and olive groves on every hill. (Turns out 19% of the world's total of olive trees are in Tunisia, and it's the world's fourth biggest producer after Italy, Greece and Spain.) But this isn't an area of modern agriculture. It was half way through the return journey before I saw a tractor; the roads were filled with horse carts and men bobbing along on heavily laden donkeys. People were selling piles of melons, garlic and pomegranates on the roadside. And every flock of sheep or goats we saw was accompanied by its own shepherd. (I can't grasp the economic validity of that.) It was both easy to see how this was the bread basket of the Roman empire, and to understand how they now import wheat because their modern agricultural standards are backwards.

We climbed over a low mountain range, getting spectacular views reminiscent of Tuscany. Then we wound back down into a non-descript, rickety outpost of a town, followed a country road along the edge of more hills and finally saw the temple of Saturn on the promontory that told us we had arrived.

Dougga has the usual mix for Roman urban sites: forum, temples, houses, baths. But I found it unusual in three ways. First, the whole place is made of a golden, almost Cotswold-coloured stone, which gives it a buttery glow. Second, there's been no attempt at a geometric city plan. The hill was too steep. So roads circle up it, creating a most un-Roman spiral plan. Third, it was almost empty. For vast parts of our visit we were alone but for site workers and their donkeys, and were free to scramble up or over any ruin we fancied. It wasn't hard to imagine that we were the first discovering a lost city after a thousand year sleep.

Several buildings are particularly well preserved and dramatic. The capitol has been rebuilt to its full height, though not re roofed. Not only does this provide a picturesque focal point for the whole site, but it also means the capitol is one of the few places in Dougga where there's any shade. Thus we paused here for a picnic lunch, perched on bits of broken pediments beneath the empty niches where Jupiter, Juno and Minerva once stood.

Another temple nearby is not so complete, but interesting in its unique structure. It stood in a semi-circular walled enclosure, and you get a perfect sense of the gracious proportions of the space. The theatre has been extensively rebuilt and has a full complement of seating as well as comprehensive remains of the stage. There's enough of the forum areas to paint a vivid picture of commercial and civic life, and the warren of residential areas was fascinating. I'm so glad we did this after visiting the Bardo, as multiple places are identified by the mosaics that were discovered there.

By far the greatest thrill of Dougga was that sense of discovering the unknown. We tramped between sites over fields covered with scrubby brush and burnt out thistles, strange white snails clinging to the dead foliage in such profuse amounts they seemed like flowers. We reached other sites through olive groves. Hobbled donkeys with no masters in sight munched on the wild thyme and rosemary growing amongst the stones. This was just so far from your usual regulated, high traffic tourist site. There was no guidebook in English, so we followed the entries in our general guidebooks and pieced the stories together as well as we could. It was a wonderful journey of discovery.

The shorter route back to Tunis still took 2 hours thanks to hitting the city at rush hour. We didn't linger at the hotel, however, but rather changed and headed for a local restaurant, Les Bon Vieux Temps. Great views, a mix of French and Tunisian specialties and a location close enough to dash to and from the hotel without minding the rain that has returned.

I started with the marinated seafood salad and went on to the stuffed squid, both dishes that could have been served in any Sicilian restaurant. More reminders, should you need it, that Palermo is a hell of a lot closer to Tunis than it is to Rome. I finished with perhaps the best lemon sherbet I've ever had (the Arabs did invent the stuff, after all), the perfect balance to the spices of the meal and the heat of the day.

Tomorrow we head into Tunis. The only chance to shop in the main souks before we catch our 4pm transfer down the coast to the beach resort half of the trip.

Mighty Carthage now a leafy, seaside suburb

We were up early to take a stroll around Sidi Bou. Our objective was to catch the town before tourists and with good light. This is a photographer's paradise; it's hard to go more than a few feet without unother perfect composition hitting your eye. We eventually ended up on a little promontory looking down on the town beach and harbour, and down the coast at neighbouring Carthage, our objective for the day. The light was indeed spectacular, and at 8am there wasn't a tourist in sight.


Back at the hotel, we let our new friend Abdullah serve us breakfast next to the pool. A Tunisian breakfast, at least at the Dar Said hotel, is a Continental one: a pot of strong black coffee and jug of hot milk; a basket of breads including croissant and pain au chocolat; butter and jans, including fig; plates of meat and cheese; yogurt; soft boiled egg. It's quite enough to set you up for the day. Good thing, too. We were going to need our energy.

Carthage has lived many lives, most notably as the capital of the Punic kingdom and home of Hannibal who almost brought down Rome before it became a world power. Later, it emerged from the ashes of Roman conquest as a new and sophisticated imperial city, one of the largest in the Empire. Perhaps its most surprising incarnation is its modern one, a leafy and exclusive suburb of Carthage. To see the ruins you have to walk through palm tree-lined avenues bordered by walled villas. It all felt a bit like LA, frankly.

Seeing Carthage means walking. A lot. This was a big town and the main sites are spread out. It's also very hilly; culture and a work out at the same time.

We started on Byrsa Hill, where the Romans built their Acropolis-like forum on the remains of the Punic city centre. There's not a lot to see beyond foundations, but the spectacular views give you a sense of just what a great location this was for a city. And you can just make out the outlines of the ancient harbour, once one of the world's most sophisticated; now apparently a series of lakes giving some of those posh villas a bit more water in their view.

There's a small museum up on the hill that gives the history of the city and shows some of what was unearthed here. The models are most helpful, letting you get a better sense of what all these bare foundations underpinned. My favourite sight here, however, was two sarcophagi, each topped by life sized effigies, one male, one female. I looked closely at this woman who lived 400 years bc. She wore an obviously Egyptian skirt, beneath a very Greek blouse and hair style. Her funerary monument was Etruscan in tradition, yet she was burried in North Africa. And I laughed, thinking of our world's obsession with this "new" concept of globalisation. This 2400-year-old woman could tell us that there's nothing new under the sun.

Next to the ruins on the hill you find the slightly dilapidated, Moorish, yellow hulk of the Cathedral of St. Louis. (Turns out the namesake of my home town died here during a seige in the Crusades.) The church has been deconsecrated and is now used as a concert venue, so I didn't get the chance to get inside to hunt amongst the monuments for proof of the family legend that a 19th c Ferrara was a ptiest who had something to do with the bishop of Carthage.

A 20-minute walk, downhill then up again, brought us to a ridge covered with the remains of Roman villas. And sandwiched, a bit incongruously, between the sprawl of the President's palace on the coast and the massive mosque he's constructed just inland. The villas will be a dissappointment to anyone who's seen Pompeii, Herculaneum or Ostia. There's just not a lot here besides foundations and a few signs showing where a particular mosaic now in the Bardo once stood. But the views are magnificent and you do get the sense that the residents of ancient Carthage, just like their modern descendents, had it good.

Another stroll, about 15 minutes downhill, brought us to the Antonine Baths. These were once amongst the biggest in the Empire. There's a model here that shows how the massive complex spread out along the sea front: any modern city would lust after such a well situated and comprehensive facility. But once again, a lot of imagination is required here as only foundations remain. At least in this case, foundations are vaults and corridors that tower above your head. With underpinnings this impressive you can grasp, a bit, at what it might have been. Despite the overall size you're still going to get a better sense of a baths complex at the Baths of Diocletian in Rome, or out at Ostia. But there you won't have the sound of pounding surf and the sparkling sea vistas.

So my verdict on Carthage: very hard work for very average ruins within a particularly alluring setting. As a fan of all things Ancient Roman I had to do them, but the ruins we saw at Dougga and El Jem were finer.

We hiked up hill to the Carthage train, and further up to return to the hotel from train station. Sidi Bou is not recommended for people who can't walk up and down hills. By the time I staggered up the stairs to the hotel, beneath the clouds of fragrant jasmine, I could hear the pool calling my name. We all collapsed there for a few hours, dozing like the hotel's wild cats in the sun.

Later, refreshed, dressed and made up, we were transformed enough in both energy levels and appearance to head out for a very special dinner at Dar el Jeld. This is mentioned in every guidebook as the best restaurant in Tunis, and it delivered on expectations.

The setting is fantastic. It's in a converted mansion near the souks of the old city. There's only one subtle sign; you have to be directed to the big, nail-studded door and then knock to gain entry. Once inside you go through a procession of reception rooms before emerging in what was the main palace courtyard and is now the dining room. Brightly coloured tiles covered the walls and the lighting was low, kept subtle by candles burning in wall sconces around the room. A musician played haunting strains on an Arabic stringed instrument while waiters in local costume seemed omnipresent when serving diners' needs.

Unlike most places we've been to, the maitre'd had a thorough command of English, so we didn't have to rely on our French patois to get through the menu. After an explanation of the local specialities, we opted for the mixed hors d'oeuvres to start. This was more what we expected when we ordered meze last night. There was a variety of small, fried, stuffed dough parcels; a cold, marinated seafood salad; slices of hard boiled egg on a bed of something like ratatouille; slices of a cheese somewhere between ricotta and bufala mozzarella on a salad of diced tomato, cucumber and onion. For mains, I had a plate of lamb couscous of great delicacy, the meat literally falling from the bone. Hillary had lamb as well and Lisa opted for kabkabou, a local specialty that prepares a whole fish in tomatoes, olives and capers. (No denying we're just 80 miles south of Sicily.) All this was washed down with a couple of bottles of vieux magot, Tunisia's best red wine.

We split assorted pastries for dessert; almonds and pistachios abound. The maitre'd, who by now had warmed to the charms of three single girls (waiters always love us) brought us a creme caramel/puddingy sort of thing covered with ground pistachios to try, on the house. Tasty, but the savouries were better than the sweets.

All in all a fantastic dining experience, with great food and wine, attentive service and super atmosphere. All for about £30 per person ... the most expensive dinner we were to eat in the country.

A wet Tunis greets us with spectacular sights

It was a bit disconcerting to arrive for our sun-baked holiday to find Tunis drenched in one of its rare torrential downpours. On the first morning the skies were still leaden and rain was falling steadily, slicking the marble pavements of our hotel and muting the white walls and towers around us.

But then the sun came out, bringing this charming small town of Sidi Bou Said ... a suburb of Tunis ... into sharp focus. It is, quite simply, one of the most picturesque places I have ever seen. Sidi Bou is famous, justifiably, for its blue and white colour scheme. All buildings, without exception, are painted a dazzling white. All architectural accents -- magnificent arched doorways, fanciful iron grillwork, latticework porticoes overhanging the street -- are painted in subtle variations of the same vivid sky blue. If that weren't striking enough, this is all complemented by the distinctive keyhole arches, domes, minarets and geometric patterning of arab architecture, draped with lush bouganvilla and given depth and dimension by the way the town spirals up its seaside hill. Add a backdrop of ocean and mountains glimpsed at the end of streets or over garden walls, and you have to admit that you've wandered into a landscape painting. It's all just a bit too pretty to be real.

Our hotel, the Dar Said, extends that fairy tale. It is essentially an Arabic-inspired palace, with opulently decorated rooms wrapping around cool, white marble courtyards full of exotic plants and fountains gurgling merrily. Bedrooms vary widely in decor and size; mine had tall louvred doors opening onto a roof terrace with views over the town. 

The hotel wraps itself around a glimmering blue pool, its pool deck enhanced with the decorative Tunisian tiles we would soon learn were ubiquitous throughout the country. You can take your breakfast here and gaze down upon the bay of Tunis, with the ruins of ancient Carthage and the sprawl of modern Tunis both visible. There's also a garden on a lower level, with white marble paths running through formal green parterres, sharing the same view and surrounded by the property's walls so entirely private. 

One of the glories of Sidi Bou Said in general, and the Dar Said in specific, is the quiet. Like most Mediterranean cities, Tunis is a bustling and brash, exciting and noisy. Here, you're within reach of the excitement, yet withdrawn into a soothing bubble like some enchanted potentate from the Arabian Nights.

We didn't linger too much here on the first day, however. A week was already starting to seem a criminally short time to spend in Tunisia. Our movements plus different attractions' closed days dictated that Sunday would be the day for the Bardo Museum.

The Bardo is acclaimed for having the finest collection of Roman mosaic floors in the world, pulled from civic and residential ruins across what was once the capital of Rome's Africa province and the bread basket of the empire. Your first few minutes in the Bardo, however, you might find this difficult to believe. The building was once the Bey's palace and, though large, is looking more than a bit weather beaten on the outside. There is no clear, dramatic entry into the place. Even the door that appears to be the main one leads into a dim and unimpressive hall. The first room off this is filled with early Christian mosaics; interesting enough, but clearly from a time when the whole art form was in decline.

The secret: get upstairs immediately. The architecture and the mosaics get very impressive, very quickly. Both the number and the artistic virtuousity of the mosaics here are beyond belief. The closest I've seen is the museum in Naples, which is dwarfed by the Bardo. There are mosaics here of beguiling complexity, with vines or geometric patterns enclosing rondels of animals or people. Fish were a popular theme, with many floors depicting underwater scenes with scores of different piscine species. Hunting scenes were equally abundant, some almost a pictorial encyclopedia of different animals, some showing hunts in progress and some showing animals at their ease in nature.
Several mosaics showed buildings or scenes of everyday human habitation, giving some sense of what life must have been like. And, of course, there were endless scenes from mythology: Theseus and the minotaur at the centre of a complex labyrinth, Hercules surrounded by depictions of his labours and enough detailed depictions of Dionysus amongst his grape vines to pave a score of dining rooms.

If you can tear your eyes from the exhibits, some of the rooms themselves are spectacular, particularly the ceilings. There's some sculpture and a nice collection of Greek bronzes hauled up from a shipwreck, both collections of which would be star sights in most other museums. But here, the mosaics rule.

After this we took a taxi back to the centre of town, strolling up the main avenue and stopping first for a drink, then for a snack. I tried the much-written-about local tea, which had a lot less mint and a lot more sugar than anticipated. We then tried tuna and cheese crepes. Unlike the French tradition, these were folded into a square and left to grill for so long that they came to resemble toasted sandwiches. Not the greatest street food I've ever had, but we were starving and it went down a treat.

It took about an hour of train transport, walking and waiting to get back to our hotel. Once there we retired to the courtyard occupied by the swimming pool and took a table with an expansive view of the sea, drinking a bottle of wine and enjoying a quiet punctuated only by the dusk call to prayer ringing out from the nearby minaret.

After that interlude, we washed, dressed and headed out to Le Grand Blu, a restaurant about 15 minutes down the coast recommended by our tour coordinator. It was "assez bien" ... Good, but nothing hugely memorable. It's a big place, of modern construction but traditional design, built on a cliff face. It clearly has amazing views looking over the water to Sidi Bou Said, but as it was after dark we didn't benefit much from these. We opted for the meze, a mix of shared plates that included several types of fried fish, several grilled and a plate of pene pasta in tomato sauce with shrimp and caviar that was by far the best thing on the table. The meal probably would have been elevated several levels if they would have brought out a couple of dishes at a time, giving us a chance to sample a progression. By placing everything on the table at once, 1/3 was lukewarm and another 1/3 close to cold by the time you tucked in. There was also a complete absence of vegetables, so not a particularly balanced meal. But good service, tasty food and a bottle of wine between us in one of the area's nicest restaurants for the equivalent of £20 per person, so we're certainly not complaining.

And thus ended day 1.

Backstage tour of Royal Opera House reveals wonders

I was very fortunate this week, thanks to our Northwestern alumni network in London, to join a small group (47) at a dress rehearsal for the ballet, La Bayadere, to open Saturday night at the Royal Opera House, followed by a backstage tour. It was the highlight of my week and completely fascinating. (Though, sadly, I was so exhausted that I still nodded off a few times during the performance. It's been a tough week.)

I am far better than the average person when it comes to consuming classic culture, but I had never been inside the Royal Opera House and I've never seen a ballet. I THOUGHT I'd seen one; a Baryshnikov solo show and the touring Kirov in the '80s, but in both cases those were a collection of famous dances rather than the full ballet.

Thus, when seeing the real thing, I was struck by several major differences. First was the acting. The full ballet was, of course, a proper story, thus the dancing was interspersed between plot. And, because they don't speak, that plot was carried forward through exaggerated movements similar to mime, but much more graceful. I was amazed at how easy it was to follow what was going on. Although we're not talking about great depth here: Indian temple dancer and hero are in love; Rajah wants hero to marry his daughter; fickle hero falls for sophisticated charms of princess; temple dancer has to dance for them at their wedding; hero realises his mistake; princess arranges for poisonous snake to kill temple dancer during dance to protect her new marriage. And that's only Act 1, which is all we saw in the rehearsal.

Next were the sets. Wow. Towering, dreamlike evocations of India, using all sorts of painter's tricks to draw the eye back and make you think you were looking into the vastness of a palace or the depths of the jungle. And matched to those were the costumes. Lush and sparkling, dominated by glittering jewels and vivid colours.

After watching the first half we went on our backstage tour. In the late '90s the ROH did a significant renovation and expansion, going from a cramped and probably sub-par facility to a large complex that's one of the best in the world. We went upstairs to see the dance studios, which are on the top floor with expansive views over Covent Garden and the city beyond. Evidently most ballet companies spend their working lives in basements, so the ROH is very proud of its ability to offer humanising natural light to its team. Past the costume department, where thousands of luscious outfits hung in long rows. (All for tiny people, of course)

And then backstage. Imagine three aircraft hangars arranged at angles to form an "S" and you have an idea. The stage fits into the top curve of the "S", but is separated from the backstage area by heavy steel doors that raise or lower. (The place burned down twice in its early history and they use a lot of pyrotechnics on stage; the steel fire walls can keep a fire contained within the stage area for hours, protecting the rest of the facility.)

It was a magnificent jumble of sets. The Indian temple we'd just seen now sat on one part of the floor, a giant dragon, presumably Wagnerian, loomed in another area. Despite the size of this space, there's nowhere near enough room to store all the stuff for all the opera and ballet productions. So they have warehouses in Wales and drive the sets and costumes back and forth. There's a lift mechanism that raises the big trucks from ground level up into the centre of the backstage area.

While we stood there talking, many of the cast walked right by us. I was struck by how differently they move from the rest of us. Every movement imbued with grace, feet pointing with every step, but every step hitting the ground with great force. These little ballerinas, frankly, sounded like stomping horses as they moved by us. The mesmerising principal dancer Carlos Acosta walked within inches, his princely looks thrown off a bit by the preposterous striped overalls he was wearing over his costume to keep his legs warm. On the way out, we ran into the bad guy (temple priest, covets dancer and schemes with princess to keep dancer from hero) getting a coke and a twixt bar from the vending machine. We had a little chat after I told him how magnificently sinister he was. It was amusing, though, to see how utterly the magic fades when you lose the distance and lighting of the stage. Standing two feet from him, he was cheerful, my height, the bald head was obviously a rubber cap, the makeup preposterous and the jewelled breastplate obviously fake. Yet 40 minutes before he'd been a towering, menacing, dramatic figure dripping in the jewels of the Orient.

It was a lovely view into why theatre people get so excited about their art. Turning illusion into reality to give joy to thousands must be great fun. I'm glad I had the chance to see a little of the way it's done. I think I appreciate it all a bit more now.