Rome

Headed to Rome from Florence again by the surprisingly efficient and easy to use Trenitalia trains. This was our most expensive days travelling - 34 euro for the 2 of us to travel for a 4 hour train ride. Very glad that we did not get Italian rail passes as it is so easy just to walk into a train station 10 minutes before the train is due to go and punch in the destination into the ticket machine (which can be programmed to give instructions in English) and get a ticket.

Arrived in Rome and immediately got in touch with our Scottish heritage by walking across the city (with my injured ankle which was rapidly developing a cellulitis if not osteomyelitis) – only 6km but took about 1.5hrs with a fully laden pack. The hostel was in the back streets in a suburb past the Vatican. It was a little basic and the small kitchen was surprisingly functional.

First day in Rome we went up to the Victor Emmanuel II monument, a large monument with an equestrian statue built for the first king of Italy, after the reunification in the 1860s. We then headed to the Roman forum (after some fantastic pizza that comes by the 100g). The Roman forum was beautiful with lots of lovely purple flowering trees. The colosseum was pretty impressive but not as complete as the Verona amphitheatre. It had an interesting display on the Flavian emperors - Vespasian, Titus and Domitian.



On returning to the hostel my ankle was very swollen (pitting oedema resembling that of an 80 year old with heart failure) and red, so started the Augmentin to treat a likely cellulitis. Decided to take the next day a little easier and walked up to another monument - to Giuseppe Garibaldi a revolutionary involved in uniting Italy (a contemporary of Victor Emmanuale). Then walked down to the Pantheon built in 126 AD. Nic continues to be blown away by this. Loved the quote on Raphael's tomb in the Pantheon; "here lies Raphael by whom mother of all things feared to be overcome while he was living and while he was dying, herself to die". Walked home past the Trevi fountain so really quite a quiet day. Got a couple of sink loads of washing done - our Scottish heritage extends to paying 7 euro for a laundromat.

Finally met our room mates after a couple of nights and a morning of them coming in and leaving while we were asleep. We had been grouping these two girls with the young Americans we had met thus far and were pleasantly surprised to find only one was American the other being Irish and both Catholic and studying theology in Belfast. Great conversations about religion and they helped in my education and understanding of the multiple pieces of art of the saints we had seen. Good preperation for a visit to the Vatican museum.

Managed to time our trip to the Vatican museum at the same time as the Pope does his weekly address so the queues were not too bad - only 20 minutes to get in. We went through the multiple pieces of Roman sculpture then up through pieces of Etruscan jewellery and vases. Most impressive was the map room showing huge beautifully painted hangings depicting of areas of Italy. Most interesting to try and go back through to identify where we had been - challenging in view of the maps not being orientated north to south and the old place names. The Sistine chapel was a little
underwhelming - very crowded, little sense of this being a place of worship. It doesn't help that we are a bit over announciations, adorations, ascensions and crucifixions. We managed to get free pizza in the Vatican's pizzeria - true Christian charity and us having no qualms in accepting someone's discards. We headed to St. Peter's basilica after the Vatican and were most impressed by the multi lingual confessional booths. The place is truly enormous and gilded with so many separate areas to worship.

Escaping the city the following day (our last in Rome) we headed to the ostia antica - the old Roman port at the mouth of the river Tiber that is a preserved park of ruins. Amazing old mosaics and statues. We spent 4 hours just wandering through the ruins. We headed back into town and had a lovely meal out of cannelloni, artichokes (that I just love) and tiramisu to celebrate our last night in Rome before heading to Naples.
Think the antibiotics mght be working on my ankle - amputation does not look quite so imminent.