Roma! - Monday.

Monday started with some aching limbs after some serious walking on Saturday and Sunday, but with the skies still blue and the temperatures still in the mid 60's it was a perfect day to head off out being tourists once more.

Today we were heading to the Vatican to see Catholic Head Office. An easy trip from our hotel on the Metro, fortunately. We weren't really feeling up to another heavy duty walking day.

During our pit stop for caffe latte and pastries on the way towards the Vatican, though, we nearly had a disaster. Missy turned her ankle a while ago and it's been a bit temperamental ever since. While sitting drinking coffee, she moved and it went again. Oops. She wasn't able to put any weight on it at all, which was going to be a problem, even if we were only going to try and find a taxi to take us back to the hotel. There's a pharmacy every couple of hundred metres in Italy (I must find out if they're as hypochondriac as the pharmacy-density implies) so I headed off for bandages and some ibuprofen. As expected, it was a short trip, and I was only away for fifteen minutes or so. Fortunately in that time whatever had popped out on Missy's ankle popped back in again. As a precaution we strapped her up and she had a couple of ibuprofen in case there was any inflammation developing. Amazingly we didn't have much problem after that.

But I digress.

St Peter's Square looks impressive on the TV. Close up it's clear that if Gian Lorenzo Bernini was aiming for awe-inspiring when he designed the piazza and surrounding colonnades, he succeeded. Huge, symmetrical, dazzling marble. Wow.




Suitably impressed, we thought we'd head into the CEO's building - St Peter's Basilica. As ever, Wikipedia's St Peter's entry saves you the excesses of my prose.

Remember the Basilica di Constantino in the forum and the octagonal reliefs? Well Michaelangelo and Bernini were so impressed by them that they pretty much copied the design wholesale. The barrel vaulting of St Peter's shows what the Law Courts of Rome must have looked like 1300 years earlier.



And here's the man himself, holding the keys to heaven. Funny, he doesn't look like your typical doorman.



We'd planned to head off to the Vatican Museum for the afternoon, but the lure of a decent meal hijacked us, so we were forced to sit and watch the world go by in Piazza Navona while eating pasta and drinking wine. Shame that.



Piazza Navona stands on the sight of an old stadium, you know. The shape is still the elongated running-track shape of the classic Roman chariot racing circuit.

Roma! - Sunday

Sunday: Blue skies, temperatures in the mid 60's, a whole city to explore. First stop the Colosseum. Well, second stop actually, first stop was a little cafe for a couple of caffe lattes and pastries to fortify ourselves.

Top Picnicsintheharbour Colosseum Tip:

The queues for the Colosseum suck. You have to queue for security, then queue for tickets. OR you can head on down past the Arch of Constantine to the Palatino booking office. The ticket's valid for both and there aren't any queues there. You still have to queue for security, BUT you can just keep left past all the people queuing for tickets and down to the turnstiles.

Once inside, the Colosseum is as impressive as I'd expected it to be.



OK, I know, everyone knows what it looks like, but it's this huge structure that's been there since 72AD. According to the blurb it was still in use for housing and workshops right through to the 19th Century. I'd assumed the missing South side of the outer ring had collapsed gradually through neglect, but it collapsed during an earthquake in 1349.

Next stop, a little light lunch at a pavement cafe just up the Via dei fori imperiali and then on to the Palatine and the Forum. It's breathtaking stuff, but fortunately Wikipedia tells the story, so I don't have to.

I have to make mention of the Basilica di Constantino, though. It contained the law courts of Imperial Rome and enough of it's still standing (with a little help from some high-tech steel supports) to get a real idea of the grandeur of the place.



It's hard to make out the octagonal pattern beneath the arches, but pay attention, we'll be re-visiting tomorrow.

We surprised ourselves by still having the energy to head across to the Pantheon, the most astonishingly complete of Rome's ancient buildings, it seems to me. As far as I can tell, saved by a) being a Christian church for much of its history and b) being located in one of the few areas of Rome that remained populated continuously between the decline of imperial Rome and its renaissance in the, well, in the renaissance.

That was it for us, we managed to stagger exhausted to the Metro for a quick snooze before heading off out for dinner with Andrea and Grazia. Andrea is one of Missy's Sabre colleagues and Grazia is his beautiful wife of 30(?) years. We had a great time, eating at Ristorante il Ciak across the Tiber in Trastavere. It's one of those gems of a restaurant that you'd never find in a million years if you didn't have a local guide. A wonderful, unpretentious local eating place specialising in meat. Lots of it!

Roma! - Saturday.

My birthday present from Missy this year was a long weekend in Rome, and very good it was too. Four days in the eternal City was well worth the effort. We headed off early (taxi at 5am!) on Saturday and Returned on Tuesday evening.

Nothing much to report about the trip out. We were ridiculously early for the flight. At 5:30am on a Saturday morning, Heathrow is not the most crowded place, so check in and security took all of ten minutes. We even had to wait 20 minutes for the coffee shops to begin to open. The flight was on time and uneventful, we were out of the airport by noon, took the 12:05 train into the central station, pausing only to make a wake-up call to James who was very sheepish to find we were already in Rome when he was still snoozing in bed.

Sooo, at the hotel by 1pm, loads of time for lunch and sightseeing! Erm no. We were so tired we fell asleep until 5pm!

At the Lonely Planet Guide's suggestion we headed up to Piazza del Popolo for the evening - we were blissfully unaware that the Italy vs Wales Rugby game was being played at the nearby Stadio Flaminio. After a very pleasant meal at Ristorante Edy, we were greeted by lots of Welsh supporters drowning their sorrows after their unexpected defeat. Plenty of Hymns and Arias going on outside the bars. I even got a cuddle from a (male) Red-shirted Wales fan. Very surreal!

Well so much for that.

Moonshine's still got a dirty bottom. The trip to the Sealift on March 3rd/4th didn't happen in the end.

The tides were always going to be a problem in that we were going to be getting back to Chichester either on the ebb tide or right on low water. Not much fun, but we could have hung around for a while until the conditions were better.

Unfortunately, to make matters worse, from mid week, a big depression was forecast to come in from the Atlantic. The forecast winds were therefore F6-F7 and South to South East. This is exactly what you don't want trying to get into the harbour on an ebbing spring tide. It didn't take much thought to realise that we were onto a loser and so I cancelled.

Come Sunday and I was so glad that I did. The storm was a real belter. The wind speed at the bar beacon was touching F10 at times and the rain was torrential. We were at home and Moonshine was tucked up in her berth. By far the best place to be.

Had we gone out, we'd have had the wind on our nose all the way to the IOW, and then it turned and we'd have had wind and tide against us all the way back. Mmmm, lovely.