It took Paul and his parents 38 days to sail from Trieste, Italy to Freemantle in 1955. By comparison, sixty years later, it took us 20+ hours of flying time plus 5 additional check-in and wait hours. So I shouldn't complain. But 20+ hours of confinement in a seat does take its toll on my spine. Funnily, I feel at least two years older than the last time I punished my body in this way.
But enough about my aches and pains ........ we are in Roma and I am doing battle with a non-qwerty French keyboard which will take a little getting used to. And the blog doesn't have auto-correct on spelling, hence the spelling mistakes in Post 1. A non-qwerty keyboard has all the numerals in upper case, all of the symbols in different places, the full stop on upper case (what a pain!), the 'a' and the 'q' transposed, the 'w' on the bottom line and a lot of other minor irritants.
As well as my keyboard I am nursing a few blistered toes from our first day on the cobblestones. I should add, we spent Day 1 on the Hop-on-Hop-off bus, so there was only enough walking for two blisters. I'm expecting more today.
The sun shone all day. We started with 8° at 9am, but everyone was stripped off and enjoying a pleasant 20° and a touch of sunburn on top of the bus.
The bus is a great way to get a feel for the layout of the city but getting good photographs is a challenge. This is the King Victor Emmanuel 11 monument, from which Mussolini addressed the masses. In Paul's parents' time, it was referred to as 'the typewriter'. In recognition that current generations don't know what a typewriter is, it is now referred to as 'the wedding cake'.
All seven tourist bus companies are restricted to the same route, which is well away from the heavy pedestrian congestion around the key monuments. For example, this was the drop off point within Vatican City for S. Peter's.
The unique and possibly very old pine trees near ruins from 1st C AD.
The tour buses following each other - this time along a rather un-congested piece of road.
An ancient fortification, Castello S. Angelo on the Tiber. And in the foreground, the benefits of a small car.
The beautiful, crumbling Colosseum. As close as we got on the bus but a detailed visit is planned once my blisters improve.
And finally, the second most important church in Rome after S. Peter's - this is S. Maria Maggiore. Doesn't really look like a church at all, does it?. We went inside and tried to love it, but to no avail.
A circuit on the bus in the morning took about an hour and a half. Then we had a beer, a pizza, a toilet break and a visit to S. Maria Maggiore before getting on the bus again for another circuit - which took 2 hours in the late afternoon.
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