Rome Day 2

No bag-packing again! Breakfast with David, a very amusing Scottish Episcopalian priest, and Alessandra, the host, then we walked to the Vatican, were waved past (short) queues, through security, past another queue and hailed as pilgrims by two volunteers. They checked the pilgrim passports - booklets stamped along the way, especially as proof of having come the last 100km - given a testamur, and sent past the popes' tombs to St Peters, where we gazed in awe and then joined the 10am Mass.

After a cup of tea back in the B&B, we set off for Rome... basically, to see whatever we wandered to. Castello Sant Angelo, Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Minerva church, where most of St Catherine of Siena is buried (church closed for renovations...), the Basilica of St John the Baptist of the Florentines to see Mary Magdalene’s left foot, along the Tiber, the Stada Gallery (an old palace, smaller than the Uffizi, but as good or better on a metre-for-metre basis, with the bonus of an optical illusion built into the private garden), the Forum, saw the Colosseum, Trevi Fountain, the main shopping street, Castello Sant Angelo and the Vatican again, and back around 5:15 which was just after sunset.

It was quite crowded, with queues for everything bar the Stada, but the longest queues of younger people (seemingly, tourists all) were at gelaterias and hip-looking restaurants. It is staggering how much of Rome is centuries or millenia old, so it is easy to understand. I remember though, wandering around the Forum 50 years ago (almost exactly) when there were neither people, tickets, guides nor guards.

We had dinner a short way down the road: great but basic at a rather character- free Italian restaurant. Beside us was an American whose phone was snatched out of his hands when he arrived the day before…. with his accommodation’s address. We can only be grateful for not enduring anything like that to date. Blisters and sore ankles pale by comparison.

24,282 steps, 19.1 km and 9 flights.Read more