Act III: Rome

I do believe it is time to kill this telling off. We arrived in Rome about four hours after leaving Venice, a journey which included a bus, a plane from which we got a good view of the Italian countryside ("Hills!" said cheeky, pointing excitedly), another bus, a short walk through a very dodgy metro station, a metro ride to Rome's central station and then a short walk through a few residential streets. Despite worries over how well we'd manage all of this, it all went very smoothly - in this direction. Coming back will be dealt with later...

We arrived at the hostel - another old building with fantastically high ceilings and wooden shutters on the windows - were checked in by a nice lady who was either actually British or had a phenomenally clear accent, dumped our bags and headed out for dinner. A few streets further towards the city centre, we found two little restaurants sharing the same alley, both with tables outside (by now, we were comfortable in summer clothes outside at all hours, and goulash was a distant memory), dithered for 5 minutes, picked one and considered the menu. Although we had dispensed with the order-your-meal-by-tv-reference method of food choice by now, it ambushed us in reverse as we discussed our menu choices and which tv characters they represented. It was decided that seafood risotto (cheeky) sounded wholesome but dull, and was therefore Apollo from BSG, while rigatoni a la carbonara sounded just plain dull and was therefore Duncan (VMars). However, when the meals arrived it turned out that cheeky's meal was no staid Apollo, but a full-out crazy Starbuck with pincers and antennae. My carbonara was indeed Duncan, but had had so much pepper added to it that we decided he probably hadn't taken his pills for a while. This was a nice meal, sitting outdoors in friendliness and warmth, and writing total craziness in the pad. But we were tired, so we went back to the hostel... and proceeded not to sleep very well. The road outside was loud, but the window had to remain open to keep us cool enough. There's nothing like motorbikes and road drills for a good night's sleep. Oh, and something that bit me.

The next day... which I think would be Monday? I have totally lost track now... would be all about the Romans. Well, all about the Romans and getting very warm and slightly sunburnt and lacking adequate hydration. But mostly the Romans. We went first of all to the Coliseum, walking there from the hostel through a park past the site of Nero's spectacularly opulent Domus Aurea, built over within twenty years by the Baths of Trajan, the ruins of which still stand on top of it. Anyway, we didn't have time for all that - we wanted to get to the Coliseum (sorry, Flavian Amphitheatre) before the queues got too long. We were mostly successful, probably queuing for only about 20 minutes. We hired an audioguide, noting as we did that it said you were only allowed to keep it for 2 hours, after which they started charging you something a little extortionate like €4 per minute. We scoffed at that but also felt safe because there was no way it would take us 2 hours to go round a single building, right?

We were within about 5 minutes of incurring that extra charge. Oops. It wasn't exactly that there was so much to see, or even that the audioguide had hours of information to impart, but we just spent much time staring at areas and imagining how they would have been - picturing the wild animals caged underneath, imagining how it was possible to have a single reserved seat for everybody, imagining the walkways full of togas and the arena full of ships for the day. Also it was very pleasantly sunny and warm, the views towards the forum were good, we kept getting asked to take other people's photos, and there were frequent breaks to reapply suncream as it was sweated off. (I missed a lovely triangle in the middle of my back which was extremely painful for weeks to come...)

After we found our way out of the Coliseum (more difficult than you'd think), the day was almost unbearably hot. We wandered the streets in search of a restaurant and eventually found a not-very-good one where we were almost the only customers and the waiters had a habit of stroking your arm. Hmm. Oh well, it had a ceiling fan. Grabbing some much-needed gelato afterwards, we headed towards the forum. Which we knew nothing about other than that our guide book said we Had To See it, and it hd been included in our admission price for the Coliseum. We rather unfortunately assumed that, as it stretches over a huge area, there must be places inside which would give us information, a map or some bottled water. We were wrong. Therefore, although we thoroughly enjoyed wandering around its many and varied ruins and indeed spent the whole afternoon there, we were restricted for information to what my very limited Latin could decipher from age-eroded inscriptions and we had to rely on the (thankfully ubiquitous) drinking fountains for cool water to quench our thirst and occasionally quench our sunburn and hot heads too (you would easily dry within 10 minutes). We also managed to entirely miss the palace of Tiberius and Caligula - oops. But on the plus side we saw lots and lots of other things, so much so that all these millennia-old ruins started looking remarkably alike and we got blase enough about them to just walk on them, sit on them, lie around in the sunshine between them, without even really paying attention any more.

As the sun fell down the sky, we stopped depetalling daisies on a comfy bit of grass and went back out into the city. We walked to the Tiber, crossed it and then crossed back on the next bridge down... and then went wrong. For this I have only myself to blame, as I didn't pay sufficient attention to the map, but it meant we ended up walking for about 2 hours - and only half of that was with nice scenery. Never mind - despite falling off the edge of the map at one point we made out way safely back to the hostel area, and some food which was a) not as good as the previous day's and b) more expensive. Boo. On the other hand, we had our second gelati of the day before retiring to bed. I picked up another three insect bites, and was unchuffed.

Tuesday. Egads. Not our best day, really - Rome just sort of got to us, being large and impersonal and so full of famous things that you couldn't appreciate any of them individually. However, we went to the Vatican and sort of enjoyed it until we'd been walking through it for two hours and it all looked the same. There is only so much gilding that should be allowed in one place, even if it has all been put there in degrees down the centuries. But seeing real friezes by Raphael and Michelangelo was sort of cool, I guess. It was just too big and too busy, though. St Paul's was slightly better although still overly grand for my tastes. We should have thought to go up the dome, but we didn't - instead we had our attention distracted by some Michelangelo statue called the Pieta. Hmm yes. Then my credit card stopped working, so we annoyingly had to go back to the hostel so I could retrieve my other cash card (and charge my camera for 5 minutes as it had died). Thankfully, after that the day perked up a bit - we were back to wandering through the city, and the free or cheap sights seemed to be much better, overall. The Pantheon was pretty cool, we loved the cat sanctuary set up within the ruins of some more Roman temples, Trajan's column is mighty and interesting, and we found more bits of forum across the road. Then we saw the Trevi fountain by streetlights and eventually made it back to the hostel, content that we had crammed as much into our time as we could possibly have hoped for.

The next morning had nothing in except travelling home - and we very nearly managed to mess that up. Thanks to a complete brain fart on my part, the alarm did not go off at the right time and we therefore left later than planned. The connection from metro to bus fell apart entirely as it turned out the buses were not at all regular, and then we might still have been fine except that the bus took the most ridiculous route imaginable, through every suburb such that we could see the airport for half an hour before we reached it. I was so nervous and despairing at this point - in the end, we reached the airport after check-in ought to have closed. We ran for the departures area, only to find - in ten minutes or so of thorough confusion - that not only had the check-in desks only just opened, thanks to Ryanair's wonderful organisation - but that there were many other people also just arriving having had difficulties with their own forms of transport (direct buses and even a taxi all apparently stuck in a bad rush hour). So, in the end, we made the flight fine, but I don't think my life expectancy has been helped by the experience.

On the flight home, we listened to ipod and mp3 player, which had had remarkably little to do previously (although cheeky went to sleep listening to hers each night). I remember miming along to various OMWF songs and giggling ourselves silly. Ah, fun. Then back to East Midlands, my car and my house. Oh hello, camera, I missed you...

I will not bother with another entry for the remaining 3 days that cheeky stayed - suffice to say there was a nice trip to London to say hi and bye to biped, a panic when cheeky thought she'd remembered her flight times wrong, a joint watching of the BSG episode that was out that week (President and Commander! Wah!) and eventually a fun drive to Heathrow with much singing along to tv songs (I giggle too easily when driving. Especially when, say, Right Here Right Now inspires my passenger to burst out with "I love Mercer!") Then an un-British farewell hug and off cheeky went to have lots of fun and sunshine at camp, while I went back to my British 'summer' and work. Darn her.