Monday 11 May

Have not been able to get internet at all/easily/cheaply.

Beautiful weather. Warm.

Kirsten rings early in the morning – Tina’s cell phone bill has arrived and is over $500 for less than an hour’s talk!!! Tina neglected to sign up for global roaming.

We have an insight tour of Rome:

Colosseum – not crowded early in the morning; plenty of time to stroll; another group (a travelling choir?) are singing beautifully in one part – a nice bonus.

a. Vatican Museum – sculpture, tapestry and the Map Room. All spectacular but crowded; herded like sheep in a linear fashion. You dare not stop to admire something or you quickly get left behind as there are so many people/tour groups. An amazing place but not pleasant. But worse is to come.

b. Sistine Chapel – what can I say? As our tour director Annalies asked a few days later, it is something you have to do/see “but did you enjoy it?” The answer is no. The numbers in the small room were simply ridiculous. It was not safe. There was supposed to be no photos but most people (including us) were ignoring this. There was a little man running around shouting “No photos!” but people ignored him and he did nothing. Compare this with the Topkapi Palace in Turkey where if someone took a photo they took the camera taken off them and the photo deleted.Tina got separated from the group – as did at least two others. She was in the right place at the right time but got behind another tour party. Tour parties on the move form an impenetrable mass. During Greece and Italy we have wireless devices so we can hear the guide’s commentary. They don’t have a big range (about 30-40) but in the Sistine Chapel Tina might as well have been on the far side of the moon. She was less than 10 metres away from us and could hear over her headset “Where is Tina?” “Where is my wife?” but she couldn’t make contact. The guide moved us on (a mistake in my view), saying that she was sure the missing people would be at the bottom of the stairs. They weren’t but now there is this mass coming down the stairs behind us and the guide says we can’t stay where we are because an official is barking orders at her to move on. So we move on but this just compounds the problem because when Tina finally gets out she has options. She picks one but it is not the one the guide took. She gets dumped into St Peter’s Square. Wisely she stands there. Meanwhile …

c. We are in St Peter’s Church. Interestingly, flash is allowed as none of the things that look like paintings are paintings – they are all mosaics.

When we exit St Peter’s we catch up with Tina. She and I leave the group, have lunch and go back into St Peter’s where I give her a guided tour and we see a group enter for Mass. Catch a taxi paid for by Insight back to hotel. Rest, shuttle back into centre and have a meal in the piazza in front of the Pantheon (Piazza della Rotonda) for a pasta meal. Tina has Gnocchi (olives, tomatoes, rocket etc) whilst I have Fettuccine alla Bolognese. Excellent meal at the M. Agrippa al Pantheon restaurant.

We go back to the pasta shop where I buy my porno pasta!!! It’s only a small pack so who wants to come to dinner and eat male genitalia???

Back to the hotel to pack for days on the road.

Observation: if I lived in Rome, Athens or any large city I would buy a scooter. The scooter is king in Rome.