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19 October 2019

October holiday, 19 October

You can't really do justice to Rome in a day, but we had a go. The trouble was, as the Swan Whisperer said, round every corner was something worth photographing.

But first of all, it was Saturday, so if course the SW had to find a parkrun. There was one fairly near, so he had a very early breakfast, to allow time to digest it, and then headed off while I got up more slowly and had my own meal. By the time he got back and had showered, changed and had coffee, it was about 11 when we set off.

We decided to go on the bus to Vatican City, but we had to change buses and I don't know what they thought they were playing at, but there were two on the stand and they simply wouldn't get going and everybody kept changing from one to the other in case that one set off, etc.

Finally one of them did and dropped us very near St Peter's Square, which was fabulous.
We didn't really want to go into the Cathedral, so we walked all round the square and admired the Cathedral. When we got back into Italy, walking down a long avenue towards the river,
there was a tout for a restaurant so we took his advice and very good it was, too. I had cacio e pepe, which was delicious, and the SW had pasta arrabiata, which he liked. Also beer for us both.

Then we thought we could walk to the Trevi Fountain. Big mistake - it took far longer than it said it would, and then when we did eventually get there, it was more crowded than a Northern Line train in the rush hour, and you could barely see it, far less throw coins in it. 

In spite of a gelato stop, I was flagging badly by then so treated us to a city tour which was cheaper as it was after 15:00. It was good to join the dots, but Roman traffic is dreadful, like Paris was 50 years ago.  And I couldn't listen to the commentary as it was on earbud headphones and you can't use them with hearing aids. 

When the bus got to its terminus we tried to catch a train back to Ostiense, the quartier where we are parked, but just missed it and ended up taking the metro. Quite a long walk back the other end, so I have gone to bed and the SW has gone to see if he can buy some sausages. 

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