We got going early this morning. We left the apartment by 08:30 with Tom as tour guide - Rome was "his city". It's 2:50 in the a.m. as I write this and my legs, feet and back are just recovering from all the walking (a total of 13.41 kilometers walked for the day). It was really quite comical to see Tom and I waddle through the passages of time - I think that we need to realize that we are just not in our early 40's anymore.

It's hard to list all the sights that we saw during our walking tour so I'll have to let the pictures do the talking. Some of the highlights for me was to see the Colosseum again, but we saw it from the backside this time on our way to one of the Basilica's on Tom's "gotta do" list.

We'd heard about the number of people in Rome that were here for the canonization, but we simply couldn't believe just how many people were walking the streets in and around the Vatican. We ended up our walking tour at huge obelisk that sits just outside the Basilica of San Giovanni - the Pope's "home church" or seat of the Pope.

Given that we were miles away from the Vatican we thought that the Metro (subway) would be the best solution to get us on the other side of town for our 1:15 p.m. appointment for our Scavi tour of the underground Vatican catacombs. Even buying our four Metro tickets was somewhat comical. The cost of 1.50 Euro per ticket was only dispensed by the automated ticket machines. I consider the four of us to be of reasonable intelligence but you would never have known it by watching us try to purchase 4 tickets at this machine. Finally, after 10 minutes we engaged some locals for assistance. We now know that in order to purchase four tickets, you could only use either ten Euro or five Euro notes (as was noted by the pictures on the display screen) to complete the transaction.

The crowd on the subway car should have said to us what we were in for when we exited at the Ottaviano Metro stop. There were people everywhere, people in religious getups, beggers, street vendors and hundreds of tour groups with their flags waving high up in the air every few feet. Thank heaven that Tom had told us about "prebooking" our Scavi tour.

In order to book the tour of the catacombs under St. Peter's Basilica we sent our application direct to the Vatican back in September last year. We figured that we were good because after the tour, we could BYPASS the insane lineup waiting to get into the Basilica itself. On or about early March, I received an email from the Vatican indicating that "because I did not respond confirming our acceptance - our application for consideration was cancelled and could not be rebooked". Knowing how disappointed that Tom & Jamie would be, I took the liberty of pleading my case. I told them how we had saved for years so that we could make our pilgramage to Rome. I ended the email with a lot of bless you, bless you's and the like and low and behold we got re-instated. Again, another case of the squeeky wheel.

It would be difficult to get a handle on the number of people that were in the square of St. Peter's when we arrived just before 12:30 - but thousands upon thousands upon thousands would have been a good guess - people who were there to follow-up on the previous days events. Given our pre-authorized status, we walked over to the back side of the basilica itself and pow - no more people. We just had to put our bags through a security scanner, speak nicely to one of the Vatican guards dressed in their colorful uniforms and we were good to go. Just 13 Euro's per person and we had a private tour (only 13 people) of St. Peter's underground or SCAVI tour.

This 1 1/2 hour tour took us back some 2,000 years ago to the burial grounds and sacred sites under St. Peter's Basilica itself. We had an excellent, well-informed guide who spoke with amazing detail about life and burial protocol back in the first century. At this point in our walking tour both Tom and I could best be described as old "penguins" - as we waddled in and out of the narrow passages in these 2000 year old crypts - our legs had just about enough. As you can likely appreciate the climate in this underground was very, very "close". To the point where one of the Phillipino ladies on the tour came up to Tom and gave him a lid so that he could fan himself. Personally, I didn't think I'd make it through the entire tour - I'm not claustrophobic in the least but I was praying to the big guy upstairs to make this tour end quickly.

As we headed back to the apartment we had to cross through the lineup of people. I asked one of the people what this 6-hour lineup was for and she responded "to get inside the Basilica" to which I responded - you're insane ! My body was saying - "no more" - so we stopped for a late lunch of pizza before we made the trek for the last few kilometers back to the barn.

We have a car reserved to take us to the port and board the Eurodam in about 8 hours and iit is supposed to pick us up here at the house. Finally we'll be able to unpack and get organized and get prepped for the next big tour in Cartagena, Spain which is on Thursday this week.

Again, thanks for continuing to follow our trials and tribulations here in Europe. Stay tuned and by the way - the tulips are still doing great !