A: Sunday Sadly we had to leave our lovely little Rome apartment after four wonderful weeks. It was time to head to the Cinque Terre for two nights, staying in an apartment in Riomaggiore. This involved a taxi to Termini, a pre- booked train to La Spezia and another to Riomaggiore. In all the train travel took four hours and was uneventful. Once in Riomaggiore we had to follow directions given by Agostino by email to La Scogliera (The Reef) at Salita Castel...

M: I'm sitting down writing this on our last day in Rome. It is hard to believe the month has already gone! We have two days (Sunday and Monday) in Riomaggiore in the Cinqueterre with no wifi in the flat, so it will be a few days before we get back to this. Yesterday we set ourselves an easier pace. No early morning trains to catch, no new maps to get accustomed to. Having risen late we set off to do the shopping for tonight's dinner with Nives. The menu was to...

M: Thursday: Another day on the road. This travelling can be tough............ This time to Viterbo, north of Rome, but still in Lazio, so we could use a Biglietto Integrato Regionale Giornaliero (BIRG to its friends). 9 euro covered the tram to Trastevere station the 2 hours on the regional train each way and the tram back from the station to "home". Not such a long trip, but again, a different world from Rome - little traffic and few tourists at this time of...

M: I'm getting in first here. The jumper was definitely a bit too snug, so now Anne has both the purse and the lovey jumper. So there! Tuesday was another day of "catching up", so we set off in search of a couple of churches. The first was St Peter in Chains, recommended by Kerry Stirling as much for the nearby coffee as for Michelangelo's Moses - both masterpieces in their own way! The church is close to Metro Cavour, up a steep hill. The building is nothing ...

A: "What did you buy for yourself in Rome, Anne?" "A beautiful leather wallet." "And Mick, what about you?" "I got a second hand jumper for five Euros at a street market!" More of this later! On Sunday we went to 10 am Mass at the Baroque church of Santa Maria del Popolo which is in the Piazza del Popolo. We went to that particular church of the thousands in Rome, partly because it has a Raphael sculpture - Chigi- and two Caravaggio paintings inside. We r...