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...

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...

A Thursday Nov 24th was our day without a lesson, and so after enjoying talking to people at home we had a look in the nearby museum at an exhibition of models of Da Vinci's machines, created from his drawings. It gives a good idea of the man's genius in ways other than his painting. It is called Leonardi Da Vinci- the Genius and the Inventor.(Leonardo Da Vinci- Il Genio e Le Invenzioni.) What a mind! The claim that he may have been the cleverest man to have li...

A: Monday marked the midpoint of our time in this wonderful city. It also means we are half way through our Italian lessons- four down, four to go. We passed the morning quietly doing homework and washing, and it was lovely to talk to Clare and Mum and Beth, and also to Kerry late last night. Our classes are proceeding well and we were pleased to see Nives fully recovered from her party on Saturday night (Well, except for a bit of a cold). Our usual routine duri...

M: After a big day of walking on Thursday - including several hundred stairs - we decided on a quieter morning on Friday. It's amazing how having little to do can easily take up lots of time! Major priorities were to get in a "major" shop to make sure we were ok for the weekend. This has actually become less of an issue because we have discovered a nearby supermercato that actually opens on Sunday. The shopping list now customarily includes the odd bottle of It...