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 the year, despite the glorious weather and the beauty of this incredibly preserved medieval walled town.

We arrived a bit after 11, and made our way from the station, through the Porta Romana under the watchful gaze of St Rose, who looks down from the wall that protects her patronal city. We immediately had a sense that this was something of a world apart. Not like Mdina in Malta, where cars are prohibited, but still, with the high walls and narrow streets that have somehow survived the ravages of the years, you had a real sense of the generations who saw the city pretty much like this.

We found the tourist office - a little less shy than its Frascati counterpart - and sat down at a cafe in glorious sunshine with the Italian brochure to plan our campaign. Just as we thought were ready, a gent with an unmistakeable Geordie accent asked if we were English. Despite our antipodean origins, he gave us a few helpful hints. It seems he has lived in the town for some years. He had been sitting alone in the cafe for some time, separate from the half dozen or so local men who were chatting animatedly beside us. I wonder if he just wanted to speak to someone in English?

We wandered up and down laneways, through piazzas and into churches, every now and then stopping to consult the map. Despite the fact that we went into only one building in the couple of hours of meandering, we were fully occupied by the amazing state of preservation of the streetscape and the buildings. You would turn a corner and here was a fountain, gurgling in the sun. There was a shrine to the Madonna with fresh flowers - not the dust of neglect you see in Rome. On another street, a billboard of death notices being read by a woman who surely knew at least some of the deceased. And the streets themselves - like some of the nonnas we have seen, bent and crooked, but still proud and serving their purpose connecting families across the generations.

The Cathedral, and the Papal palace adjacent, have a quiet dignity about them. The walls of the cathedral still have some lovely frescoes, and the plain stone of other walls sets them in strong relief, even though their colours have faded. The papal palace hosted a famous conclave where the local citizens withheld supplies until the Cardinals made up their minds about who was to be Pope - Hello Gregory X. The laity in action! (A: Next to the Cathedral di San Lorenzo is a museum with a reliquary said to contain the chin of John the Baptist. We decided that our lives would not be transformed forever if we gave it a miss.)

Anne had brought the names of a couple of recommended restaurants. We chose one and headed for it, but Thursday was its "giorno di riposo" - so we were out of luck. A nearby restaurant - Quattro Stagione - Four Seasons - advertised local specialties such as Acqua Cotta (cooked water - a kind of vegetable soup) and seasonal dishes with chestnuts and mushrooms so we went in.

It was not incredibly busy - like the town itself. There was a group of about 8 locals having a meal in the room with us, perhaps relieved that the tourist season seemed over for them. I had mozarella buffala and prosciutto, followed by tagliatelle made with chestnut flour with porcini and chestnut. Absolutely fabulous. Fresh, local, well cooked.

(A: And I had salmon and rugola for starters and the above- mentioned soup which is vegetarians' heaven! This was washed down with a half litre of the local red wine for 3 Euros and a bottle of mineral water together with a basket of delicious bread. If we are back in this town we would certainly dine here again.)

M:

We headed back out the gate and boarded the train for Rome. It ran pretty much to time through the countryside and into the roman suburbs and on to Trastevere. We had noted that there was a Christmas market to raise funds for Italian Emergency - an aid organisation, so got off the tram at Trastevere to have a look. This took us through the annual Chocolate Fair - a range of stalls, all selling temptation in the form of chocolate. Not sure what St Rose would think! We only succumbed to the extent of buying a pear strudel for tomorrow night's meal with Nives.

The other market was largely selling material from developing countries, the kinds of things we can buy at home anyway, so we didn't buy anything. We got back to the flat around 6 - it seemed much later since we had left home 10 hours before! This gave us a chance to catch up on the blog and watch an episode of Don Matteo. While I don't catch every word, I get enough to make sense of the fairly simple plot.

Two more days in Rome. Where have they all gone?