Tuesday 14th May

After breakfast had a short walk & then were off to the station to catch the fast train to Rome. Fast it certainly was & smooth & quiet also reaching 296kph at one stage & so it was a very pleasant if expensive ride. As it didn't pass through any stations I think that it must run on a separate track from the rest of the network most of the time.

Joanne & Gian Carlo met us at the station & then drove us around a few of the sights of Rome before taking us for lunch to a cafe near to their unit down the coast where we are staying for 2 weeks. The unit is in a complex of 4 about a block from the sea with a small garden & is very pleasant. After explaining how everything operates & how & where to get buses etc they went off & we unpacked. We set off to buy some food etc & on our return found there was no hot water supply so they came back complete with a new flat screen TV to replace the existing one but couldn't get the water heater working so that is tomorrow’s problem.

Off we went to see about finding an ATM & we walked for miles along the edge of a busy road past miles of houses & the occasional shop running parallel with the beach. Although we had been down in the car with the others we had completely underestimated the distance. We returned with te money & went to bed exhausted.

Wednesday 15th May

Up late to find a grey morning, the first for some time. As we prepared to set out for Rome we heard the bell only to find Gian Carlo at the door as he couldn’t get the plumber until tomorrow he had decided to try & fix the water heater himself. Luckily for us he managed to talk to the plumber in front of the heater & he resolved the matter. We then accompanied him back into Rome as he had come by bus & train. We had quite a time to wait for the bus so we had a welcome coffee in a little cafe nearby, took the bus the 12k to Christofo Colombo station at the southern end of the line & caught the train for the 50min journey into the terminus at the Pyramid station. He then took us to the post office where it took about 40 minutes to send a 3kg parcel of books to home. Having farewelled & thanked Gian Carlo we walked down to the Tiber & followed its bank for about a km before turning back home for the return journey from the same station. On arrival there we couldn’t see where our train went from so after scouting about found that the platforms for our line were not visible from the street. The returning train was quite crowded at 5pm but the numbers dropped fairly rapidly as we got into the suburbs. Arriving back at our station on the coast it was spitting with rain & looked very threatening which was a bit disconcerting as our bus was 15mins late & we thought that we might have an incorrect timetable. We got back to Torvajanica & found a small supermarket just near the bus stop so we stocked up on food for a day or 2. Luckily for us the morning’s washing on the line was only slightly damp so we had dinner & called it a day.

Thursday 16th May

Woke up to rain & set off at 8.45 for the trek into Rome again which took about 1 hr 20mins from us to the Pyramide station. From there we took a bus to the Capitaline Museum, a very large repository of statues & paintings ranging from 200BC until the 19th Century. It claims to be the world’s oldest museum, started in 1471 with statues donated by Pope Sixtus IV. Since then various Popes have purchased private collections & paintings have been included & a gallery has been constructed around the foundations of the Temple of Jupiter which also houses a bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius & huge fragments of a statue of Constantine. We were in there for about 3 hours before exhaustion drove us into the cafe & then we spent another hour exploring various other galleries.

From there we moved on to the Pantheon, via a basilica to see the oldest relatively complete late Roman building in the city. It is circular with a diameter height of about 43m, a tremendous example of Roman engineering. It was converted into a church & now houses the tombs of Italy’s first 2 kings & Raphael, the painter. Then on to the Trevi fountain, which is a beautiful work before fatigue set in & we made our way back to Torvajanica to put our feet up. We were amazed at the huge numbers of tourist groups being shepherded through the various sites & were glad to leave them behind.
Friday 17th May

Woke up to find the sky very grey & that it had rained in the night. As we prepared to go out Jane hurt her back so luckily, we delayed our start to see how she was. At about the time we were due to catch the bus it teemed down & was quite windy so we sat it out & in about an hour it cleared up. We caught a later bus & train & went to the Basilica of St Paul’s Outside the Walls which turned out to be the second largest church in Rome with relatively few visitors although there was a large group of nuns who arrived at the same time. At the eastern end of the basilica there is a giant Byzantine style, half hemispherical mosaic covering the ceiling & above a side chapel is another flat mosaic which is so fine that we thought it was a painting. The place is gigantic & was beautifully rebuilt after a disastrous fire in 1824 in a fairly severe classical baroque style where a church has stood since the early 300s AD. St Paul is buried there & the remains of a pagan building are underneath. We spent a couple of hours wandering around & had lunch there before taking a train back to Lido, a suburb north of Torvajanica, where we wandered around & caught up on emails etc before catching the bus back here along the coast.

Saturday 18th May

Woke up to a fine day so Jane put on the washing & on completion we took the bus for the Cristoforo Colombo station & caught a train to Ostia Antica, the original port for Rome, now about 4km from the sea. It wasn’t too busy at all when we arrived at about 10.30 & once again, our EU passports got us in free although we lashed out €2 on a map of the site. At its height it was a walled city of 50,000 but its position as the port was affected strongly by movements of tem out of the Tiber river & the coastline. The site is about 2.5 kms by 1km & includes house, shops, temples, a forum & a fine theatre together with a small but excellent museum which holds some fine sculptures from the 1st century BC onwards. We spent about 4hours wandering around it & found it quite fascinating with many reasonably preserved mosaics & a few frescoes.

Leaving the site we took a train to Lido Centro did our internet business & then returned home. One major change we noted was the massive increase in frequency of the bus service which is now on a summer timetable, which is very handy or us. The coast road was very busy with cars, scooters & bikes which park anywhere & everywhere t get to the beaches.

After tea we took a walk down to the beach just across the coastal highway & the sea was pretty calm & it looked quite safe despite an unusual warning about it being dangerous as it is unpatrolled. The sand is a brown colour but looks clean enough.

Sunday 19th May

Started out reasonably early for the station & were in Rome by 10am & then took a metro to the Colosseo which is the station nearest to the Forum. The queue was quite short so we were inside with our site plans & audio guides by 10.20 but in less than 20 minutes Dick’s packed up & we had to get by on one audio guide. Sad to say the place is poorly signed & the audio guide is of about the same standard, very dry & referring to places not open to the public which made it very frustrating to use. This is tragic as the area is so steeped in history that it cries out for both better signage & a far better audio guide. Even so we gleaned a little of the area’s history which stretches over 1000 years of active management of a huge empire, even by today’s standards. On one wall there were modern maps showing the extent of the empire in 4 periods which clearly showed Rome’s dominance of Europe & the Mediterranean basin. The size of the buildings is almost unbelievable as we saw in the ruins of a Basilica which Constantine had built with massive brick arches which have survived. It would have rivalled the present day St Peters in extent, although it was purely for secular purposes. We had also seen evidence of its power in Tunisia so we had some understanding of it but to see how it was so concentrated in the centre of Rome itself was very moving. The site itself has been so ravaged, apparently largely by later Romans themselves, that it is just a shadow of its former self today.

In the same site are the remains of the Palatine houses which are above the forum & temple area where the wealthy & the Emperors lived but as below much has been lost over the ages.

Leaving the site at about 2pm we had a very costly couple of coffees & took the metro to EUR Fermi, a new suburb as we could catch a bus back to Torvajanica & thought it would be worth a look. This was a disappointment as apart from a big market for clothes, shoes & nick nacks there was little for us to see so we caught a bus back on a ride which took more than an hour.

Another hard day over in the pursuit of knowledge.