More snow overnight and it looked very cold and slushy outside. In the end it seemed just too much hassle to get a bus to the ground as nobody knew how often they went or where we could get a ticket, so we decided to walk. It was about an hour's trek along the side of the river. Very enjoyable, apart from the mud and the slush! At least the weather was dry which was a nice change from yesterday. Oh dear, spoke too soon. It started to drizzle at first and then rain quite heavily. By the time we reached the Stadio Olimpico it was more sleet than rain.

We had been told that the restaurant where we were to have lunch would be well sign-posted. Unfortunately this was not the case. In all honesty we walked one and a quarter time round the entire ground asking stewards every few yards and nobody was able to help! By the time we eventually found it (definitely no signs of any kind!) we were hot and bothered in spite of the snow but at least we were getting plenty of exercise!

Lunch was good but it was a bit of a bun fight. No table service and very long queues for food. So long in fact that we gave up completely on the idea of having any dessert. Luckily there was plenty of plonk on the table and the company was good. Meanwhile we could see the rapidly deteriorating weather through the restaurant window. This is really Rome? You have to be kidding!! The TV screens were showing us the state of the pitch and there were lots of gloomy faces standing around but the snow eased a little and they came out and started painting all the white lines red. Game on!

We all struggled back into layers of jumpers and coats and made our way outside. The directions to the seats were every bit as good as those to the restaurant! We piled into our seats just as play was about to start. Our seats were under cover which was a blessing but luckily there wasn't much more snow anyway. It did look cold out on the pitch though! We noticed that there seemed to be no clock displayed in the stadium which made it very difficult to check how time was going. There was no scoreboard either!! Certainly nothing visible from our seats, that's for sure. Nevertheless, delighted to say that our boys came through and beat Italy 19 to 15 but for a while there it didn't look like they would make it. What a relief that they came back so strongly!

Afterwards we all piled back in for the post match tea. What a joke that was! Hordes of people rushing in with nowhere to go and very little to be had when you got there! They had taken all the tables away so we stood around drinking a couple of beers we managed to tunnel through and find but eventually gave up and made our way out of the stadium.

The walk back to the hotel seemed MUCH longer than coming the other way, but we trudged on regardless and eventually made it back. We were going to watch the Ireland v France game at the hotel but it was called off only 10 minutes before the start. It made us realise just how lucky we were!