Today we planned to visit the Ancient Sites of Rome but ran into a very unexpected problem. Massive street protests were planned in protest of "corporate greed" and "government cut backs" and were considered to pose a big enough threat that the Colosseum, Roman Forum and other big sites were closed for "security reasons". Police in all forms dominated the streets as they attempted to confine the protest to a small area. After speaki...

We took a well earned sleep-in today (8:30) followed by a leisurely scrambled egg breakfast cooked in our "chalet" while we plotted out the day ahead of us. Two buses run from the bus stop out the front, the 247 which terminates at the Vatican or the 246 which takes you to the metro stop. The starting point for our day was simply going to come down to whichever bus came first, it turned out to be the 247 to the Vatican and so our starting point was set!...

Last night was regrettably our final one here, we've never felt more at home since we left as we have here in southern Switzerland. It's clean, friendly, safe and welcoming, something that unfortunately can't be said for some of it's more famous European neighbours. It would be very easy to settle in here for a long time.... This afternoon we returned to Italy on the train bound for Rome. We had to change to a connecting train in Milano but due to a delay on the...