We were up early and waiting for a 7.30 am bus, when a huge ship sailed past the end of the road. It was so close it looked like it was sailing through town, may be it was too early for the eyes to focus. Suddenly remembered our passports which reception kept the previous night, a quaint little Italian custom you have to get used to quickly as you can not go far without a passport.

For the first time we had a lot of yahoo types on the bus with by far too much loud mouthed language and generally trying to get themselves noticed. Australian males of course. Eventually they quietened down and decided to sleep it off.

We pulled into a service stop and watched an Italian family walking the isles eating biscuits, lollies and drinks without any intention of presenting at the checkout, we're talking grandma, and kid here! They started jabbering at the child, obviously trying to get her to hurry given their bus was being loaded. A bit hard to report shop lifting when in a foreign country.

We were passing some of the Italy's most pristine scenery and the other passengers wanted to put on a movie - crazy. They finally settled on Trainspotting and given it is quite a disgusting movie, were cheeky enough to ask our permission as the" olds" on the bus. Of course we agreed but spent our time enjoying the scenery.

About an hour from the last service stop we came onto a massive traffic jam and while we were crawling along two ambulances came flying past (not literally but fast). We eventually caught up to the cause of the jam, a bus had clipped a road sign and flipped over. Not only were there ambulances but a helicopter had also been called in to assist with the evacuation of injured. We thought that we recognized the bus as the one the shoplifters had been on - not that we are saying anything here. It was a very sobering sight given the semi yesterday and now this, particularly for the driver who needed to take a toilet break at the very next service stop.

We arrived in Rome at our campsite the Seven Hills Village at about 3pm. We had a cute little tent with a wooden floor, single beds again though. This park had a unique system of money management we had not found previously. On arrival you are issued with a computer chip which you pay to have charged with funds, then for the rest of your stay you insert the chip to do washing, have a shower or buy from the shop etc. You can either then recharge if needed or cash in when you check out. Ingenious. We spent the evening chatting with Stewart who was again our bus driver then hit the sack early as we wanted to get into the Vatican City as early as possible.(see next story about Vatican visit).

Monday and we were heading back into town and caught the early bus, shouldn't have bothered with the early bus, as soon as we got off in Rome the heavens opened and it bucketed down. This was possibly the heaviest rain we had ever witnessed, absolutely deafening and totally opaque. We spent at least an hour, with others, cowering in a shops entrance. 

Finally, the rain eased, and we were on our way to the Colosseum, passing other Roman ruins being excavated, practically in the city centre and also getting lost for a bit. The Colosseum was mind boggling, very large and well enough preserved to get a good idea as to how it functioned. Once inside we discreetly cottoned on to a tour group and picked up some pretty good information from their tour guide. A couple of gems were that it was possible for the slave's to cover the Colosseum if the weather turned (and we think Telstra Dome is innovative) and that prostitutes had a large section to themselves and freely plied their trade as part of the entertainment. More disturbing was that the pope still comes to the Colosseum annually to perform a type of exorcism to keep the tormented souls at rest. This was truly a place of horror and unconscionable murder. We could not help feeling very strange as we wandered its corridors and dungeons.

On a lighter note we went on to have a look at the Pantheon (Romes oldest workable building), the Trevi Fountain (which was not working) and the Spanish Steps (overrated).

We arrived back at the campsite too late to order pizza so had to content ourselves with some bread rolls, a type of fritz and some cheese for our evening meal. Tomorrow we are off to Florence.

Footnote: The Historic Centre Of Rome is UNESCO World Heritage listed.