Roma, Roma, Roma

A classic Italian park-job

base of the community? (any other translations out there?)

beggars belief

Nice neighbourhood

Grub and grog

Doctor Who scene?

Jane's Europe campaign

Home for four days

a Roman

X marks the place we're at

We are finally in Rome. The master-blast from Florence worked a treat and we are amazed with ourselves. We got onto the Autostrada quickly, stopped for fuel twice, had breakfast, managed to zoom into the right airport and took all the right turns to arrive at exactly the right time to return the Fat Panda. Lucky I sat on 140 all the way; and I was always being passed by Germans.

We saw glimpses of Umbria on the way down, enough to make us want to come back for some more exploring. The fort-towns on top of mesas were amazing, like Cinque Terre but all jammed on top of a platform.

We sat up top in the front of the bus into Rome and enjoyed not having to engage with the flow of traffic personally. A quick and kindly taxi ride to our rented apartment, a phone call to the owner and we are in. A few hundred meters from the Colosseum. We must be getting better at this.

We went for a look at the ruins but wanted to save it all for one of the three days we have to relax. The relief from the intensity of travelling and the prospect of lounging about is a great contrast. We celebrated with an evening in. A bottle of red, a bottle of bubbly, a couple of trays of cheese, olives, bread and other luxuries and we were complete.

The flat was obtained through a web-site called cross-pollinate which allows owners to let out their homes to travellers. It works well both ways. The place in Paris was just a room with the owner tending it as an innkeeper, this place is just ours. And very nice it is too.

I've just served up the tea and toast so we're off into the sunny Roman day.

Stay tuned.