We trained from the suburbs into St Peter’s. At 9am the queues were growing and we had no tickets to anything. Idea here was to buy €78 tickets to see the Vatican Museum, St Peter’s Basilica, get the right to enter the Colosseum if there was a vacancy. It all looked too hopeless.So we went to a cafe just outside the Vatican wall.. No beer or coffee for me today. Tour groups kept drifting by. This was during a lull.We walked to Ottaviano Metro station, figured out the subway system and headed for the Colosseum, here taking a diversion for the Piazza del Populo.Walking toward the Trevi Fountain, we encountered the Spanish Steps. Nobody was sitting on them.Now THAT’S a fountain.Cab to the Colosseum cost only €9.The privileged people with tickets were inside the Colosseum.Nothing fell on us.We went to lunch instead, on the rooftop terrace of a nearby restaurant.
And took a cab to my favourite building in the whole world, the Pantheon. Completed in 120, it had the largest dome until the completion of the Duomo in Firenze in 1434. One great thing about this building is that you can walk in without a ticket, spend as long as you like inside, seated if you wish, the only problem being the usual lack of a WC. I booked an apartment in Livorno and a ferry ride to Bastia.A few hundred metres away, the Piazza Navona.Relatively quiet lane.On the way to the Ponte Sant’Angelo.
Back to the Vatican precinct for a quick beer or two. The piccolo one is Don’s second round.First course of our most expensive meal of the trip at a restaurant near home in Ottavia.
