Saturday
17th October
Rome
Sun
shining and Mt Etna in all it's glory was what we awoke to this
morning. Quick breakfast then a 15 minute pack and we were off again
... well not quite. A flat battery on the car. Thank goodness for
one of the hotel staff who sprang into gear and jump-started the car
for us to make our get away in good time to the airport in Catania.
Quick
painless flight and before we knew it, we were in Roma.
We
made good time to our hotel and decided it would be best to to a
quick tour of the city by bus to get the city under our skin. Our
helpful hotel guide suggested we pick it up from Piazza Santa
Maggorie, which was a short walk away. Off we went, map in hand and
spirits high. As we headed up the road we noticed an inordinate
amount of people on the streets with banners and placards, all of
which were in Italian, so we had no idea of what they were on about.
As we arrived at the Piazza we knew that something was up –
obviously a rally of some kind. What we didn't know was that there
were 100,000 people readying on the roads around the Piazza. We
found the bus embarkation point and were greeted with the news that
the bus would not be running due to the protest rally against racism.
Ok, we'll hoof it! We decided to check out the forum and the
Colosseum. We took a few back streets and arrived at the Forum just
in front of the main body of marchers, with a significant police
escort leading the way. But, we did have a great time wandering the
Forum and around the Colosseum and then wound our way back to our
little B&B. We've never seem so many Africans... funny being in
Italy and all!
We
headed into the local boy-town but not much happening so headed home
to get ready for our reunion with Victor and Don for California
tomorrow.
