Mostly Rome

We came. We sore. We crumpled.

So far, Rome has been the almost-right city. Our apartment was ready for us, clean, mostly functional, unoccupied, but the bit about "internet available" in the blurb should have translated as "internet available if we haven't got all the other modems in use in different apartments, so can you wait till the day before you leave?"

The lounge room light turns on, but I found it confusing to turn off - until I realised that the electrician had wired it up with two switches on the same plate, either one of which will power the light. It's only after you've turned both switches off at once that the light goes out.

The kitchen has sponges and dish detergent but no tea towel; microwave and toaster but no kettle; bath towels and hand towels but no face-washers.

In the half hour+ that we waited in the Termini ticket office queue we chatted with other travelers. They'd had similar experiences with trying to book train trips from Rome: you interact with a web page that seems like it should enable you to book your tickets, then once your expectations have been raised it forces you to go stand in queues at the station.

Rome was almost right, so we left Rome for the afternoon and entered an extraterritorial region within Italian territory (at least according to the Lateran Treaty): the Basilica of Santa Maria Maggiore.

St Someone shows his light sabre style.

Little boy kneels at the foot of the crypt.

You say cherub; I say protocol droid.

MC Escher woz ere

 

St Someone ponders limbo - and whether his hat will be a handicap.

We took the scenic route back - a 2 hour sight-seeing open top bus tour. There are at least 6 different bus companies that run these tours (we counted them while waiting for the right bus). Each one provides a fleet of buses doing a loop of the city, and each one has their own pre-recorded documentary about the sights. Of course, on our tour the driver got his button presses mucked up and for a while we got the previous commentary segment voiced over the current scenes. I guess you'd say it was almost right.