I'm back!

After many problems with my passwords/account, I can now write again. And yes, you will get all my holiday and pics thereof. Because I couldn't write directly on my blog, I kept a journal of my trip (how very bourgeois) so I'll unleash each day here, headed with the date I wrote it. So I'll start with the day I arrived in Rome, 30th March: - 

View across the forum of Trajan - column on right hand side

    Arrive in Rome. Very tired and sick of being in a flying tin-can, but interesting coming in to Rome over Naples, seeing Vesuvius like a great big pimple coming out of the face of the earth. Tired but impossible to resist the urge to go out and look at Rome! Went first to Santa Maria Maggiore, just caught the end of Mass. This is a very active church, not just for tourists, but always something going on, either in the main church or one of the substantial side chapels. One of Pope Francesco's favourite churches, he came here to give thanks after his election. Mass is now in Italian not Latin, so I could understand the 'partenze in pace' and the communal peace/handshaking. It's a practice that should be more general, perhaps we'd all get on better if we wished each other well every morning.
   Then I pootled off to the Quirinale, noticing oranges grown as street trees in Via Consulta, all the lower branches well and truly picked clean. If only citrus were as easy to cultivate at home. Then somehow I got to the Forum of Augustus and the Forum of Nerva, now much more accessible than the last time I was here, with steel ramps and interp. boards. Loads of tourists and associated hawkers and tat.

  Went to lunch at a tiny little place in a street behind the fora. Can't remember now what I ate, there was a domestic drama going on with one of the other diners. She was in tears and objected to my sitting down near her table, and abused me a little for shoving her out (which was not my intention at all, I was bone-weary and hungry, and thought she was leaving). However, she came back and apologised to me, saying she shouldn't have ruined my day as well as her own. When I told her I'd just arrived after a 36-hour journey and it was my birthday, she shouted me a drink and drank my health. She was an Englishwoman who had lived for many years in Rome, and we had quite a long chat, so it was all right after all.

Forum of Trajan

Forum of Augustus

   After lunch I wandered around a bit more and found the Basilica of S. Pietro ad Vincoli (Saint Peter in Victory) which has Michelangelo's tomb for Pope Julius in it. Built in the 5th century to house the chains of Saint Peter, this church is accessed from Via Cavour by a set of stairs that goes up inside a tunnel in the hillside.

 The statue of Moses is the only statue of the tomb that Michelangelo completed; the other figures are by other artists, and Moses looks a bit out of place, like a prince among paupers. 

Moses as superhero

Apologies to Michelangelo, but I was more impressed by this other tomb sculpture, to a Cardinal - he looks pleasantly surprised by the appearance of the skeletons "You've come for me?"

   Back to Via Cesare Balbo to sleep.