At least the flight left approximately on time, and we got some great views of the alps.

I said goodbye to J at the airport – we had managed not to quarrel all week (well – hardly ever…). He was lucky in only having an hour’s journey home – I had three hours by tram, train and car.

It was great to see R and the lads again. I now discovered that R had suppressed the facts that he had had to take Tora to the vet on his own, and that he had also not been well himself. That was good of him as I would have worried. They were both fine though.

Had a great holiday, but glad to be back. I think I need another one to recover but I am not going to get one as I have a test to start tomorrow.

This was a misapprehension on many levels. Most importantly, it may have been “supposed” to be closed to traffic, but in fact the Italians weren’t taking any notice of that as a concept. As the road is narrow and runs between two high walls, it was taking your life in your hands to walk down it, and with cars and motorbikes whistling past at great speed it was no pleasure at all. We walked, and walked and walked in the baking heat, hoping things would improve – they didn’t.

About 1pm we got to the catacombs we had been going to visit to find they were closed. With true British grit, we toiled on in the sun to the final bus destination, the tomb of a Roman matron which looked impressive from the outside but was distinctly underwhelming from the inside.

So we set off back. Afterwards I discovered that further on from here was the good part, and that the traffic calmed down a lot. But we had had enough of it…

We stopped at a Trattoria and had lunch – there was a very cute little dog at the next table.

Then we walked all the way back over Rome in the heat. By the time we got to the Irish pub I was seriously dehydrated and drank a whole pint of water straight down (followed by a pint of beer straight down too!).

We said goodbye to the cats and went home to pack. A rather disappointing last day but you can’t win them all I suppose.

The pictures don’t look much because it was dark – but the scale and quality of the building was remarkable.

We had to wear hard hats to go into the diggings and I have a picture of me wearing mine which is not going to be shared with the Internet!

After this we went to the Baths of Caracella which were also pretty impressive. It was baking hot today (27 or so) and we were getting quite footsore at this point.

So we had a quick look at the “Mouth of Truth” but did not stand in the enormous queue to put our hands in it and went and had a late lunch/early dinner in a little trattoria.

We fed the cats again – this is my three-legged favourite.

Then as we were coming the end of our holiday, we had a bottle of Prosecco at the apartment and watched the sun go down.

First we found the Altar of Augustan Peace more or less by accident. This was really interesting – Augustus has always been a bit of a hero of mine (although Mary Beard did try to put me off him recently) and again there was no one apart from us there because it was early and expensive. The “Res Gestae Divi Augusti” were on the wall outside which was a nice touch.

Then we walked the long way to Villa Borghese. Here is J looking exhausted after climbing hundreds of steps (good view though).

We got a bit lost on the way out of the park and I started to get a bit stressed as I thought we were lost. Eventually we found it, but I would not recommend walking this – it was a very very long way. Anyway, when we got there they had three ticket options, one for “Casa Nobile”, one for “Casina delle Civette” and one for “Villa Torlonia”. We bought the most expensive one and then walked round the park looking for Villa Torlonia on the basis that this must be Mussolini’s villa. But we couldn’t find it anywhere…. We were about to give up when I realized we had bought a combined ticket for Casa Nobile (Mussolini’s house) and also the Casina delle Civette – the owl house. Doh…

They were both brilliant – and completely empty of tourists (hurray!). Mussolini’s house was beautiful – not at all in the style you would expect for a Fascist dictator (actually I don’t think he was that bad a man for his day – certainly not in the league with Hitler and Stalin). It strongly reminded me of an ancient Roman villa which would have pleased Mussolini himself I think as he always thought of himself as a modern day Roman Emperor.

Then we went to see the House of the Owls which was an art Nouveau creation owned by a mad sounding Italian Prince with a predilection for owls and other creatures of the night. There was one creature of the night outside.

The stained glass was some of the most beautiful I have ever seen.

We then took the decision to walk “part of the way” back and take the metro at some strategic point. Needless to say we walked the whole way back – I was starving the whole way but J wasn’t feeling hungry, so I got grouchier and grouchier the whole way back. Anyway, I recovered once we had found our Irish bar and fed the cats again. There was one little sweetie with three legs and virtually no ears which has been at the sanctuary since 2004. When another cat tried to steal its ham, it reared up on its hind legs to bop the intruder with its remaining front paw.

Walked sixteen miles today – I am well impressed with J in keeping up I must say.

We had been havering over what to do about the Vatican as the queues are particularly long and horrible – when R and I were there previously we had to queue for nearly two hours, and when we finally did get in the Sistine Chapel was so mobbed you couldn’t see a thing (or hear a thing for the guards yelling “Silence” and “No Photo”). So little as I like guided tours, J and I opted for an early hours “beat the crowds” tour. Actually it was a big success; we were in by 7:45am – and although there were not “no crowds” they were sizably reduced and we got to see the Sistine chapel in all its restored glory (I thought it was a big improvement on the pre-restored version even though some art critics are not impressed) without too many other people.

We did get whisked round at a pace, but to be honest, neither of us minded that as we are not that interested in paintings. My favourite bit of the Vatican Museums is the wonderful map gallery.

We also saw St Peter’s which is very impressive but far from my favourite church. We didn’t go up to the dome after my experience trying to get J to go up the bell tower in Bruges.

We nipped back to the flat for lunch and then in the afternoon walked back into centre Rome to look at the Capitoline museums. It took us quite some time to find them and then there was another tortuous queue for tickets and yet another metal detector. But once we got in they were nearly empty and very cool – we saw the (now sadly controversial) Capitoline Wolf.

I liked this statue as well – somehow it reminds me of Schrodi….

This is me walking in the footsteps of Mary Beard.

We fed the cats at the sanctuary on the way home again. Another exhausting day.

We walked right over to the other side of the city to get the suburban train (this was becoming a theme and in retrospect it might have been better to have chosen an apartment near the ancient centre rather than near the Vatican). We saw the old city walls on the way along with a weird pyramid shaped tomb built by a 2nd Century Senator….

The ancient site was only a short walk from the station. About the first thing we saw were two very friendly cats.

Then we walked round the very large site. Away from a few central buildings it was largely empty and very atmospheric. The best thing was the remains of a courtyard of shops, each with a mosaic outside advertising its wares.

Many of the buildings were wonderfully preserved.

There were many fig trees and grape vines but unfortunately not ripe enough to pick yet. Here is me having a go anyway.

After lunch we were suddenly hit by a thunderstorm and a deluge of rain. I had no coat and the only thing we had to improvise any kind of covering from was a shopping bag decorated with bananas which I turned into an impromptu hat!

We went back to Rome and visited the Coliseum on our way home. In a way magnificent, but in another way very disappointing as too many crowds and a ridiculous level of security. J was highly irate at having to pour his bottle of water away in the 27C heat. Here we are together….

We walked over from our apartment (near the Vatican) to the Palatine Hill, making several detours on the way to try to buy the Archaeology Card mentioned in the guide book which would give us entry into the main sites without having to queue up. This was not an easy task as the first few places we tried either didn’t sell it or hadn’t even heard of it. The main tourist office in Piazza Navoni were in the latter category – and the assistant didn’t even speak English. Now I don’t want to come over all imperial here – but would you really employ someone who didn’t speak English in a tourist office in one of the most touristy cities in the world? Anyway – we managed to buy the card by dint of visiting a museum we didn’t even have on our list.

Goes to show – because the museum was great – in a converted Palace with lots of beautiful Roman statues and hardly any other people.

We had a quick (and nice) pizza – unfortunately mine was ham and had the side effect of making me terribly thirsty all afternoon.

Then we took our card to the Ancient Roman ruins around the Palatine and Capitoline hills – of course after all the hassle getting the card it was the very hottest part of the day and there wasn’t much of a queue anyway. The ruins were good – but not as atmospheric as when R and I had visited in 2000 because we had come early in the morning when there was no one about (you can see this is a recurrent theme with me).

By the time we got half way back we were exhausted. We found an Irish pub which was cool and sold Hoegarten in enormous glasses (Belgian beer in an Irish pub in Italy – go figure). This became a real favourite of ours and we had a beer here on our way home nearly every day.

When we arrived in Rome it was quite hot (about 25C) but not as bad as it had been the week before when it was 31C! We got the bus to the city centre and then the Metro out to the Vatican where our AirBnB apartment was. The Metro made the London Underground look quiet and we have resolved not to use it again unless we have to.

The apartment is quite brilliant – a big open plan kitchen/lounge and two bedrooms (each with an en-suite) on different floors – which is good because J has a terrible snore. The best thing about it was the terrace with fantastic views over the city, and so close to the dome of St Peter’s you could almost touch it.

We went out and stocked up with food at the local supermarket and then took a look at the Pantheon which was impressive but mobbed with tourists, and a number of other churches which were not on the tourist A list and therefore almost entirely empty (this was to become a theme).

We also walked along the Tiber for a while but decided not to take a boat trip as it is so deeply set between high banks that we wouldn’t have seen much.

Finally we fed the cats at the Largo Argentina cat sanctuary for the first time (but not the last).

The day ended with a nice drink on our private terrace.

So in the afternoon we went to see the Camera Obscura and associated optical illusion museum. This wasn’t bad although it is looking a bit tired these days. The revolving corridor is good, it really feels as though the whole room is turning round.

Then we went to the Castle, where strangely enough J has never been before. Then we had a rather indifferent dinner at a chain restaurant and took the tram out to the Hilton. The tram was fun though I can’t help thinking about how many buses they could have bought for the same price.

The Hilton is not a particularly endearing hotel I have to say – it has big rooms but with those very distinctive 1990s swirly carpets and key cards that deactivate themselves if they come within 500m of a mobile phone.

Off to bed and up early….