When in Rome.......

It's become a tradition over the years that we take our first holiday of the year round about the time of our birthdays. Both of us being Pisceans and with our birthdays three days apart, it provides an excuse for a double celebration. It means our friends don't have to ponder over what to buy as we are very rarely around,  and it means that Richard's middle sister can do what she does best - entirely forget the birthdays are there at all!

Early March has seen us visit Bruges, Barcelona, Venice, Dublin and  Reykjavik  but this year all roads led to Rome.

The visit was mainly inspired by the fact that I had 58,000 British Airways Avios points sitting quietly in my account and as anyone who has ever tried to exchange airline points for a real-life trip will know it can be virtually impossible. Unless you can fly on the second Wednesday after Pentecost and return on the mid-afternoon flight two full moons hence via Helsinki, you're unlikely to be able to book anything. It was to my great surprise then to note that the new system of reward flights from British Airways allowed both of us to fly to Rome for a total of £54 + 30,000 points.

 So Rome it was.  My only previous visit to the eternal city was back in 1998 film a commercial. To this day I couldn't actually really tell you what the commercial was for - something about unpaid television licences as I have a thought, but I couldn't swear to it. It involved me dancing on a table to Take That singing  “Relight my Fire"  while about 18 extremely chic and rather handsome Italians stressed as dinner guests looked on bewildered. I think they were probably just thinking “Well that's the English for you" and certainly the level of abandon needed for such free choreography was far beyond the cool chic of most Italians. I spent one day filming and one day sightseeing so it was just a quick visit to the Vatican and the Trevi Fountain and then home.

This time we were there for four days. We had a cute little apartment just off the Piazza Venezia,Incredibly close and convenient to all the sites. We spent a morning doing the Coliseum, an afternoon walking round the Spanish steps and the Trevi Fountain, a whole day looking at the excesses of St Peter's and the Vatican and a beautiful morning on a pedal powered (electrically assisted I might add) bicycle rickshaw in the grounds of the Villa Borghese.

Add to this an evening  where an Italian chef came into the apartment and prepared us a delicious four course meal and you have a perfect spring break.

Of course the phrase “When in Rome, do as……………" was never far from my lips.

So what is Roman behaviour for those of you might find yourself there?

Don't queue, don't observe any orderly formed line if you can help it.
If driving a car take no notice whatsoever of any pedestrians who may be attempting to cross the road.
If selling sandwiches or soft drinks in a park, make sure you have no change…….
………. and if you're a bus, make sure that you don't go quite on the route that you would seem to from the map!

Arrivederci Roma!