Jollies Update

I'm back in Blighty. "Hail," as one of the Romans said in 'Carry on, Ceasar'. "Hail," responded Sid James. "Rain, sleet and snow". The day before yesterday, I was swanning around in a frock and sandals. Today I'm in a jumper.

We've had a great trip, though quite an eventful one.

The first problem is that we were travelling through Terminal 5... Of course, before we even reached Italy, there was the matter of the lad at the back of the plane, who was being deported. Remember, Marge Simpson's "Fear of Flying" ("Let me off, let me off!")? It was a little like that. He was screaming and shrieking: "I'm not going, I'm not going, I'm not going."



We made it to Rome, but the cases didn't. However, being a pessimist, I had packed a couple of changes of clothes for us in an overnight bag.

The next issue was that the Italian banks had 'lost their connection' with my bank = no money. (Though we had Euros with us).

The luggage was delivered to our hotel that night and was waiting in our room for us when we returned from an evening walk around Rome. (How relieved were we?) I'll pop a couple of photos on when I get my act together.

We had six days in Rome, followed by two days in Florence. The weather was beautiful (with only one day of rain). We've seen the sights - Colosseum, Vatican, St Peters, more churches than I can remember, the Capitoline, Palatine and Castello St Angelo; we queued for three hours to go into the Uffizi, we've been to the Duomo, and we saw the Leaning Tower of Pisa from the plane. However, most importantly, we've drank red wine, cappucinos, eaten pizza, pasta, traditional Tuscan cooking and even more importantly... cake and lots and lots of icecream.


Further events have sadly included the eartquake at L'Aquila. The tremors from this hit Rome. Obviously, we weren't hurt though the hotel did quite some shaking and there were people screaming. I was just impressed that I was awake for it. We didn't realise how serious it was elsewhere until we started getting calls from home.

In Florence, there was a fire alarm, just after we woke up. We scrambled out on to the road outside... only to discover that someone had burnt their toast and everyone else was upstairs, eating breakfast.