Too much food....

Corsica /Ajaccio

A minor port of call for the Needhams. We mooched around for a couple of hours taking a few pictures. Ajaccio is nice but there isn’t much to see really. Bonapart was born here, his house was an old building, like all the other old buildings.

Noticed more people taking photos with tablets here. What is that about? Especially when you have a camera in your hand.  Freaks.

Rome

What to say about Rome. Again J

Religious? Figures. Basketcases.

Bustling? Uhuh.

Chaotic? Definitely.

A later start this time around, a nice easy 8:45 on the coach and 90 minutes to Rome from Civitavecchia. Traffic as ever was horrendous in Rome. The traffic in Kenya could be bad with poor/insane drivers. Rome takes this and adds 50 times the vehicles. Utter chaos, how anyone actually lives in Rome is beyond me.

Once off the coach we proceeded to our meeting point next to St Peters as we were…….doing Rome on our own. Yipes! We hopped on the open top bus to the Coliseum and made our way back on foot stopping off at the usual places, Forum, Trevvi fountain , Pantheon etc and Pizza Novana where we had a spot of lunch. 12 euros for a pizza, no worries….7 euros for Carlsberg. WTF??? 40cl of Carlsberg 7 euros!! Wowsers. Still, not as bad as the bottle of coke we paid 4 euros for later on.

One thing I noticed about Rome this time doing it on our own was the commercialisation of the whole thing. You know it’s there but the extent became apparent without the distraction of a tour guide. Queues into everywhere, market stalls everywhere and lucky lucky men. You know the sort, sell anything. They really were EVERYWHERE. Having the same hats thrust in my face got boring the 50^th time.  There were a few last time we came but this time was beyond a joke. Crossing a bridge over the river opposite Castle Sant’Angelo you had nowhere for photos as all the pathways were taken up by them. It’s a plague that Rome needs to deal with.

People. Lots of them, never seen it so busy. Being a Saturday didn’t help but the number of people was mind boggling, think Old Trafford sized crowds leaving the ground, a sea of people. Most of the time our walking was a slow amble at snail’s pace, before stopping at a road crossing waiting for the lights to change to halt the relentless flow of traffic.

As I said, how anyone lives here is beyond me. Having had a whine as I do, we still enjoyed it immensely. Just wish the other people would feck off ;)