Saturday 8 May
The plan today was to visit the Vatican first. Unfortunately about a thousand others had the idea before us and the queue was very, very long. So instead we headed down to the Piazza del Popolo, then past the Spanish steps, then the Trevi fountain. Lunch was at a cafe next to the Teatro di Marcello.
Next stop was the the Colosseum. The queue took 30 minutes. It was quite wierd to imagine gladiators and animals in the space we were standing in.
We wandered around town for the rest of the day. Our last stop was a bike shop that we stumbled on where I bought a really nice Campagnolo rain jacket (yes, I know I should have done it at the beginning of the trip!!). Next time I will be better prepared.
We had supper at a posh restaurant up the road from our b&b. Expensive, but nice.
Sunday 9 May
We did a lot of walking yesterday, so we needed something relaxing for today. We discovered that the Tennis Masters tournament was on when we saw John McEnroe leaving his hotel yesterday in a car covered in Tennis Masters stickers. Then our route home took us past the tennis stadium and Olympic sports centre.
So we headed to the tennis stadium in the hope of getting tickets. We waited for about an hour for the ticket sales to open and got tickets for the final - Carlos Moya vs Ricardo Nalbandian. Moya won quite convincingly in 3 sets. Its amazing how hard these guys whack the ball.
That was it for the day and it was back to the b&b to get everything ready for our trip home.
Monday 10 May
Our luggage was all packed, and we had the bikes taped so that they wouldn't get damaged on the plane. Emirates in South Africa had told us that we could just wheel the bikes on, which meant a huge time-saving as we didn't have to go hunting for bike boxes.
We were collected by our taxi and driven at very high speed to the airport. No speed limits when there's a taxi driver involved, and no gap too small to squeeze through, even if you are doing 150km/h. Rather scary!!
We arrived at the airport quite early so we were in the queue before check-in actually opened. Unfortunately when it did open they told us quite rudely that under no circumstances could we wheel the bikes on the plane, and they would have to be boxed or bagged. Of course there is nowhere to get a box or bag anywhere in the airport, and the Emirates groundstaff had basically told us that if we didn't comply the bikes would stay behind, notwithstanding the assurance we got from Emirates' Johannesburg office. This was a big problem and we had to settle for having the bikes plastic-wrapped - what you'd normally have done to your luggage to stop it from being tampered with. Of course wrapping a bike is a whole different prospect to a suitcase, and it took quite a while for the wrapping staff to do both bikes, and it cost us 24eur for both of them. And on top of it all they didn't really look very well protected from the abuse that was obviously now going to come their way.
Unfortunately there was nothing much we could do, except to make a note never to fly Emirates again. On arrival in Johannesburg our fears were confirmed and both bikes were scratched, one of our racks was badly bent, and one wheel seemed to have developed a bit of a kink. What exactly they did with the bikes on the plane isn't clear, but they definately had some heavy luggage packed on top of them. Very annoying.
Apart from that last frustration, the trip was a tremendous success, and Italy is definitely somewhere we'd like to return to. The people are friendly, the food is great, scenery was beautiful and prices are affordable. Ciao Italia!!