Our last day in Rome and then off to Singapore for three days and then home at last.  Starting to miss things, this morning at breakfast, as I chose between the croissant with chocolate or the custard Panini, Ilze expressed a sudden longing for Vegemite.

It’s the small things you notice. I mean when we get back we will wonder how we ever managed without a bidet. Its vey useful, it keeps all our bathroom bag things together and off the floor which is prone to flooding and whenever I can’t find the shampoo or stuff Ize’s standard reply is, “ look in the bidet”.

We walked a long way today, 12 or 13kms, to fit in the last few things and as usual it was the small little treasures that do not feature large in the guidebooks that take your breath away.

We found quite by accident a museum with reconstructions of the machines drawn in Leonardo’s code books.

There must have been a hundred, all life size, and beautifully turned out of wood with reproduction of the drawing alongside.  A real must for the boys, Vic, not a piece of fabric in sight although lze reckons one of the pieces was for weaving.

We got a bit lost looking for the next place as it was off the maps we had, I had drawn a few attack points on a piece of paper but we either missed them or the Romans were having the usual fun with their street names.  Anyway, we ended up approaching our destination from the rear. The Porta San Sebastian.  A towered gateway through the original Aurelian Wall of ancient Rome through which the Via Appia passes.  The small museum in the tower was open and is filled with replicas of Roman military regalia.

Legonaire’s helmet.

The tower’s Centurion.

But more importantly the bored guard open a little gate and let us climb out on to the top of the tower.

There we stood, looking down the Appian Way towards Campania, just as those last few legionaries had  done,watching the fires of the Huns and Goths as they prepared to sack Rome after Constantine had taken his capitol away to Byzantium.

Via Appia from the tower.

What must they have thought, after 700years of military dominance, how had it come to this?

We left the tower and walked a length of the Via Appia Antico, just to say we had and then got lost again, Ilze had dropped the map. We emerged from the back streets on to the Tiber river and I spotted this big churchy thingy and that gave us a landmark to get us back to the hotel. We are done. Were eight days in Rome enough or too many?

We will never know because they were cleaning the fountain.

Next report  from Singapore in a couple of days.

Peter