Tripping around Roma on the bus

Turns out that the 881 goes from outside the door of the hotel to St Peter's and Vatican City. Suddenly we turned a corner and there was the famous dome and colonnade. Still as extraordinary as ever, even though it's a place we've been to before. We followed the crowd in one of the queues and discovered that the bag Celia was carrying - with her Swiss army knife and another knife - had to go through a metal detector. For some reason it went through without the guards paying the slightest attention, and so we were able to park it in 'left luggage' and go inside without carrying it.

It turned out that we were in the queue that was heading for the crypt area, where Popes are buried. Well, we hadn't been there before, so we thought we'd give it a turn and catch up on the Basilica itself later. It wasn't the most inspiring place - except for those Catholics wanting to pray in front of the tomb of Pope John Paul II - and we trundled along with the crowd, climbed some stairs at the end, not quite knowing where we were going, and suddenly: we were inside the Basilica itself, with that awe-inspiring altar of four spiralling columns made of black marble.

Celia says we didn't get inside the Basilica when we were here in 1974 because there was a Mass being celebrated. I can't particularly remember. I know we saw the then Pope from a distance at one point on that occasion; he was being carried around on his throne high above the crowd. Anyway, the Basilica is fantastic, as you'd expect. This is one of the treasure houses of Catholicism after all. It's full of wonderful statuary and paintings and design. And then there is an actual treasure museum which we visited. Seemingly these particular treasures have been ransacked more than once and have had to be re-found again. Strangely enough, one of the most impressive items in the collection is very new: Pope John Paul II's vestments. They are so richly brocaded and designed that you just stop and wonder with delight.

We spent quite a long time at St Peter's all in all, and didn't actually get round to having lunch till five o'clock! (We'd stoked up on breakfast in the morning, anyway.) Found a restaurant near one of the bridges over the Tiber where the food was at our sort of price. Celia had a very nice spaghetti cabonera and I had a beef dish. Plus we shared a salad. Very tasty meal, slightly offset by the fact that what they then charged for the bottle of water and the bread was exorbitant.

Celia's idea of fun is to jump on a bus and see where it goes. She's full of confidence because we have a bus route map. So we got on a 64 and it took us through some of the touristy areas to the main station, where we discovered a bookshop with a whole area devoted to English novels, and yet another McDonald's. The latter have infested Europe like flies - but their milkshakes are rather refreshing, even though in Italy they only seem to have to flavours available: strawberry and chocolate. And their milkshakes are smaller than the ones McDonald's provide in Germany, where you get a choice of large or small.