Of Saints, Popes and martyrs

We had planned the next day to go to the Catacombs of the Appian Way which were a tram, then Metro, then bus ride away so it was a relatively early start to get there before the two hour lunch shut down at noon. Now practised, confident and carrying our trusty Roma Passes we made it to Termini, the central train station and the beginning of many of our Roman journeys. Through the turnstile and onto the train was easy too. Even catching the 218 bus from San Giovanni Metro stop was a cinch- it was waiting right across the road. Trying to work out the correct stop? Not so easy. We guessed and pulled the buzzer probably a couple of stops too early and ended up trotting at a fair clip to get to the ticket booth before the cut off time. Up the little country lane, into the well marked driveway and through some beautiful serene rural scenery not even an hour out of central Rome.


The Via Appia Antica was the first of Rome's great roads stretching all the way from here, Saint Sebastians Gate...



...to Brindisi in the south -where we would be heading in a day or two's time.

Since it was illegal to bury their dead inside the city walls it makes sense that Roman tombs were located, here, just outside the city limits, where they could be still be visited and cared for easily. Pagan Romans tended to be cremated but for Christians, who believed in resurrection, this wasn't an option, so they needed land. A few wealthy Christians allowed their land to be used as burial places as most Christians were too poor to be landowners. To make the most of the donated land they dug tunnels, an estimated 375 miles of tomb lined tunnels, as deep as five layers, in the volcanic tuff. Tuff is soft enough to cut relatively easily but durable and not prone to collapse, perfect for the 60 or so known catacombs outside Rome. At a time when Christians, in particular, were persecuted, the Catacombs became a relatively safe place to bury the dead.

There are three sites tourists can visit today each with different opening times and days. We had chosen the Catacombe de San Callisto because it was open when we wnated to go and the closest option.


The five euro ticket gets you a guided tour by an expert and if you are lucky an enthusiast but 'no photos allowed'. The morning was sunny and the 20 or so minute wait for the start of the English tour was warm and pleasant and there was plenty of people watching to do.



See the dog collars? Incidently my mum used to make dads clerical collars out of washed Janola bottles long before recycling was trendy.

The Callixtian Complex is a large area of nearly 90 acres of land, homes, school buildings, dormatories and the Catacombs, which cover about half the area, underfoot. People have been coming to this area to bury, tend to or pay homage to their dead since about 5 CE (or maybe in this case it is appropriate to use the term AD). The Christianisation of Rome, in 313 AD, led to a cult of pilgrimage. As there would be no more recently persecuted martyrs to connect and to inspire they needed to be regularly reminded. The Pope of the time, St. Zephyrinus, entrusted the administration of these particular Catacombs to Callixtus, a decon. He had to provide a tomb for every Christian, the poor and slaves, so that each would have a worthy burial. On Zephyrinus' death, Callixtus was elected pope. He enlarged the Catacombs, which became the official cemetery of the Church of Rome.

The most ancient parts of the Catacombs of St.Callixtus include the 'Crypts of Lucina', the 'Area of the Popes' and the 'Tomb of St. Cecilia'. It is thought that maybe even the bodies of Saints Peter and Paul may have been bought here for safe keeping during the 3rd century.

Our guide was an energetic nun dressed in modern civies, her only tell a simple cross around her neck and a cross pin on her collar. She led us down a box lined garden path and into a chapel where we sat on low wooden benches. Using a set of large painted panels that slid in and out of a frame she gave quite an entertaining historical summary and background to the symbols we could already see in the marble pieces mounted in the chapel walls- which she pointed out were the real deal. In fact everything that we were about to see in the underground chambers and corridors is as it was, except for the lack of bodies which is largely due to looting by relic mongers rather than more sinister reasons. I had sat next to B in an effort to relay as many of the main points as possible which was taking significant concentration as her thick Italian accented English kept getting swallowed by the dense walls but I think we did okay. I was glad I had read up beforehand.

The Catacombs of St. Callixtus are the most important and imposing of the catacombs of Rome. They are considered by Christians, historians and anthropologists alike as 'the cradle of Christianity', 'the Archives of the primitive Church' because of the way they illustrate the usage and customs of the early Christians, their religious beliefs, the way they were expressed and the history of martyrdom. They provide an intriguing way of studying early Christian symbols too. Their secret language.

The Good Shepherd, carrying a sheep, represents Jesus waiting to guide his followers to heaven, the sheep is the saved soul. The fish, representing both Jesus and his disciples, taken from the biblical reference 'I will make you fishers of men' in the book of Matthew and because the first letters of Jesus Christ, Son of God and Saviour spelled 'fish' in Greek. The dove, representing the soul, can be seen quenching its thirst (worshipping), with an olive branch (resting ), or happily perched (arrived in paradise). Peacocks embodied immortality. The anchor, used to disguise a cross, was already a symbol of hope so it seemed appropriate. A simple banana shaped boat with a hoisted sail, a symbol of safe passage in a turbulent world, could also hide a cross. The capital letter M signified the tomb of a martyr and the 'chi-rho' symbol, the first two letters of Christ in Greek XP making a kind of star.


The entrance steps lead straight to the second level past more pieces of engraved sealing stones, epitaphs and a statue of the Good Shepherd on the landing. The enscriptions on the epitaphal stones give a 'birth day' rather than a death date as the belief was they would be reborn 'into the light', 'Cuius dies inluxit'. In fact I think I remember our guide saying that the word 'Catacomb' means bed, as they like to think of their loved ones just falling asleep and waking in heaven rather than dying. There is even pilgrim grafitti scratched on the wall.

The tunnels are more than tall enough to walk comfortably through and wide enough to pass. There are hollows in the walls sized to fit the occupier, usually poor and unable to afford a room, the most poignant are child or even baby sized.

The first stop, the Crypt of the Popes which although now empty, once held 9 Popes and 8 Bishops of the 3rd century. Original inscriptions, broken and now incomplete, are still on the wall indicate their names and titles in Greek and symbols. There is also a large plaque with parts of a poem by Damasus. Further down the cool packed dirt corridor is the Crypt of Saint Cecilia, another notable martyr, the patron saint of muscians and church music, who died a terrible long drawn out death after her brother and husband were killed by Turcius Almachius. They apparently tried to kill her by smothering her with steam and when that didn't work somehow tried and failed to cut her head off- how thats even possible I don't know! She was holding out to receive the Last Rights. Her body was later found, where she finally succombed, three fingers outstretched on one hand and one on the other, signifying her eternal belief in the Holy Trinity. In her tomb now lies a white marble statue in the position she was discovered complete with sword cuts to the neck!

The rest of the tour took us through rooms which once held families in a similar way to how a cemetery plot can be reserved for generations now. There are regular shaped holes like the drawers have been pulled out and left and sometimes still artifacts such as pots and utensils. There was often a table in the room and space enough for the remaining family members to hold services and ritual feasts. Some of the rooms still have parts of frescos and mosaics depicting Baptism, the Eucharist and other biblical scenes and stories.

What we saw was but a small part of the huge underground burial chamber. Walking through the chambers among the tombs of so many faithful in the footsteps that so many have walked before really does leave an impression on you. It took incredible effort and sacrifice against sometimes, it must have seemed, insurmountable odds, especially during the persecution, to hold on so tight to their faith to a God they couldn't see and it must have seemed, at times, had completely forsaken them. Our guide led us into one of the last family tombs and asked permission to say a simple prayer which, considering the company we were in, seemed appropriate, and then we climbed the steps back out into the sunlight.

As the swarming hollow of a hive, the whole Basillica- Alive!- Browning

Following the steady line of people, like a trail of bread crumbs leading to the altar after Sunday mass, we skirted the wall that surrounds the Vatican grounds, through some lofty arches and into Saint Peter's Square. I'm not sure why, because it happens every time, but I was surprised at how affected I felt. I'm not a particularly religious person in the sense that I don't believe in any one thing or follow any one organised religion and although I am certainly not Catholic, I am the daughter of a liberal theologian and Presbyterian minister who has been a teacher of World Religion at tertiary institutions since I was born. Religious performance, ritual and practice, in it's many forms and guises is, to me, an expression of culture, of people and of being. It's human nature, a primal instinct. People have been doing it for as long as we have existed, in fact the further back you go the more superstitious we become. Saint Peter's Square and the Basillica represent the symbolic mother lode of, at the very least, the Catholic church if not Christendom as a whole. The mighty and majestic basillica is the largest church building in the world able to hold 60 000 people within her belly. As what must surely amount to a magnanimous act of piety and devotion as great as the ancient Egyptian temples or the temples of Angkor Wat, Saint Peter's was built entirely by hand.



The square that lies before the basillica was designed, by Bernini, to give the greatest number of people a decent view of the Pope as he gives his blessing, from either the middle of the façade of the church or from a window in the Vatican Palaceby. Bernini, a deeply religious man, had to contend with an already placed obelisk, a large fountain off to one side and an irregularly shaped open area. He solved the balance problem by placing a matching fountain on the opposite side of the Egyptian obelisk and by dividing the entire area in two. The space immediately in front of the church is trapezoidal, narrowing as it moves out into the square making the facade of the church seem even bigger than it already is. The main area of the piazza is a huge ellipsis around the 360 ton obelisk at the centre. It slopes slightly downwards towards the monument. The whole area is boardered by a simple double pillared colonade, wide enough to accommodate a horse and carriage, that alledgedly cost more than a million dollars. That's a huge amount in the mid 1500s. It stretches around the piazza, save a bit opposite the church that gives a view all the way down the road to the River Tiber, symbolically gathering worshippers into it's fold.



Standing motionless on top of the colonades and church facade are 140 figures of saints keeping a watchful eye on the millions of people from all over the world who come into the busy square every year. The figures weren't made by one artist but by many over a period of 41 years. And in front of the church raised on a plinth stands Saint Peter himself.



Beside the Obelisk was a huge traditionally lit christmas tree and a platform with a presepi, a nativity scene. The tradition of the nativity scene is an Italian one. St Francis of Assisi is credited with staging the first one in a cave in Greccio using live subjects in 1223. A hundred years later nearly every church in Italy had it's own although they were already beginning to substitute static scenes. Living scenes are still popular in some parts of Italy including in Assisi, where it all began. I had read that, in Italy, the baby Jesus was left out of the crib until Christmas morning but all the ones we saw in Venice, before Christmas, had an occupied manger. The Jesus used seems to be the same, traditional but not very probable, ceramic bub. A blonde, blue eyed, curly haired, naked cherub lying on a white blanket, a little grey 'nappy' preserving his modesty, a kind of condoling look on his face and wee arms in the palm up, out stretched 'let us pray' (or maybe just 'pick me up?') pose. His parents, however, although they still have soft oval symetrical faces, at least have the dark hair and brown eyes that are more historically and culturally accurate.

To get into the basillica we joined the 5 or 6 queues of people being fed through the 4 security machines in a pretty much constantly moving stream. Once cleared we walked past the door guarded by Alice in Wonderland extras- or Swiss guards depending on who you ask- that leads to the Perfecture of the Papal Household, where you can get a free ticket for a private audience with Pope Benedict although you have to do it at least a week ahead of time, and up the steps and through the doors into the long portico.

Built on what was once a pagan cemetery, the remains of which can still be found beneath the impressive building, the basillica rises from the exact spot where the then Apostle Peter was crucified, in 67CE, in a spectacle that included battles between slaves, gladiators and beasts in what was known, appropriately by the sounds of it, as 'Nero's Circus'. Peter's body lies under the Altar of Confession (in the middle of the picture)...



...which was hewn from a single block of marble and like most early Christian altars faces east directly under Michelangelo's, dome.


The canopy, a baldacchino, is again Bernini. In his typically ephemeral style the bronze supporting columns are heavily detailed with olive and bay leaf branches, bees, Saint Peter's keys and scrolls, angels and floral festoons and then crowned with a drapping effect like wind blown cloth.

The Main Tribune, or apse, which holds the Cathedra Petri, St Peter's Throne, is also a Bernini.



Above, on the golden background of the frieze, is the Latin inscription:
'O Pastor Ecclesiae, tu omnes Christi pascis agnos et oves' -O pastor of the Church, you feed all Christ's lambs and sheep.
On the right is the same in Greek.
The ornate chair, it is said, is the same one in which Saint Peter sat to teach. The dove just visable in the centre of the golden halo represents the Holy Spirit which like the chair has survived revolutions and persecutions and so symbolizes the perpetual continuity of the Christian doctrine and its promise of infallibility. It is certainly not subtle, the shining crown visible from the moment you walk into the nave of the church.

Other notable works in the churches many little chapel niches include Michelangelo's Pieta.

He carved this depicition of the Virgin Mary holding her dying son, when he was only 24. It is the only piece he ever signed and he is said to have regreted his 'act of arrogance' for the rest of his life. 'Pieta' means pity in Italian which, I think, doesn't acknowledge the strength in Mary's face. The overall picture is one of sorrow, a mother's personal sorrow, as she cradles her grown son like a helpless baby, but Mary's expression is one of acceptance rather than despair.


The Altar of Our Lady Succor is the only icon (because it is painted on wood) in the basillica. It is embellished with 'the rarest' alabaster and decorated with precious stones. Underneath lie the remains of Saint Gregory of Nazianzus.



Over one of the doors near the back of the church is this little beauty, the Monument to Alexander VII- the Pope who commissioned the colonaded courtyard. Crafted by Bernini ,who was nearly 80 at the time, at first glance it looks like many of the other white marble statue compositions but look closer...can you see the skeleton with his feet hanging over the door? The Pontiff, who is out of the picture on the top of the work is kneeling and absorbed in prayer, not at all disturbed by the sudden appearance of Death, the skelton, who is brandishing an hour-glass to indicate that time has passed. The four statues around the base represent the virtues practiced by the Pontiff: Charity, with a child in her arms, Truth, with a foot on a map of the world, Prudence and Justice.


This ancient bronze of Saint Peter has had it's toes worn to indistinction by the hands of centuries of pilgrims.



It was getting late and entry to the cupola, the dome on the roof of the basillica, closes earlier in winter so we followed the signs to the end of the thick queue. This was to be the first and one of the only slow moving lines we experienced during our whole time in Italy and it moved so painfully slow we really didn't think we would be let in. One tiny little window was serving both those who wanted a ticket to the lift and those who were going to do the pilgrimage up the 400+ stairs to the top. If you buy an only slightly more expensive lift ticket you still have to climb about half the stairs so we thought we may as well do the whole pilgrimage. The sign at the bottom cautioned those who were claustrophobic and those with lung or heart problems so I was expecting much worse than the wide half steps to the first level where we walked across the flat roof between uplit domes just above the front of the church.



The second set of steps left the climber with a bit less room width wise but there was still room to pass and to turn around.


They take you to a very special spot though- the inside of the dome- where there is a skinny completely caged walkway around the inside edge.


The view down into the church nave is breathtaking and being so close to age old mosaics memorable...


...but it is where you go next that will really blow your mind.


The staircase corridor is just wide enough for one, no going back, no stopping and absolutely no passing (the exit is a separate but almost identical staircase)and it seemed to get even more narrow as we climbed. To make things even more adventurous (or comical depending on how you look at it)they seem to lean outwards which is just as well when they disappear into nothing more than a metal spiral with room for no hand rail on either side suitable only for anorexics with a death wish. There is, however, no going back- remember I said you can't turn around- a wall on one side with which to hug with both hands and a thick rope dangling down the middle should you need extra reassurance.


The view from the lantern at the very, very top is, quite frankly, utterly worth the effort and the heart palpitations.


Now there's a couple of people you don't see that often on this blog!


Little did we realise that climbing steep and precarious staircases to the top of some of Italy's monuments was going to be remembered as a main characteristic of this holiday.

Psst ....Italy is obsessed with nutella

I swear I have never seen Nutella jars as big as the jars we saw in Italy. I didn't even know they came house sized! Just as well probably...


(from here)

The frequency of Nutella sightings was not something I was expecting either. Italians it seems eat Nutella with...well...with just about anything. If it said chocolate it probably meant Nutella, something B discovered to his chagrin when ordering what turned out to be a Nutella and Nutella and cream gelato one afternoon. It seems Italy just can't get enough of the stuff so it wasnt surprising to find out it is actually as Italian as the ice cream cone, the espresso machine and the human torpedo . Created in the 1940's by Pietro Ferrero, who also flogs those little gold wrapped chocolatey nuggets of the best part of a dollar. Born out of necessity during World War II, when there was a chronic chocolate shortage, Ferrero, looking for a suitable dilutant, mixed chocolate and hazelnut butter and sold the result as a block. In 1951he began selling a spreadable variant he called 'supercrema gianduja' and the version was born. The name Nutella wasn't adopted until 1964. Incidently 'gianduja', a mixture of chocolate and 30% hazelnut paste, was invented in Turin in 1852.

The family Ferrero has done rather well out of the chocolate hazelnut combination. Last year Forbes voted 82 year old Michele Ferrero, who currently runs the business, the richest man in Italy with a, more than, 9 billion dollar worth.

What economic downturn?

Four years ago Shelley and Ms Adventures in Italy proclaimed February 5th to be world Nutella Day.

If you hack the Vatican server, have you tampered in God's domain?- Aaron Allston

Rome only has seven hills. The exit to Palatine Hill sits about three quarters of the way up Capitoline Hill. At the top sits a piazza, surrounded by Renassiance buildings housing the Capitoline Museums, designed by an elderly Michelangelo who died before it was realised. The Piazza del Campidoglio is a perfectly proportioned square on a trapezoid shaped site (something which caused it's designer endless headaches) with the 2nd century bronze equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in the center. Actually it's a replica swapped for the real thing in 1997, a little more worse for wear now thanks to modern air pollution, which is safely inside. The fact it survived at all is considered pretty remarkable as Aurelius was a pagan. It is thought it's resemblance to Constantine, a Christian, was probably what saved it. Legend says that when the original statues gold patina returns, it will herald the end of the world.



Commissioned by Pope Paul III, the artist turned the orientation of the square away from the Forum, to face Saint Peter's and the Vatican, to symbolise Rome's Christian allegiance.


The remains of the infamous, 6th century BCE, Temple of Jupiter was discovered, during a restoration by Mussolini on the site, controversally exposing artifacts such as 16th century tombs of children.


The Statue of the Nile (Tiber is there too), discovered on Quirinal Hill, and placed here, at the bottom of the staircase, just as Michelangelo had envisioned.



The two imposing figures at the top of the stairs, designed with a gentle incline so as to accommodate carriages, are Castor and Pollux. Twins who were born of different fathers the significance of which was realised when Castor died leaving Pollux, who was immortal, to plead to Zeus to share his immortality with his brother. Zeus complied and they became Gemini. The remains of the Temple of Castor and Pollux, you might remember, is down in the Forum. Again, these are not the original Michelangelo sculptures which are now in front of the President of Italy's palace on yet another, the highest, hill in Rome.



Inside the museum is the oldest public collection of art in the world. The vast majority of it is sculpture in marble, stone and bronze, busts, life size figures, colossal gods, mythological creatures, Popes and Heads of State -pun intended. Many of the male figures have amusingly and quite obviously had their maleness removed by the early Catholic church, to preserve the piety of the onlooker but of course it only succeeds in drawing ones attention to the fact- even at the ripe old age of 40!


Even though it was still raining this prodigious figure of Neptune really did deserve a closer look.


It was getting dark outside so we called it quits for the day and went instead in search of food.

Day two in Rome dawned dry. Trying to be relatively organised and avoid unnecessary queues we had purchased our tickets to the Vatican Museums online a couple of weeks before our departure. The lines at the Vatican are legendary and the 27th of December was no exception. Around the block and down the road they stretched almost as far as the eye could see. The line at the adjacent entrance for those with reservations, however, was completely non existent so for no extra cost we were able to stroll casually through the door to join the security shuffle.

It was a bit hard to know exactly where to go to get into where the museum actually started. In the end we just followed what seemed like the majority of people up the stairs through the 'Bookshop' where we were able to swipe our tickets on an entry turnstile and proclaim successful entry.

The Vatican Museums are physically huge and almost every surface is decorated. I took just as many pictures of the tile and mosiac floor as I did the beautiful ceiling frescos.

The advice was to work out which of the 14km of galleries you wanted to see and stick to the plan. There are supposedly signs at the beginning showing you where to go for the 2 hour, 3 hour and 5 hour self guided tours, thereby cutting out the bits you weren't as interested in, but we didn't see them. You can of course get yourself onto a guided tour, for a price, but with a Deafie in our midst we have found that often proves more trouble than it's worth as someone has to 'translate' all the time, so he gets some benefit out of it too, which means inevitably the 'translator' and B miss sometimes more than they 'hear'. You can also download audio tours off the internet or rent tours and headsets near the bookshop at the beginning.

Having finally found some direction we moved quickly through the first gallery of pilfered Egyptian antiquities, including more than one mummy, and into a set of rooms called 'Museo Pio-Clementino', a collection of ancient Greek and Roman sculpture that was the original core of the Vatican's collection. Gathered by the Popes Julius II, Leo X, Clement VII and Paul III during the fourteenth century but then lost, as the bulk of it was gifted away. What you see now was painstakingly recollected by the Popes Clement XIV and Pius VI.



There are ceiling frescoes and mosaic images on the floor to look at too.



Yep, that was on the floor under ours and the winter boots of literally thousands of others.

There are 11 named rooms, that make up the Pio-Clementino collection, all full of worldly treasures and significant eye candy. One, the Sala Rotonda, built by Simonetti, was based on the Pantheon which we planned to see the next day.



The tapestry room is impressive and not just for the huge carpet size hangings with the tiniest wool, silk and silver stitches I think have ever seen.



Every inch of the barrel shaped ceiling in the 120 meter Gallery of Maps is ornately decorated with incredible delicate paintings, gold gilded embellishments and pale naked ladies.



The maps, commissioned in the late 1500s by Pope Gregory XIII, are incredibly detailed and, considering they were painted well before GPS, amazingly accurate.



A priceless collection of early printed books and manuscripts are not the only extraordinary things in the Vatican library. Every surface is covered with scenes of early religious and Papal life.



Again remembering to look both up



...and down so nothing is missed.



You could certainly spend an entire day in the museum except feet eventually get tired on the hard tile floor, eyes get sore and brains get so full everything begins to look similar. I am an art and a religion buff and after three hours or so I was fatigued and we still hadn't found the famous Sistine chapel although we were following the signs swept along in the river of humanity that washes the Vatican halls and galleries everyday.



And then we were there.

The Cappella Sistina. Now I've really run dry of superlatives.

Compared to what we had already seen of the Vatican's treasures the chapel seemed more quiet, less busy, despite the intermittent barked instructions from the guards. 'No photos please!', 'Move down please', 'SSSHHHH!!' Even surrounded by bent necks and furtively captured pictures it was possible to feel reverence for the work, for the artist, for the place.

That Michelangelo, a sculpter not a painter, composed the legendary work under duress is astounding considering how intricate the illustration is and how time consuming the art of fresco is. Because Frescos are painted on wet plaster a new section of plaster had to be laid fresh each day. He used a broad wash technique, applying colour to larger areas of the wet plaster returning after the section had dried a bit to add detail and outlines. The height of the ceiling does nothing to diminish the impact and clarity of the 'Last Judgement'. We stood and gazed and we resisted....










....which is why I dont have any photos to show you....

After the Sistine Chapel it was hard not to feel finished. We made our way through the rest of the galleries and on the to the Vatican Post Office...



...where we bought and wrote a postcard to Grammy and Pop and to Nana then exited using the spectacular spiral staircase designed, by Giuseppe Momo, in 1932. The spiral double helix, like the DNA, suggests life.

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the train before. ~G.K. Chesterton

Travelling by train in Italy was very easy. We bought ‘ticketless’ tickets online using the Trenitalia site but also used the machines at the station which you could change to English, took both cash and credit cards and out tickets with reserved seat numbers. Apparently not all credit cards work on the site but we had no problems with both our New Zealand and our Cambodian cards. We even changed a departure time, online from the airport in Zurich, which you are able to do once for each trip without incurring any more cost.


Most of the trains we caught either originated or terminated, or both, at the destinations we were departing from or travelling to but when they didn’t they don’t stop for long so it pays to be ready and move quickly especially when you have a couple of layers, hat, scarf, gloves and packs to don! All the seats we had came with electrical plugs, should you have your computer with you, and either a tray table, or in the case of four seats facing each other, a shared skinny table between the seats. There didn’t seem to be much difference between 1st and 2nd class seats although maybe the 1st class toilets were a bit bigger but no one would have stopped you from walking the length of the train to use the bathroom in 1st class if you’d wanted to.


Most of the journeys we took were only a few hours long and during the day but we chose to travel by sleeper train from Brindisi to Milan as it was easier and more reliable than flying Alitalia, which is notorious for delays and cancellations, and it meant we saved the cost of a nights’ accommodation. It turned out to be quite a cosy, comfortable experience even with the four of us bunked up and down in one cabin though with all the rocking I don’t think I did much more than doze all night. The train originated at Lecce about 30 minutes drive from Brindisi and pulled in at the station in Brindisi at 10-30pm for about 2 minutes to let 15 people including four of us on. We had hedged our bets and were standing in the middle of the platform, still wearing jackets and packs, and had to trot to nearly the end to find our carriage. B had just lifted his foot from the last step into the train when we felt the cars begin to move. The cabins, which were as warm as a just toasted crumpet, were already set up as bunks with a doubled over sheet and small square pillow on each and a, still surprisingly clean in the morning, shared toilet cubicle similar to an airplane bathroom at either end of each carriage.


Once at our destination we used the bus or tram or in Pisa just walked. We found it easier to buy biglietto, tickets, from the tabbacci- usually a newsagent- for a euro each for the busses and trams but used the machines for metro and vaporetto tickets. We bought the Roma Pass in Rome which, along with free entry to three of the first attractions you see and discounts for most others, came with three days unlimited travel on all public transport.


There is a big thing about remembering to validate tickets on all the forums and information websites I used for our travel research. You do still have to for the busses and trams, there are yellow boxes at either end and in the middle of the vehicle, but metro ticket validation is now a part of the automatic entry barriers on the way down to the platform. You do still need to validate for a long haul national train if you don’t have reserved seats or if you have changed your booking –again the yellow boxes are at the end of the platforms- but are still using the original tickets but not if you have a ‘ticketless’ booking, which we had printed out, but you can just quote the booking number to the conductor or even show him an email or texted copy which we saw people do too.


The first train we took was from Milan Centrale to Venezia Santa Lucia, a three and a half hour ride in the dark, too tired to be that interested in what was out the window but nervous enough not to allow ourselves to fall asleep completely. The trip on Christmas day from Venice to Roma was very different. Again we sat in four seats facing each other and spent the time reading, talking and watching the Italian countryside pass by. The next trip from Rome to Brindisi was the longest daytime trip we took lasting about 5 hours. We sat airplane style in twos across the centre aisle. B had his computer so, after swapping seats with M and I as his electrical plug didn't work, he and his father spent much of the trip watching 'Bad Lieutenant' which J said was indeed very bad! I spent a lot of time scenery gazing. The Italian countryside reminded me a lot of parts New Zealand; lush green farm land, rapid filled streams, vineyards and olive groves. The farmhouses are quite different, however, with stone or adobe like buildings in regular square or rectangular shapes with tiny dark windows as opposed to New Zealands obsession with the sprawlling wooden villa with huge windows and a wrapped veranda. The biggest difference, I thought, was the distinct absence of farm animals. We saw no more than a handfull of cows, goats, horses and sheep in the whole time we were in Italy and the sheep were in a field at the Catacombs!


The average sized farm in New Zealand is about 536 acres (215ha)out of a total land mass of 103 738 square miles. The average size of an Italian farm is much smaller at just 6.5ha out of a similar total land size of 116 346 square miles. New Zealand farms have to be bigger to be profitable as our government does not provide subsidies like Italian farmers get. It used to be said that there were 20 sheep for every New Zealander in New Zealand, now the number is more like 14 but it still makes for a lot of sheep. Add to that 1 dairy and 1 beef cow, 3 cartons of exported apples and pears, 40 trays of kiwifruit and even 13 litres of wine produced per year per person in Aotearoa and all from just 268 680 km² or 103 738 sq miles. Incidently there are 4 million 350 thousand odd people in New Zealand. Italy has a population of just over 58 million and according to this site and only 11 million sheep and 7 million beef cattle. It is, however, the second largest producer of wine in the world and ranks right up there in Olive oil production too. The vast majority of the land between Naples and the coast, it would appear from the window of our high speed train, is wine and olive orchards and often both together.

The land of the boot has a long long history in viticulture. The Etruscans and Greeks were producing Italian wine in the country long before the Romans began in the 2nd C BCE. Today grapes are grown in nearly every region in Italy with more than 1 million orchards under cultivation. We managed to sample quite a few bottles of both red and white and much of it we found fairly palatable (that was quite hard for a proud kiwi to say) even a bottle we bought for less than 2 euro!