Rome. Closed For Business.

This mornings news was that Australians returning from Italy must self isolate at home for 14 days. Andrew rang me for another interview on the ABC and I expressed that much of the information coming through is contradictory and changing minute by minute. I guess this is a function of the whole Covid19 situation coming so quickly and taking everyone by surprise so officials are essentially flying by the seat of their pants and making decisions as they go. For example it is not clear what happens for us once we get back to Australia. We were booked to travel home to Albany by bus but would we be allowed to do that? It wasn't clear.

We made our way to the station where we caught the first available train to Rome. At the station we weren't directly asked our reasons for travel but one of several policemen on the platform came over, ostensibly to tell me to keep my large, gold covered watch hidden at the Rome station because the wicked pickpockets there would have it off in a flash. I reassured him that the watch is probably only worth a few euro brand new so any pickpocket managing to take it was wasting their time. I suspect this chat was as much his polite, non-intrusive way of establishing that we were tourists heading for home, as a genuine concern for my watch's welfare. The police seem to be as perplexed as anyone by the developing situation.

At a cafe having breakfast before the train, we chatted with a Brisbane couple who had had a couple of accommodation disasters as an apparent result of the Covid19 crisis. Having places closed for booking due to concerns re the situation and turning up at other places to find them overbooked. Fortunately we haven't had any such issues. On the train we also chatted, at a good metre distance with a couple of Australian ladies who were heading to Rome and home, the same as us. They had spent over an hour the previous night on the phone to Qantas trying to rebook their online booked flights. We planned to wait until we successfully reached Rome before trying to get our travel agent to rebook our flight. The good news was that according to the internet, airlines were doing rebookings at no charge due to the crisis.

The train trip to Rome only took a couple of hours, through broad plains of acres of shiny plastic grow houses. The oranges had declined in favour of stone fruit. Edward saw interminable lines of poplars and elms along the roads his carriage traveled. While some of the poplars are still there, there are also many lines of eucalypts as windbreaks and shade.

The towns still seem to favour the hills which must lead to a lot of steep hills to walk up, less of a problem I suppose in this era of cars and motor bikes. I guess Italians have had several thousand years of worrying about who is going to invade next, so their desire to see who is coming is understandable. And even in these more peaceful times old habits die hard.

Once again a trip that took us a few hours took Edward took Edward 4 days. For breakfast one day, he ordered a beef-steak for five o'clock tomorrow morning. A French fellow traveler found this highly unusual. So astounding did this carnivorous inclination of mine seem to appear to our friend's Gallic prejudices, that during the rest of the evening he could not subdue his astonishment, but continued occasionally to mutter "Ah mon Dieu! Un bifteck a cinq heures du matin."

As usual there were no ticket checks on the train. The PA was now telling us all travelers must carry forms outlining their reason for travel but there was no sign of such forms, let alone anyone asking to see them. As we got close to Rome the farms appeared to be larger and more prosperous with some having large fields of large round hay bales and decent sized flocks of sheep. Rome itself is surprisingly small geographically because it didn't seem far from the suburban edge until we got to the central station.

You won't see the Trevi Fountain this quiet for a long time. 

We walked up to our apartment at Via Boschetto 114 which we had deliberately chosen for it's central location. As everything is rapidly closing down we decided to take a walk to some of the nearby tourist attractions. We went first to the Trevi Fountain which was without it's usual crowds although there were still several dozen tourists in the forecourt. There were also about half a dozen police of assorted kinds and while we were there, one who had Polizia on his hi-vis vest, but looked more like a Council Ranger, started to shout "go back to your hotels-no one is supposed to be out". The tourists all looked at their shoes and shuffled their feet and the other police did likewise but no-one seemed to be in a hurry to go.

We decided to go but made sure our route back to our hotel took us past the Pantheon, the Forum and the Coliseum. All imposing structures but hard to comment on from a quick stroll past. For Edward the Coliseum is grand, far surpassing all ideas of it gained from descriptions or engravings. The beautiful Column of Trajan, and Constantine's Triumphal  Arch also fill one with admiration and I couldn't put it any better.

Locking down in style. 

On our way we passed an Italian film crew, filming two ladies waving Italian Italian flags and shouting angrily. With no Italian we couldn't tell whether they were protesting the curtailing of their liberty by the shutdown, or cursing foreign visitors by bringing this plague upon them. We hurried on by in case it were the latter. We stopped off at a local supermarket where we joined an orderly queue at metre intervals down the street to buy supplies for the next few days including some bubbles and limoncello. Live fast-die pretty. That's our motto