We set off from my uncle Hew’s place, not excessively early, but early enough. Our eventual destination this day was Birmingham. All the English people I spoke to wanted to know why on Earth we’d want to go to such a hell-hole, but as it turned out, Birmingham’s reputation for being grey and very nasty is unfounded. At least, it’s not very nasty.

But more of that later. We trudged to the station, and caught the train into London Victoria, followed by a tube ride on the aptly named Circle Line to Paddington Station to catch a train to Oxford. Why Oxford? Well, apart from the fact that it sounded like a delightful place to do a bit of sightseeing, it was also because it’s roughly on the border of the area covered by the BritRail SouthEast passes that we had in our possession. We’d bought them when we’d thought we’d be doing a lot more rail travel than we actually ended up doing. So we thought we’d better use them at least a bit.

We’d actually tried to get the passes stamped at South Croydon. The bloke there had no idea what they were, and we waited until reaching Paddington to do it. A tip when at Paddington: there’s a really long, slow queue for people booking tickets in advance. And there’s a very short quick queue for people travelling that day. After a 5 minute wait, I looked around and found the latter, which proved to be suitable for my pass-stamping purposes.

The Thames Turbo train zoomed out of Paddington, and we got to Oxford around an hour later. I’d had the crazy idea of putting the rather heavy backpack into the left luggage lockers, but in a country in fear of IRA bombs, wouldn’t you know it, they were closed. So we went for a walk around Oxford, the type of walk that you generally take when you’ve got a big heavy backpack on your you-know-what, a four year old whose saying of the week is "I’m too tired of walking" and a sleepy toddler in a stroller: a short and slow walk, but not too slow.

Oxford reminded me of Cambridge, because it looked almost the same. Narrow streets, bicycles, canals, punts, and picturesque spots just about everywhere you turned. We stopped at a pub and enjoyed some fish’n'chips’n'Guinness, which was a mighty fine thing, even when the rain started. After a quick look around the shops, a listen to some extremely skilful buskers, and a look at some of the local constabulary dealing with a drunk, we headed back to the station and caught a train on to Birmingham.

Birmingham is apparently known as "Brum" by the locals. A curious shortening, it sounds like they just can’t be bothered pronouncing it in full, in much the same way that people in Melbourne call the Melbourne Cricket Ground not the MCG, but simply "The ‘G".

It was mid-afternoon by the time we rolled into Brum New Street, stumbled out of the station into a cab and headed for our B&B, a little place going by the name of "The Kennedy" in Edgbaston, a place I’d only ever heard of before in relation to cricket.

I’d booked the B&B a couple of weeks before after having found it on the very marvvy British Tourist Authority web site. The bloke on the phone had sounded pretty cheerful, and hadn’t even asked for my name, a deposit, a letter of confirmation, or even a return phone number where we could be contacted. He was obviously very trusting.

The place looked a bit dishevelled from the outside, but it was very nice inside, very clean and tidy, and the manager bloke was very nice in person, too, even though he reminded us somewhat of Basil Fawlty. He gave us a little map of the area, and pointed out where the shops and things were, and we wandered off down the road to find them. We settled on a pizza shop, and ordered a pizza to take away, because it was just about time for my friend Ian to meet us, but he was expecting us back at the B&B.

We trotted back with the two pizzas (they threw in a second one for free), found Ian and sat on the wall outside the B&B, chatting with him and munching happily on pizza. Ian foolishly volunteered to be our tour guide for the next day (at least we knew he was qualified to do it - that’s how he makes a living) and before saying goodnight, we agreed to meet up bright and early(ish) the next morning for a look around the sights of Brum.

Just as we were getting used to Roma, it was time to move on to pastures new. We packed everything, somehow, back into our bags, disposing of whatever stuff we thought was surplus to requirements (those two huge books all about the pasta museum, for a start) and set off for the station.

On the way I took what would be the last chance in a while to get a picture of an "SPQR" drain cover. I remember as a kid reading The Eagle Of The Ninth, and wondering what SPQR stood for. And now I think it’s so damn cool that 2000 years later they still use the same initials for the government of Roma.

Termini station seemed a tad more chaotic than usual, but we found our coffee-company-sponsored airport train, and lumbered aboard. It was standing room only, and given the service is only hourly and earns the FS (Italian Railways) about 14,000 lira for every man woman and child aboard, I bet it’s a pretty good money spinner.

A friendly and knowledgeable American on the train helped dispel the clich� we’d seen a little too much of in the previous few days - that of hordes of elderly Americans wandering around Roma, loudly looking for a steak house to stuff themselves in.

Despite the train leaving late we made it to the airport in good time, and sauntered over to the terminal, echoing those classic old Telly Savalas promotional films for UK cities that he’d obviously never been to, by declaring "So long Rome, you’re my kind of town!".

L was to tell me something rather unnerving a little later: that while queuing for check-in, she had noticed the laser target of a police sniper’s machine gun cross her chest. I can tell you now, that would have absolutely scared the shit out of me.

The plane ride was a noisy (well, until Jeremy fell asleep) two-and-a-bit hour jaunt to Heathrow. We found our luggage, zipped through Immigration and Customs, then headed for the tube station.

I tried to negotiate with the booking office man for a family Travelcard, which would have been slightly cheaper than two adult Travelcards, but because the kids are both under five and would travel free anyway, he wouldn’t sell us one. Hmmm. Ah well, it was only about 10p difference.

So we rode the tube into London, amused for a while by the driver’s constant reminders to mind the gap (the gap?! You call that a gap!?) and to not give money to beggars. This was followed by a train ride (which is, of course, a completely different thing) to East Croydon, where we climbed into one of those ol’ London black cabs and I quoted my uncle’s address in South Croydon, giving away no clues, just to put his "knowledge" to the test. The driver didn’t come through with flying colours.

"Ahh, now, I know I’ve been there before, but…", he hinted.

"Off Haling Park Road."

"Oh, right, of course. Thanks very much", he replied, sounding as if he hoped I wouldn’t tell anybody at all that he’d ever needed to ask.

Uncle Hew arrived from work in his tiny VW Polo just as we got there. He was, as ever, most hospitable, setting up the rather cosy spare room, which we fitted ourselves and our luggage into with a shoehorn. Then we ate, drank and made moderate merriment until it was time for bed.

Today, we got religion, and we got robbed. Well, almost. Well, okay, not even almost. But we did visit Il Vaticano (The Vatican), and we did have a close encounter with a pickpocket.

You can hardly go to Roma without visiting the Vatican, so we caught the Metro to the brand spanking new Cipro/Musei Vaticani station, supposedly slap bang next to the Vatican. But you still have to haul yourself up a bunch of stairs, along a street, up loads and loads of more stairs, along another street with chaotic renovations all over the place… come to think of it, I wonder if we did get off at the right station.

And then, we saw the queue. The queue to get into the Vatican Museums was phenomenal, and growing by the second. We looked at the queue. We saw how slowly it was moving. We looked at the kids, and considered how overjoyed they would be to stand in a queue for ages so that we could stumble around in museums for hours looking at artefacts. Not very overjoyed at all, actually.

Heck, we’re not even Christians. So we decided to give the museums miss, and look for the part of the Vatican which involved wide open spaces and no queues. And we found it: Piazza San Pietro (St Peter’s Square). It’s huge and impressive, and even though there were hundreds and hundreds of tourists around, it wasn’t crowded. It’s not technically speaking, square, but then, most squares aren’t.

Having read in the guidebook that you might as well just throw your postcards in the bin as mail them at an Italian post office (is this true - would any genuine Italians care to elucidate?) we mailed them at the Vatican Post Office. Then after gazing around the Square again, we wandered off down the equally impressive Via della Conciliazione, in search of lunch.

We crossed over the river and found some lunch, which we munched on, seated on the steps of Chiesa di San Giovanni dei Fiorentini (yet another church), while we watched the people and cars and buses of Roma go by. After that we walked back towards the Vatican, found some thoroughly delicious and surprisingly quite decently priced gelato, as well as an Italian ad for "Austin Powers - La Spia Checi Provava". Then we got back on the Metro at Ottaviano.

I spotted the man almost immediately. He got on the train at the door opposite to where we were sitting. He carried a coat over his arm, even though it was a hot and sticky day, the kind of day when nobody in their right mind would take a coat. He stood right next to a man standing in the doorway, even though the train wasn’t crowded. Their faces just centimetres apart, he stared at the man intently. I watched as from somewhere underneath the coat, a hand began to move forward. Its fingers open, slowly moving towards the second man’s jacket.

Then the hand stopped and withdrew. Maybe he thought he’d been rumbled. Maybe he realised how empty the train was. He came over to the door next to where we were sitting, and looked around the carriage, eyeing up prospective victims. Apparently there weren’t any on board, and instead he felt into one of his pockets and pulled out a camera. Just a small one, and he rolled it over in his hands, looking at the various buttons. He pointed it at the ground, pressed a button and the flash went off. Someone had obviously been relieved of their camera earlier in the day.

I hissed at L to keep an eye on her wallet, and kept a close eye on the man until we all got off at Termini, making sure that we were behind him in the crowd.

Nothing else nearly so exciting happened for the rest of the day, though we did get to watch Bananas In Pyjamas dubbed into Italian, which was pretty amusing.

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Another glorious day in Roma (Rome), and our first activity of the day was to head back to Pincio, a little corner of the gigantic park Villa Borghese. We were going to meet L’s Italian teacher Giuseppe, who when he’s not in Melbourne teaching Aussies how to speak Italian, is in Roma being a Roman. We met him, and his two kids Johan and Alice and our two kids Isaac and Jeremy
got on with the serious business of playing "throw the soccer ball in the fountain", with each round being followed by "find an adult to get the soccer ball out of the fountain by making splashing waves and using a long hooky stick".

After a while we wandered around the park a bit and found a cafe. Foolishly failing to inspect the price list for consumption of coffee and ice-cream at their tables, we consumed coffee and ice-cream at their tables. When the bill for 48,000 lire (two coffees and 5 ice-creams; you do the maths) arrived, we were somewhat surprised. Alas, the prices were as published, and accepting the undeniable fact that most of us were gullible tourists, we grudgingly paid up. Then when one of the kids spilt some ice-cream on the tablecloth, Giuseppe made sure that enough other debris got left on the tablecloth that at least we’d have the satisfaction of knowing that they had to change it when we’d gone.

We paid up a far more decent 20,000 lire to hire a four-seater bike thingy for an hour, and explored some more of the park on that. Villa Borghese is quite a huge place, with some lovely gardens, a museum, amusements, and on this particular Sunday morning, lots of people out enjoying the sunshine.

Eventually we said goodbye to our Roman friends, and wandered back to the Scalinata di Spagna (the Spanish Steps), watching more of the crowds and basking in the sunlight. We re-filled our water bottles, then after consulting our guidebook decided to head out on the Metro to a mysterious Roman suburb called EUR. It stands for Esposizione Universale di Roma, and started life as Mussolini’s pet project. The guidebook said it has excellent versions of Fascist architecture, and certainly walking around it, the vast majority of big buildings were ugly and grey and reminded us of pictures of Eastern Europe.

Evidently there was generally not a lot going on there on a Sunday, and we were getting hungry. Finding the only open restaurant to be a very well patronised McDonalds, we opted for that, but vowing not to have any more Maccas for the rest of the trip, a promise that we very nearly kept. While I found us some seats and kept yet more begging gypsy children at bay, L, being the best versed in Italian, went off to order. Amusingly the order got a little muddled somewhere along the line and she came back with, along with the rest of the meal as intended, three large Cokes and three large Fries.

With everyone else happily settling into their meals, and with two large Cokes and a bewildering number of French fries allocated to me for disposal, as well as the burger I’d asked for, I did my best at consuming this mountain of Maccas, and when we eventually toddled off to explore EUR further, I waddled and burped my way up the street for quite some considerable time.

We saw a church spectacularly placed on top of the hill at one end, and some equally spectacular public buildings, which we tried and failed to determine the actual purpose of. We also found a Sunday market, along the lines of art and craft markets that you find open on Sundays in car parks all over the world.

There were more, slightly less reputable looking stalls down by the lake, with shonky-looking radios and CDs and jewellery on sale. We wandered around the lake, and found a kids’ combined playground and amusement arcade on the other side. Isaac romped on the swings and zipped down the slides, and Jeremy looked around at the coin-operated rides.

He chose his preferred ride and climbed aboard. I peered at the instructions to try and figure out how to make it go. "DUE GETTONI" said the notice. "Hmmmm…", I thought, "Due gettoni". Ah, token? I looked around, sure enough there was a token booth. Thinking I was incredibly clever, I went and exchanged 500 lire for a token. I put it into the token-shaped slot and… nothing. Tap the machine. No movement.

I went and found the attendant, and attempted to explain what had (or hadn’t) happened. He had a good chuckle and signalled that two tokens were in fact required. I bought another one and pondered slapping myself for not realising that "Due" means two. 

After wearing ourselves out in the rest of the park, we headed back to the Metro station and the hotel, followed by another killer dinner at the Trattoria around the corner, which if I can read my own writing from my notes, was called the Trattoria Cavoni. By the time we stumbled up the stairs to our room we were well and truly stuffed in more ways than one.

I did however manage to summon up enough energy to traipse out to an Internet caf� to catch up on e-mails and news from home (whoa… the election result wasn’t a Coalition landslide?!? Wow) before collapsing into bed.

After a quick stop-off by the Colloseo to exchange the el-cheapo t-shirt L had bought for one that didn’t have a hole in it (there’s a tip for any of you wandering off to Roma - check the merchandise before you walk away), we wandered up Via Del Circo Massimo, enjoying the impressive view of the remains of Circo Massimo (Circus Maximus). Actually there aren’t really remains as such, it’s just grass. There seemed to be swarms of nuns and priests of various orders walking in the sunshine through it, though to be honest, there are swarms of nuns and priests all over Roma.

We carried on towards the river, passing by the Temple Of Hercules. (Yes, for any philistines reading, the legend is older than the TV series.) Like much of Roma, it was wrapped up in scaffolding. Ah, but what scaffolding! This was classy Italian scaffolding, with lots of shiny brass. You just don’t get scaffolding that nice looking back at home.

Roma was undergoing lot of renovation, for next year, the 2000 Jubilee. As far as years go in the Christian world, they don’t get much bigger than this. Okay, so maybe it won’t technically be two thousand years since the birth of Christ, and maybe it won’t be the new millennium until 2001, but that’s not going to stop the Romans having a huge party next year.

We walked along the river Tevere (Tiber) for a bit. It’s quite wide and impressive, and full of little waterfalls, which explains why there were no boats using it. Some of the bridges looked positively ancient, and knowing this city, probably were.

There were more creepy machine-gun-equipped Carabinieri outside the synagogue in the Jewish quarter, and to us mild-mannered Australians, there are few things more likely to keep us scurrying along with our heads down.

We decided to treat ourselves with a classy lunch, a lunch of gastronomic sensations, a lunch that our tastebuds would be forever grateful for. Or failing that, McDonalds. We were curious to see what McDonalds could possibly offer to the locals in this land of such superb food, and also to have at least one meal that the kids would tuck into happily without the noises of apprehension that so often accompany meals of unfamiliar food.

And you know what, it wasn’t too bad at all. The burger was better than any Maccas burger I’d had before. They had nice salads, and best of all, THEY SERVE BEER. Is that an idea whose time has come or what? Australian McDonalds should take that on board - that would be an instant winner. "I’ll have a McLager please".

After chomping down our food and despatching yet another couple of begging gypsy children with a calm but determined "No", we carried on up Via Arenula, and eventually found the Pantheon. Of course, the Pantheon isn’t very old… What’s there now is actually the third version of the building, and it only dates back to about 120AD. It’s big and impressive, and the decorations inside are absolutely stunning.

Equally impressive are the obelisks scattered around Roma. I found one outside the parliament building, which was apparently brought back from Egypt in around 30BC. Either they take good care of them, or they’re extremely well built, because they all look brand new. I wonder what the hieroglyphics say - something like "Augustus was here" perhaps?

Off the beaten tourist track we found a kind of historic tourist anti-attraction - the very grassy and run-down mausoleum of Augustus Caesar, which also holds a few other emperors who shacked up with him in the afterlife. And nearby, cursing the sunshine, were a bunch of umbrella salesmen, just hanging around having a smoko, their bags full of umbrellas close to hand, ready to burst back onto the streets as soon as the clouds reappeared.

From there it was only a short walk to the Scalinata di Spagna (Spanish Steps), where we re-filled our water bottles. The proliferation of free public drinkable water in Roma to me is a sure sign of civilised society. We sat for a while by the fountain, then took the lift inside the Metro station up to the top of the steps (hey give me a break; we had Jeremy in the pram). We ate snacks and admired the view, then had a quick look at a bit of Villa Borghese, the bit called Pincio.

Then we headed back to the hotel, and after L had zipped out to do some much needed laundry, we headed out for dinner. We decided to reject the place we’d tried three times - the one that had delicious food but prices that increased wildly every time we’d gone there - like they were testing us tourists to see just how much they could charge us. "Oh, they came back. Bump the prices up 30% this time and see what happens."

Instead we found a lovely little Trattoria a couple of streets away. We sat down at some tables out on the street, and discovered we were sitting next to a girl from North Caulfield, which for those of you who aren’t familiar with the suburbs of Melbourne, is about five minutes drive from where we live in Glen Huntly.

Freaky. After she finished, our next set of table-neighbours turned out to be a couple more Aussie girls, one of whom had lived in Melbourne about three doors from where I grew up in St Kilda. Blimey it’s a small world. The food was delicious, the prices predictable and cheap, the service good, the company friendly, and we vowed to dine here every evening we had left in Roma.

Today, we had one simple mission: To cast a vote. The Victorian state election was on Saturday, and we’d decided that rather than vote at the airport on our way out of Australia, we’d explore Roma and find the local Australian Consulate and exercise our democratic rights there.

So we set out to find it, and sure enough on Via Alessandria, find it we did. At least, we found the Australian Embassy, and we told them "We’d like to vote in the Victorian election".

They sent us around the corner to the Australian Consulate. Perhaps one day somebody will explain to me what the difference is between an embassy and a consulate, but apparently there is one, at least where the Australian government is concerned.

So we found the Australian Consulate, got through the groovy mini automatic metal detector door thingy and told them "We’d like to vote in the Victorian election".

The nice Italian man behind the counter went through the paperwork with us to cast our vote, and then told us "Now your duty is done!"

For the rest of the day we simply explored. Looking for some green on the map, which might indicate a park where the kids could have a run around, we came across Villa Torlonia, a huge park with a few randomly located old buildings, statues, obelisks and a playground.

If they were in Australia, the National Trust would be jumping up and down at the state of the buildings. Hundreds of years old, they’re just left to rot, boarded up and left to the mercy of the elements, the vandals and the rats. Roma has got buildings ten times as old that they need to take care of.

We walked through the Villa, refilling our water bottles with deliciously cold water from a constantly running water fountain, one of hundreds in Roma. Then we found the playground and the kids acquainted themselves with some of the locals, giving L a chance to practice her Italian and me a chance to have a nice quiet rest.

We spent the rest of the day exploring a bit, not finding anything special, but roaming around just taking in the atmosphere of the place.

We woke up early, around 5am, and watched CNN for a bit. During our stay in Italy, this was the easiest way of catching up with the news, at least all the big world news. Getting it from the Italian news services was a bit dodgy with my Italian vocabulary, which was (and still is) tiny. I did work out that "morte" meant someone had died, something which often features in world headlines, but which is next to useless if you don’t understand who has died, how many of them there were, where it was and why.

After breakfast we set out. We wrestled with the Metro ticket machines, then headed for the Colloseo. (That is, the Colosseum - and I demand to know why we have an English translation of it, when the English word doesn’t actually mean
anything. I mean, why did we bother? The same with Roma/Rome. What does Rome mean? Nothing. So why not just call it Roma?)

If you’re ever taking someone to Roma, just take them to the Colloseo without saying where you’re going, and watch their face as they walk out of the station. It’s just THERE, in front of you, opposite the entrance, in all its colossal glory.

If I had only four words to describe it, those four words would be: "It’s ancient and huge". We walked around it to the entrance, gazing up in awe at it, chuckling at the blokes dressed as centurions getting their pictures with tourists, and of course watching out for those dreaded gipsy children that all the guidebooks warn you about, the ones who apparently distract you with newspapers in your face or by throwing excrement, then pick your pockets before you realise what’s happening. Lovely.

Actually, I saw no hint of any of this while we were in Rome, though I did see gipsies begging from time to time. And I did spot a bona fide (if such a word could be used to describe him) pickpocket on the Metro a few days later.

We coughed up our hard-earned lire and went into the Colloseo, trying to avoid the large groups of large elderly tourists clambering around the place. At one point Isaac found a quiet spot and announced that nature had called, then promptly pulled down his pants and marked his territory on the ancient monument. Oh to be a little kid again and to be able to do that kind of thing without raising eyebrows or being arrested.

• A little fun at the Colloseo: RealMedia (44K)
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After eating some exorbitant but delicious ice creams, we walked up Via Dei Fori Imperiali, then Via Del Corso, stopping along the way to look at whatever was interesting. It started raining a little bit, and suddenly the streets were filled with umbrella salesmen. We didn’t mind the rain too much, and had no umbrella, so every couple of minutes we’d be offered one. The price varied according to how hard it was raining. When it was just spitting, they’d haggle themselves down to 5,000 lire for an umbrella (about A$4). When it was raining hard, the price wouldn’t go below 10,000.

It would be an hour or so later, when it was really pissing down, that we finally gave in and bought one (sure enough, 10,000 lire). We reached the Trevi Fountain and L did the apparently traditional coin tossing thing, before we began a search for the fabled Pasta Museum.

We eventually found it in a little alleyway, and looked around inside, attempting to listen to the rather amusing attempt at an English translation of the commentary on the museum’s special CD player. Everyone else seemed to have problems with theirs running out of battery power, and ours was no exception. At the end they gave us two bulky books about the museum, which alas seemed to be more about the museum itself that about the history of pasta. Whoever compiled it seemed to be obsessed with a picture of a busty Sophia Loren eating spaghetti - it appeared many times in the two books.

Then we headed back to the environs of the hotel, for relaxation and dinner.

Around half past six in the morning we landed in Roma (Rome). There was a looooong queue at immigration for all of us poor sods without EU passports. Actually a number of long queues, a bit like at McDonalds where you never know which one will move fastest, and which one will split into two when they open another window.

And there were cops hanging around with machine guns. In fact, during our strolls around Roma, we would see quite a few such heavily armed Carabinieri (military police) outside some embassies and synagogues and so on. Makes you wonder how much they’re needed. And I’m not entirely convinced they made me feel safer.

We found our luggage and walked up to the airport railway station and caught a train into the city centre. We had a room booked in a nearby hotel, and after staring at the map for a few minutes, we dodged around the morning commuters and lugged our backpacks to the appropriate street.

We got to the end of the street without having found the place. But the friendly proprietor found us, and directed us across the street to a door which had a tiny "Hotel Sandra" sign beside it. We huffed and puffed up three flights of stairs and we were there. Alas, the room wasn’t ready, so we left our luggage there and walked around for a bit, trying not to get too
lost.

The first things I noticed the most about Roma were of course the things that were different from home. Everyone seemed to smoke. And there are obviously no parking spaces at all left near the centre of the city, because people park all over the place… over zebra crossings, at weird angles, double parked… A traffic warden on holiday from another city would probably have a heart attack within minutes of arriving.

Crossing the street is quite an art form. If you wait to cross at a zebra crossing, you’ll never get anywhere because nobody will stop. You have to just walk out into the traffic, then they’ll stop. More than courage, a death wish or good insurance, what you really need is the confidence that deep down, Roman drivers have absolutely no wish to run you over.

They have a quite unhealthy disregard for red traffic lights, too. Red in Roma apparently means you should stop if going means you’ll hit something. Most scooter riders and many car drivers would come up slowly to red lights, look around to ensure nothing was coming, and then accelerate through.

All these things, plus the very musical emergency vehicle sirens added to an overall impression of a busy, chaotic city, a city in a hurry to get wherever it was going, even if it meant going through the occasional red light.

After we got back to the hotel, the rest of the day was mostly spent showering, snoozing and otherwise recovering from the plane trip. L and Jeremy, however, ventured out and got thoroughly lost for a couple of entertaining hours.