24 hours proved to be a remarkable difference at St Peter's Basilica.  We arrived at 07.20 and wandered straight up to the security point.  Apparently Sundays are immeasurably busier than Mondays. Who'd have ever thought that?!
It was worth the wait, and the previous effort.  Rob had earlier in the trip described the Louvre as the second-most impressive building he had seen - the Basilica being the first.  All those concepts I have mentioned in earlier posts about scale, grandeur, history and power apply (perhaps even more so) to this building.  Perhaps (and here is a possible theme for future adventures) I need to balance my perspective on these issues by visiting great triumphs of not-necessarily-Christian architecture such as the Hagia Sophia, Pyramids and Taj Mahal.
Perhaps ...
In the last day or so of our trip I have been feeling a sense of melancholy.  This is not unusual in itself; it happens to me every time we pack up the shack on Sunday mornings on the west coast of Tasmania.  This is different though.  In a purely self-focused sense, we have done something significant in taking this trip.  It has been, and will continue to be, a highlight in our lives as individuals, and our lives as a family unit.  Few families are as fortunate as we have been to make this happen.  There have been costs (apart from the obvious elephant in the middle of the room).  The girls have missed valuable school hours and we have abandoned many of our responsibilities at home, particularly to family, friends and pets.
We're each very much looking forward to going home and re-immersing ourselves in those relationships and responsibilities; and in many ways we are tired of travelling - yet there is a reluctance to let this major chapter in our lives close, primarily for fear that another chance may never come our way.
Moggy and I had hoped that this trip would allow Mollie and Ella to arrive home with renewed appreciation on two fronts:  an awareness of how large and varied the world might be, and a renewed appreciation and respect for the part of it we choose to live in.  Even though our experiences on this trip have been of the first-world only, I am confident we have gone a long way to achieving that first ambition.  The degree to which the second ambition is achieved is yet to reveal itself.
​Our last day overseas had threatened to be something of a trial; having to vacate our apartment at 8am and not departing Fiumicino airport until 10pm.  That's a long time to drag luggage around the cobblestones of Rome.  In an attempt to turn that day into a pleasant end to the trip we booked a hotel room at Lido di Ostia, which is a town on the edge of the Mediterranean and only 5km from the airport.
We arrived expecting Surfers Paradise.  What we discovered was in many ways akin to Indonesia.  Funny old place, really.  30 minutes from the centre of Rome and perched on the edge of the Mediterranean, it should be fabulous.  But it's not any more. The architecture suggests that it was a happening place in the 1920's and 30's, but these days it's just tired and shabby. Restaurants have been constructed on the beach side of the promenade, and they have been laid out in such a way that access to the beach is all but impossible except for a few easements about 800m apart from each other.  Each of the restaurants has a thatched-roofed faux "beach hut" in front of it, invariably called the "Havana Club" or the "Tropicano Beach Night Club", and blocking the view of the sea from the restaurant proper.
So we spent the day wandering the promenade, reading, eating tapas from Toros Don Pepe, hydrating and waiting for the taxi to Fiumicino, from where I type.  
Boarding commences in 15 minutes.
​Arivadierci Roma.  Farewell Europe

I recently added another year to my personal speedo.  In those years I've had some dumb ideas and made some dumb plans.  But I suspect that right up the top of that list would be my idea to avoid the crowds at St. Peter's Basilica by arriving bright and early on a Sunday morning.
​Sunday.
I figured that the first mass was not until 9am, so the window from opening time at 7am until about 8 might be a relatively quiet period.  How utterly wrong!
The first photo below shows the scene outside the colonnades when we first arrived at 6.50am.
With typical Italian efficiency no public admission occurred until 7.40am, and by then the scene where we were was as depicted in he second image.
We stayed to see how quickly those at the front of he grid got away, and which of those further down the starting order did something radical to make up ground early (almost all of them), then we turned and set off against the flood tide of further pilgrims to find coffee and cornetto.  I'm beginning to think that the gods do not want me to see inside the Basilica.  They have pre-disposed me to abhorring queues, then massed crowds at each attempt I have made (three so far) at getting in.  I'll have one further crack before we depart the city.
Have you ever tasted a sauce, or a stock, or even a wine for that matter, and found it to be so complex, and to contain so many layers of competing and complimentary flavours, that it takes a little time to form an immediate impression about whether you like it or not?
Rome is that flavour.
Rome goes way beyond sweet, sour, salty, spicy.  These are just some of the elements I've detected in the past several days that go to making up the flavour of Rome:

• The organic chaos of the traffic, particularly at large sweeping city roundabouts,
• The number of people who smoke in the street,
• The charm of waiters and shop-keepers who patiently and playfully engage in faltering attempts to order in Italian,
• The extraordinary grandness and beauty of the architecture,
• The wealth and influence of the Catholic Church,
• Frank and loud public exchanges of opinion, complete with gesticulation,
• Street vendors who can instantly revert from sunglasses sales to umbrella sales at the first spit of rain,
• Aloof boutique vendors,
• Sardine tin buses,
• Beggars, exposing deformities and supplicating themselves in front of a cup which ALWAYS contains a single coin,
• Street performers who endure hours in the sun for a handful of coins,
• Pamphleteers around major tourist sites buzzing and stinging like March flies,
• Exceptional food and coffee,
• The sense of history,
• Statues and fountains of extraordinary beauty,
• Tiny alleys of plum and ochre coloured stucco and undulating cobblestones,
• Mopeds and bicycles,
• Car horns and the sirens of emergency vehicles,
• Double parking / corner parking / crazy parking!
• Pilgrimages.

It's an extraordinarily complex and addictive flavour, and one which I hep to return to one day

  prThe past three days have been a blend of early starts, packing, ham and cheese baguettes (not our preferred option), train travel, unpacking, ordinary hotels and extraordinary highlights.
We watched Paris slide away behind us as the 08.23 train to Zurich glided away from Gare Lyon train station.  The TGV Lyria Duplex is a magnificent train: as fast as Barry Allen and as smooth as Rob Thomas & Carlos Santana.  We had secured an upstairs berth of 4 seats facing each other over a small table.  The train quickly reached speeds above 200km/h. I tried multiple times to get a photo of the speed display reading 300+ but was foiled many times by the changing display or a slight uphill section of track.  Eventually, I managed to snap the pikkie below.  Later, I was standing in the buffet car eating a ham and cheese baguette (theme alert!) and drinking an espresso when I glanced at the display to see the train travelling at 317km/h - and I'm standing up like it's the bar at the local pub!  
A quick change of trains at Zurich saw us proceed to the small Swiss city of Chur.  Now, to be fair to Chur, we HAD just left the middle of Paris on a busy weekend.  Chur, at 3pm on Sunday, doesn't seem to have a whole lot going on.  Even the cable car up to Brambrüesch was closed. So were all the restaurants and cafés. Our dining options were reduced to seedy kebab shops and the petrol station co-op store.  More ham and cheese baguettes, please.  Later, when about three of Chur's "many local restaurants" opened for dinner, we found a funny little pseudo-Asian restaurant where we managed to get a plate of noodles and a random assortment of condiments for a somewhat sobering price. 
Our accommodation in Chur was the Hotel Schweisserhaus.  In our pre-trip planning I had begun to refer to this as the Hotel Scheisenhausen, so much so that I had trouble NOT calling it that to people who may have been offended by the reference.  My Mum always told me that many a truth is spoken in jest and I think on this occasion she was quite correct.
Another early start saw us trundling out of Chur on the Bernina Express.  This scenic railway links Switzerland with Northern Italy by winding its way over the Alps via the Bernina Pass.  Such is its significance that a section of it is classified as a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  As we climbed the foothills of the Alps we were surrounded by mist and cloud and I thought our luck may have failed us in terms of seeing some of the peaks, but the further we ascended the less consistent the cloud became until eventually we were rewarded with spectacular scenery.  It was a true highlight of our holiday and as we trundled into Tirano Rail Station (along the Main Street like a tram) I commented to Moggy and the girls, "Do you know what that was worth? - Every single cent we paid for it!".
From Tirano we caught a regional train to Milan, which we, sadly, credited with too little time for attention.  We were on a mission to get to our hotel, eat something, grab a nana nap, and then get to a concert.  Our taxi driver agreed that we had given Milan too little attention and so she took it upon herself to take us past the Duomo, the cathedral, the shopping district and the banking an d finance district - all of which was interesting, and of benefit to her taxi meter.  It was done so nicely and she was so pleasant that we considered the additional €10-€15 to be a reasonable price for a speedy guided tour of the old city.
So we eventually arrived at the Assago Fawlty Towers (not its real name).  The information about the hotel services and facilities was limited to a small pamphlet in three languages, and it was wrong!  We had tried to arrange a restaurant booking for dinner, but the restaurant did not open until 7.30, which was too late for our concert schedule.  So, relying on the pamphlet which promised room service from 5.30pm, we ordered some meals, only to be told that room service was not available until the restaurant opened.  They did, however, offer us a snack.  Guess what we had for dinner?  Yep - ham and cheese toasted sandwiches!
In 1977 I bought a copy of Peter Gabriel's first solo album because I was completely entranced with the song "Solisbury Hill".  Since 1977 I've been completely entranced by petty much all of Peter Gabriel's music and it has been a constant accompaniment for me.  Thirty six years after beginning that association I saw my first Peter Gabriel concert, and I'm so pleased that Moggy and the girls were with me for it.
The show started off as a very low key, acoustic set.  The house lights were up and the first few songs were simply the band on the stage reinventing some Peter Gabriel songs.  The song "Family Snapshot"' for those who don't know it, is a story about an assassin, and it builds steadily in tempo and tension as the song proceeds.  At one moment in the song where it starts become quite intense ("They're coming round the corner with the bikers at the front, I'm wiping the sweat from my eyes...") - in a heartbeat - the house lights dropped and a full-on light show took its place.  It was a breath-taking transition to an amazing display of sound, light and technology. 
Mollie and Ella were sad because they knew all the songs.  I'm just happy!
Tuesday morning saw us depart Milan aboard the Frecciarossa (Red Arrow) for Rome, where we settled into our very comfortable apartment at Ottaviarno (near the Vatican Walls) and enjoyed a night out (REAL FOOD!!!) with Rob and Tom.