Italian Adventures

This Sunday, weather and health permitting, we are off to Rome. I have been to Rome before but only for one day. Much as Rome wasn’t built in a day it can’t be visited in one either so I’ve been hoping to go back since then to see what I missed and to soak up a bit more of the place. I plan to do a lot of what I haven’t been able to do much of in the last few weeks - wander about, stare at the beautiful things and spend time with my husband.  I have started to think that I am married to a pile of school reports as he hasn’t seemed to have emerged from them for weeks now. I seem to have become surgically attached to my Blackberry. Our trip to Rome will be guaranteed report and email free. Bliss.



The Roof of the Sistine Chapel from The Telegraph



The trip is being partly funded by some money that my Grandma left me. It’s quite ironic that I would be using money she gave me to go and feast in Italy as she hated any food that wasn’t either from a Birds Eye packet or could be traced back at least four generations to an olde English house wife.  She never has the opportunity to travel but I think that if she had of been born when I was born then she would have. Talking to my great aunt at my Granny’s funeral my Gran was something of an adventurer in her youth. She signed herself up to join the Women’s Air Force during the War to the horror of her family. She asked her sisters to go with her but they were both married and refused so she went on her own. She always said it was the most exciting thing she ever did. While she was there she met my Granddad and soon became a married woman herself and that was the end of that!

Have you ever had the conversation with people about what era you would have liked to of been born in if not the one you were? I have always said I was made for this time and wouldn’t exchange it for the world, particularly as a woman. This is my first Christmas without my Grandma but it’s also the first Christmas with a new member of the family, my gorgeous and charming little niece. I’m pleased that she will grow up in a place and time where she can have as many adventures as she chooses and marriage is a happy option and not a necessity (Though I’m sure a man in an RAF uniform wasn’t too hard to take on for my Nan!)

When I hear about my Granny as a young woman she doesn’t seem so different to me. A stubborn streak, going her own way – it rings a few bells! And I can tell you that my niece is showing signs of being cut from the same cloth! Even though my Granny’s experiences made it that a few days in Rome was an impossible thought, I like to think that she will see a bit of it through me on a trip she made possible. So off we go to marvel a while at the Sistine Chapel and throw a coin or two into the Trevi Fountain on her behalf. Despite her hatred of Lasagne I like to think that she’d actually heartily approve!