Waiting at the Foot Locker store next to the Piazza of St. Peter's Basilica. Domes, ceilings, walls covered in art. Some in mosaics, even underfoot. People, people, people. Shoulder-to-shoulder and cheek-to-cheek, literally. Popes entombed, one pope's corpse on display. Twenty-five thousand people a day take the tour. Nine million people. Lines snaking behind your guides as they dodge each other. Ready to fall down at the finish. But lunch revives us, and we resume the role of lost travelers trying to follow maps deliberately not made to scale. Why would your hotel provide a map deliberately not made to scale? Why to minimize the distance from.the hotel to the various major attractions to the casual eye.
We limp home--Ah, but dinner under the moonlight. How many times have we done that? The restaurant had a bit of sadness to it. The hotel building attached to the restaurant but always a separate entity had failed just a year ago, and the empty building shielded the restaurant from our view on the side from which we approached. But dinner err was excellent, and, as we stepped away from the building to look at an olive tree, and turned back toward the restaurant-we saw what this restaurant building had once been before the hulking hotel was added-a vine-covered inn bathed in the light of a full moon.
Touring and being lost have walked our legs off. Next day we'll know the territory better--how bad can walking be when you know where you're going?
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