Always pilgrims

For the last 39 days our focus has been to get a step closer to Rome each day. As Tim wrote, we all had a huge sense of anticipation and elation as we walked the final 17 kms into St Peters Square only 2 days ago. Sophie and I could hardly walk for the next few hours and hobbled around, and we finished our journey by arriving at a wonderful hostel for pilgrims to Rome, where we were warmly greeted by the volunteer looking after the pilgrims, and had reunions with several other pilgrims we had met on the way. Meal times were special to catch up and celebrate together.

Yesterday we had the privilege of farewelling a young German man who has walked from Germany, and now continuing his pilgrimage to Jerusalem, a total of 5000 km. As you can imagine, we are keen to follow his ongoing journey. Then we visited St Peter's Basilica before meeting Maddie who had taken a train from Milan early in the morning. Still, it seemed strange that it took her 8 hours and us 39 days to cover a similar distance! It was wonderful to reconnect and introduce her to a taste of what has been our life for the past 6 weeks.

This morning we finally left our pilgrim world behind. Tim's comment that we had finished as pilgrims, though, was met by the response that the pilgrimage had only just begun. We had some more goodbyes, and set out for the Colosseum. Getting there before 9 am we simply wandered straight in, and spent the next few hours in Roman ruins. After lunch we visited a museum with a Renaissance art exhibition, the highlight being an original portrait of Martin Luther and his wife Katherine.

We have now settled into a local B&B, which is not quite what we expected, quite funny really, and heading out for an Indian meal.

With love from Merran.