In pictures: A rainbow of colours

The bus dropped us off in a square with a fountain depicting slavery and a monument to celebrate the naval battle of Lepanto that took place on 7^th October 1571 when a fleet of the Holy League, a coalition of Catholic maritime states, decisively defeated the main fleet of the Ottoman Empire.

Marino was clearly not a tourist town but instead a traditional Italian living and working town with shabby narrow streets, brightly colour washed buildings with washing lines strung outside windows and across the streets and little shops and small bars.  In the heat the atmosphere was slow and lazy and no one appeared to be rushing to do anything very much at all.  The greatest activity was at the bottom of the hill where there was a small market with a few stalls selling fruit and vegetables where there was a bit of trade but a lot more conversation.

We returned to the square on the main road where, although we couldn’t be certain because there was no timetable, we estimated that if buses ran every hour from Frascati then one would be due in twenty minutes or so from now so we found a bar with a clear view of the road where we could keep look out and ordered some drinks from a waitress who seemed surprised to see tourists in town on this Tuesday morning.

A couple of blue and white buses came and went but these were not ours and twenty minutes came and went and we began to wonder if we had guessed correctly as a further ten minutes passed by and we started looking around for a taxi rank.  The waitress had no idea of bus times so we waited a few minutes longer and then finally a bus for Albano came along the main road and we hailed it to stop and jumped on board back to the town.