Italy 2011, An Unexpected Bus Trip

We had a late afternoon flight so had all of the morning and the early afternoon for more sightseeing and the plan today was to use the local bus and take a trip to the shoreline of the lake that we had seen several times now from the windows of the train.  From what we could make out from the badly faded timetable half stuck with peeling  sellotape to the window at the terminus the buses seemed to run every hour and we had missed one by a matter of only seconds so there was a forty minute wait for the next one to come along.  I purchasedthe  tickets for Marino and we waited in the sunshine.

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Italy 2011, Lake Albano and Castel Gandolfo

The small café was opposite the entrance to the Papal Palace which is where the Pope spends his summers on the shore of the lake ostensibly to avoid the oppressive heat of Rome.

I’m sure that this probably isn’t strictly necessary anymore because I imagine that the Vatican will have more than adequate air-conditioning facilities these days but nevertheless it still remains a nice place to spend the summer.  The Catholic Church owns this splendid Palace thanks to the Lateran Treaty of 1929 when Italy recognized the full ownership by the Holy See of the Pontifical Palace of Castel Gandolfo.

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