June 14, 1969 Rome, Italy

We spent the morning in the Vatican City at St. Peter's Basilica.

By Alvesgaspar [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons
We climbed to the roof and I took this picture of Vatican Square.

 Here is another slide I saved of Rome.  I actually like the pics better in black and white as you can see how badly the slides faded in this picture.

We toured the basilica and saw the Pieta .

After touring the Basilica we went to lunch.  My diary has no details about the afternoon, except that we visited the catacombs.  I am not sure why I did not record events but it went something like this:

Having had lunch we were talking to the son of the owner of the restaurant.  They were getting ready to close for the afternoon and he and his friend offered to take us on a tour of the surrounding area.  They seemed nice enough and we agreed.  DUH!

Anyway, I remember being in the traffic circle in front of the Victor Emmanuel Monument when the two cars in front of us hit each other.

By Alvesgaspar [CC BY-SA 4.0], from Wikimedia Commons
There is just nothing like Italian drivers and accidents.  All the cars came to a halt, everyone got out and started waving their hands and shouting, then everyone got back in their cars and took off. 
As I said, our first stop was the catacombs.  From their we went to Ostia, a port city with a beach, though we did not go swimming.  On the drive they pointed out a large estate that supposedly belonged to Sophia Loren, but who knows. 

They dropped us back at our hotel and offered to take us out after dinner to see Rome by night.  Well, I decided not to go, but Shar did.  She got back late and was upset with me for not going, but I had told her I did not feel comfortable about it.  Not sure if I didn't write about it out of guilt or embarrassment.  I did see somethings that afternoon like the beach and catacombs that we would have missed otherwise. 

Expenses for the day were $1.00.  I am thinking they must not have charged us for the lunch.