And so to Rome...

Our final full day in Italy began with a fleet of taxis to the station - five in fact due to the amount of luggage which had accumulated as we all did our bit for the Italian economy. From there we had a restful train journey back to Rome before checking back into the Hotel Mariano, one of four groups staying there for the night which necessitated locking in breakfast bookings for our last morning in Italy. April 25 is a public holiday in Italy to celebrate Armistice Day from WWI but luckily for us the Vatican was still open, so the next stop on our agenda was a visit to St Peter's and then a tour of the Vatican Museums, including of course the Sistine Chapel. As always, it is quite incongruous to have the security guards in there yelling for silenzio while telling people off for taking photos. The 'abbreviated' visit still took a couple of hours and by then we were all getting a bit tired so we braved the Metropolitana underground train back to the station and our hotel.
Our 'last supper' involved homework - all of the students compiled affirmation sheets for eachother of what they had learnt or appreciated about each member of the group, and we gave them postcards with our own observations. All that remained was a last sleep before the trip back to the airport, where we farewelled Tania and Samantha on their way to Malta and our long-haul journey back home began.