Today it is off to the catacombs, outside the ancient city walls. We had to get the bus from the metro stop and then it was a 10 to 15 minute ride. Well, an hour later we were still wandering around the metro stop looking for the buses. Finally we found the bus stop, but it was late and we could not get to the catacombs before they closed for lunch. Guess our excursion yesterday has sensitized us to that little detail of Italian life. We headed back towards our room and stopped to do some grocery shopping. There are a few spices we needed and we needed to see if there was anything else at the stores we needed.

Around 2 or 2:30, we headed back to the metro stop, walked straight to the bus stop to our waiting bus and were on our way to the catacombs. Again, we did not know which bus stop was the one for the catacombs, but we managed to guess correctly this time. It is pretty obvious, don’t you think?

Walking up to the catacombs is just a stroll down a road through a pasture. They are located outside the old city wall. You can see a couple of the old towers from the field.

The catacombs were dug in soft volcanic soil. The tunnel was lined on both sides with 2 ft slots where the dead were placed. As the tunnel filled up, the floor was dug out deeper and so you end up with tunnels 15 to 20 feet deep lined floor to ceiling with graves. Occasionally, there was a vent shaft to the outside, but all lighting was provided by candles. There were actually 4 levels like this, approximately 26 kilometers and 500,000 graves in this one section.

After the catacombs it was back to Rome proper. We had not seen the Spanish Steps, so we got off the metro at the stop and wander around there. It was amazing the number of tourist here, as this was the off-season.

Back to the room and to dinner. Tomorrow we return to Durrës.