The reason we so often had the time to ponder such existential matters as the nature of Italian traffic is that Kylz and I are obsessive itinerisers. It is imperative that we squeeze the most amount of café, gelato, apperitivi and wine o’clock (and here and there a few significant monuments also) into our day.

Of course, our plans rarely unfold along the predicted lines because inevitably we encounter certain unavoidable obstacles along the way, such as our acute inability to read maps. Now, this I’ve commented on before, but it’s worth revisiting if only to induce malicious laughter from people who revel in my pain.

Barely had we left our hostel this morning after having assured Kylie that I trusted implicitly her knowledge of the Italian language and ability to be a most excellent tour guide, when she started exhibiting all the signs of a hopelessly lost traveller: stopping dead in her tracks, staring up ahead quizzically then directly back from whence we had come, furrowing her brow worringly.

Eventually she approached a pair of old ladies and asked if we were anywhere in the vicinity of the Via Condotti, the main shopping street. At this, the women dropped their bags and started laughing uproariously, gesticulating to other passers by and generally revelling in the sheer idiocy of tourists.

We got distracted then by the policemen strutting by in their snappy little knee-high boots – white, at that. All the better for chasing crims with, and providing dashing assistance to useless tourists. Suddenly being lost and in Rome didn’t seem so bad after all.