ITALY: The crowds would be frightening if they were not so well behaved. Try to cross the Borgio Pio, a street not even within sight of St Peter's Square, and such is the teeming mass of humanity it proves impossible.
A Roman taxi-driver, certifiably insane as a result of the street closures and the crowds, peremptorily dumps this reporter a good mile from St Peter's Square, yelling: "Fit! Fit!" (a diktat ultimately translated as "Feet! Feet!" or "Get the hell out and walk", it transpires) and demanding €15 for a meter fare that clearly reads €9.50. The mark-up is no surprise.
An American visitor notes wryly that when she booked hotel rooms two months ago, the price quoted was $320 per room. Last week, when they confirmed the booking, it had risen to $500.
When they checked in on Sunday, it had soared to €700 (around $1,000).
In the cafes and bars in the tourist/pilgrim zone, prices are reckoned to have trebled.
At noon, the queue snaking through the streets towards the square is probably a mile long and about 20 people wide.
There are queues to get into queues, and because they can take up to eight hours, these are the kind of queues that require a strategy - such as not drinking too much liquid (despite the hundreds of volunteers cheerfully handing out bottles of water to counteract the heat). This might necessitate a visit to the toilet.
And while there are plenty of toilets along the routes, availing of one will lose you your hard-earned place in the queue.
These may well be the most patient, well-mannered queues in modern history (easily as well behaved, say surprised veterans, as those for the viewings of the two previous Popes Paul VI and John Paul I), but if the 200 civil protection officers filtering people on to the square are seen to allow people step in and out of it at will, the remarkable sense of egalitarianism and order will collapse pretty swiftly.
The international media are here in strength, pacing up and down alongside the queues, seeking out speakers of their native languages.
Yesterday, in (another) lengthy but astonishingly well-mannered four-hour queue, this time for media accreditation, Poles were well represented. One Polish television station alone was seeking 36 passes.
The talk was of AP television, which has managed to snaffle the best location in the Vatican, courtesy of the Augustinians to whom they have been paying a monthly retainer for several years, rising to €1,000 a day since the Pope's final illness.
Bridie Collins from Adare and her 67-year-old mother, Mary Redican, from Donegal, found the media a most diverting part of the entertainment during their eight-hour stint in the queue.
"We stayed on the edge where it was not so packed, and it was cooler than Monday", said Bridie. "There wasn't the huge sense of reverence or ceremony that you might find on a pilgrimage, but that was because of the size of the crowd. You were more conscious of the crowd and minding your spot than the spirituality".
They were also conscious of the sense of order and contingency planning that had gone into the arrangements.
The area is lined with mobile clinics, staffed with 50 doctors and 100 ambulance and 120 civil protection volunteers, usually on call for natural disasters.
"Two people had to be stretchered out that we saw, but there were plenty of first aid posts run by the Order of Malta and the Red Cross . . .
"It was very orderly, and you never felt you would be trampled. I think the authorities have done their best.
"The thing is that people are there by choice, and when you do it by choice, you're prepared to take what's thrown at you."
The first glimpse of the square was "overwhelming . . . You've seen it on TV, but to be in the middle of it was awesome.
"Walking up the steps of the Basilica we felt a huge sense of achievement. Up to that point, we had been packed like sardines, but at the door they only let 100 through at a time, and the mood was very respectful and sombre.
"We were very close to him and what struck us was how small he looked", said Bridie.
"You recognised him as the Pope, but because you couldn't really stop - you had maybe two seconds - and there was nothing to touch, it was almost like looking at a work of art."
The Basilica is being kept open 21 hours a day, which means further demands on the stretched security forces. The captain of the Carabinieri expresses the hope that it will be "a time of faith", but is also acutely aware that this is "still a security target".
Some 10 to 15,000 police officers are on duty, as well as 1,000 firemen trained to deal with a nuclear, biological or chemical weapon threat. Plainclothes agents circle the balconies over the square, and with the world's heads of state due to descend on Friday, there is talk of fighter jets patrolling.
As the build-up of visitors begins, the head of the civil protection force, Guido Bertolado, sounded a rather alarming note when he said : "We are trying to handle the event, but it is inevitable that there will be many very critical moments that will have to be handled, confronted and resolved on the spot".
But in the meantime, it was clear from yesterday afternoon's streets that one of the city's greatest challenges will be litter. Mountains of water bottles, discarded pamphlets and newspapers lay all round.