Day 46: Roma Day 3 The Vatican and more

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Off to the Vatican today on a guided tour, we thought that would be the best, no queues and someone to tell us about the various things there. Well I have to say that from here on forward all churches, abbeys and so forth are likely to pale in comparison with the sights we saw today. Saint Peters Cathedral is the largest church in the world and is a quite emphatically, stunning, with a size that defies belief when you understand that one of 4 decorations at the base of the Basilica’s dome measures some 27 feet in diameter, and that is just a decoration. Old Michelangelo had his work cut our for him designing that puppy, he never saw it completed and the whole church took 176 years to build and complete. The Sistine Chapel is spectacular and defies my poor words and suffice to say that we are not religious at all but the whole Vatican City thing just blew us way. The Vatican City has its own Police force, swat team and even intelligence and counter intelligence unit, it is a sovereign state with complete right to govern itself, I have to say that their cops have nooooo sense of humour, I took a photo of the crowd in the entry to the Vatican and there happened to be a Vatican Cop in the photo, well he went nuts at me and started screaming in very loud Italian and made me delete the pic and then proceeded to go through the camera and check other photos, anal little bastard he was, then he took away the tripod I was carrying and made me take it to the storage room, I thought he was going to arrest me for a while. An interesting thing we found out was that all the marble statues you see in photos and on museum walls, if they came from Rome then they were most likely painted very bright colour, what a sight Rome must have been 2000 years ago, a huge conglomeration of bright colours and music all around. Several of the sculptures we saw still had faint traces of colour on them and the copy of the statue of Saint Peter has been coloured very accurately by using modern forensic techniques’ bright reds and blues prevail, it is absolutely stunning. We also found out the one of the popes from 30 odd years ago is being made into a saint and that coincides with Easter here so that is why Rome is pretty manic at the moment.

Leaving our guide we grabbed the train again and headed off to the Circus Maximus, just to see if the chariots were racing today, alas not to be and we had to make do with our imagination. It was not hard to imagine, standing on the high embankment looking down to where the old circus was, the riotous colour and sounds of the chariots racing around the arena 2000 years ago. They say that the Circus Maximus held from between 150k to 250k people at its height and was a spectacle to behold like nothing else in history even surpassing the Coliseum. We had planned a whole day and evening in Rome today as we needed to head of on Wednesday so it was onwards to the Isola Tiber and a bridge still in use today by cars that was built in 42BC, now that’s a long time ago, we walked it and the one next to it called the Ponte Fabricio built in 67BC. Onwards to the old Theatre of Marcellus built around 85bc and was thought to be the design model for the Coliseum as the construction was very similar with lower arches and upper square windows, Heading on to the Pantheon via the non tourist route and the little back alleys we prefer we came upon the old round church and yet again was amazed at the fantastic design and condition. Just lurking around the Piazza for a while to have a break as it was now around 7.00 we decided to find a cheap Italian meal, not easy in Rome I tell you, but find one we did, the Calzone was fine Bree had a new dish for her a seafood risotto with baby octopus and clams. Fully fed it was off to photograph the sights at night, including the Coliseum, what a great day and we only had to find our way home now as the trains we knew so well stopped at 9.30 for works and we had to sort out a bus. The first one we got on was going the wrong direction so we ended up deeper in the back of Rome, finally finding the right one it was a 2 hours and 3 bus trip back to the camper, total hours today 16, a bloody long day in anyone’s book. Well enough rambling, suffice it to say Rome is my pic for the whole trip so far and I so much want to return, I tossed a coin into the Trevi fountain so if legend holds it will bring us back sometime, maybe when Isabella is 11, that’s about 10 years. Camping Roma is a great campground and while a little time consuming to get to town and expensive at 37e per night it is very well located and our best recommendation for a trip to Rome.

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