Day 24 - Revisiting the Vatican (fingers crossed)

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We booked La Spezia for the next three nights. That meant heading way up north again but it will also meant that I will see the Cinque Terre and no way did I want to leave Italy without seeing the CT. So up early in Rome and off to the Vatican, again by metro. We visited the Dome (chose the ascendore, not the stairs as we are both suffering from sore knees and my hips and legs are also uncomfortable), then into the Basilica. We had hoped to be on our train north at 1:30 but by that time we were only half way along a very long line into the Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel. After almost four hours in line, we were in! So scared we were going to be in the line all that time and then get turned away. Unfortunately we couldn't spend as long as we wished in the Musei Vaticani but it gave us a taste of the amazing, fabulous, spectacular art and also the restoration work going on (Brendan - you can't take photos in the Sistine Chapel just like you can't gamble in Italy !!). I am so pleased we perservered albeit you would need all day to see even half of it. It was then a mad dash back to the B&B (okay, we did stop for three minutes to get three arachini balls - YUM) where the host had let us leave our bags, and then a rush back to the Roma Termini to purchase tickets for La Spezia. We managed the process really well except we chose a Regional Train instead of the Fast Train (we really did listen, Nath, it's just that we only had 10 minutes to get our ticket). We made the train with five minutes to spare but Roy took a nasty fall when the suitcase caught on the door but thankfully he was okay - a broken hip would not have been fun. We didn't arrive in La Spezia, approx 9pm, after finally contacting the host and finding our 'hotel' - not quite what was on booking.com and certainly not an 8.8 but not the worst we have stayed in.

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