Roman Holiday

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Day 15 Friday 5 October 2007

Roman Holiday

Wake up 5:44am Breaky 6:30am Meet 7am

We had a very early start to get to the Vatican. Rome is a mad city. Cars everywhere. Vespas even worse. The group line up was quite long when we go there. The public were already queued even though they wouldn’t be let in until after 9:30am.
We met our guide Franka and went in around 8:15am. The Museum was amazing. It was hard to understand the scale of the place. The letters at the top of St Peters dome were over 2 metres yeat looked tiny. It wasn’t until you saw people above it that you could put it in perspective.
The Sistine Chapel was different to how I expected it. It was a long rectangular shape. There were many guards. Often they clapped their hands for silence. It hurt a lot to look up.
The highlight for me was the Pieta, by Michelangelo. The Mary had the face of a youthful girl and a woman’s body. It was so smooth and full of feeling - very touching. When we left the Vatican we went to the Souvenir shop. I bought a few items and sent them off to be blessed by the Pope. Free hotel delivery (They arrived about 5pm)
Most of us continued on to see the Pantheon. It had a big open hole in the top and the rain comes through.
There were drainage holes in the floor. We had some pizza for lunch. They gave me 2 big slices. Looking around, people had them like sandwiches. Just enough time for gelato. Coffee and dark chocolate. No rest for the wicked. We were straight off to the Colosseum. It was very impressive. We walked around it on all levels, took photos and went back to wait. There wasn’t time for the forum. We were all exhausted and hot. Thankfully we had a 2 ½ hour break at the hotel. It was nice to veg out for awhile and watch a movie.

6:30pm Roman Dinner.
It took us a long time to travel through the city, and then we had to walk to where the Spanish Steps were (over an hour)They were not very impressive.
There were large crowds sitting on them. Rob drank from the boat fountain infront. We walked quickly to the top and back down again.
The sellers were pushy here and tried to shove a flower under my arm. The view was better from the top. We drove for ages to our restaurant Casanova. The food was very average. Carpiatta, some green gnocchi, steak and lettuce and chips.
They had some opera singers. I don’t think they were too happy when we didn’t buy the CD’s. It turned out to be quite a late night.

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