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Published: September 30th 2017
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Geo: 41.9023, 12.4581
This blog starts at 4am today… Kamie & I are wide awake because we have an 11-hour tour in Rome planned. We will meet a group of 17 other cruisers downstairs at 7:45am and we will not return until 7:00pm. Here is the itinerary for today….
- Private tour of St Peter's Basilica, The Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel and Grotto with a licensed Vatican guide
· Skipping-the-line and going directly into The Colosseum with our prepurchased tickets for a 2 hour tour of The Colosseum, Palatin Hill and The Roman Forum
· Piazza di Spagna (The Spanish Steps)
· Fontana di Trevi (The Trevi Fountain)
· The Pantheon
· Piazza Navona
Update: it's now nearly midnight here. I'm sitting up in bed trying to ignore the ship's rocking again tonight. Dangit!
The cherry on top for today….we had a terrible tour in Rome where two of our friends were left in Rome by the driver (true story) and we did not get to see the Piazza Navona….the one place I was most looking forward to exploring. Today's "tour" was so bad, in fact, I am not going to write about it so I won't have to relive it.
The best part of today…. exploring inside the Coliseum.
We loved it!
I am also homesick… ready to go home, ready to see our Simo and Scaredy, ready to have Internet and email and phone service again.
I am going to say what you are not supposed to say now…… Americans supposedly have a reputation for being rude overseas but it has been our experience from day one on this trip that Italians, Germans and Asians make Americans look like good little angelic soldiers. We have never encountered more pushing in line, walking in front of you, cutting in line, shoving and general hatefulness as we have on this trip – all by non-English speaking tourists. We see it in the airports, on the trains, on the ship, on the tours, in the restaurants, etc. I think I remember it being this way on our honeymoon but its glaringly obvious this trip… the Americans know how t o be patient and wait in a line, the Americans know not to crowd your personal space, the Americans would never simply walk in front of where you are obviously taking a picture and put their family of 10 between Kamie and your camera and start smiling & taking pictures. There
are many other Americans on this cruise that agree. Americans are no longer the rude travelers…. by far…. we have been surpassed by several other countries.
And why do I write this today of all days?? Because The Vatican is truly a place to go if you would like to see the pushiest, rudest people on Earth. Sad but true. The Sistine Chapel/St Peter's Basilica/Papal Grottos were a bit awe inspiring but still filled with rudeness galore. The Vatican Museum was terrible and by far the worst place we've visited this trip. The Catholic Church should be ashamed of their greed in selling unlimited 20 Euro tickets per day – they could easily say only “X” amount of tickets are sold per day and the price is 200 Euro pp. There would be room to breathe, less pushing and shoving, and they would still have a backup line of mindless followers wrapping around three buildings like they did today…. greed at its best. To quote Kamie… “Just what Jesus would have wanted.”
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