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Published: October 7th 2005
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St Peters Square
Surrounded by the Saints from across the ages We went out last night to a night club called the Red Garter, there were plenty of sleazy men there and I was happy enough to go home the earliest!
We had our guided tour of Florence starting in Piazza Signora and we saw the massive Neptune Statue which is in the middle of a fountain. Also in the Piazza stands a replica of the famous 'David' statue which now sits where the original one stood when unveiled on the 8th September 1504. Michelangelo was 29 years old when he completed the statue which took just 2 years to complete. It was made out of a long skinny piece of white marble that no one else wanted to use. The Neptune statue took 12 years to complete. After David was unveiled people labelled it as a masterpiece.
There was so much artwork in the form of statues in the Piazza some beautiful some very... graphic!!
Florence was the birthplace of the Renaissance some of the statues were based on the ancient Greek statues.
Machiavelli, who was a young philosopher, Leonardo and Raphael were all in Florence at the same time... however Raphael and Leonardo didn't like each
other and used to be quoted saying comments that would rial the other.
We walked past the Duomo which is the 4th largest cathedral in Europe. It is amazing and imposing. The work and detail is extraordinary. It's easy to see why it took 140 years to complete. Unveiled in 1296, it was a birthday present to the Virgin Mary.
We stood on the Pontovecchio amongst the merchants. This is on eof the only bridges that Hitler didn't destroy during his 'visit'.
We had lunch in a little cafe and I officially had the best meatballs in the whole entire world!!! Arty thought that that was a big call but after trying them she agreed with me!!!
We had an excellent dinner at a restaurant with a male opera singer, had stacks of wine and then headed to the infamous 'Space Electronic' Dodgy, dodgy dodgy... Our tour manager was telling us that the DJ's ask women up into the DJ box and video tape them in .... Compromising positions.... Art and I were dancing and they asked us to go up!!! Not on your life! The Italian men were very full on and you had to
watch yourself... none of the girls recommend wearing a skirt otherwise you will end up with hands in many places they shouldn't be....
I ended up finishing off my bus dare of pole dancing.... Luckily the others weren't around to witness it, there only had to be photographic evidence, but am sure that my trusty Arty will dispose of the evidence and they will never see the light of day!!!
The following day we drove into Rome and went on a walking tour. The city didn't look like I'd expected, don't know where I’d gotten the image in my mind from...
Some of the buildings were really old, closer we got to the city centre with more Piazza's it probably looked more like I'd expected.
We walked to Vatican City which has a massive wall built right around it. The Vatican City is the smallest independent city in the world. We stood in St Peters Square looking at St Peters Basilica which is the largest church in the world. The whole plaza is surrounded by Saints from right across the ages, they are mounted at the top of the never ending columns. There are about 258
of them.
The city is interestingly designed with their metro running around the city and not through it, with only 2 lines.
We walked to the Pantheon which was build in 27 BC - it is an extraordinary building with many claiming it's the most beautiful building in all of Europe.
The dome on the top is 43m high and made from one piece of cement. They say it's so perfectly designed that if you turned it upside down it would just touch the floor. The Pantheon's walls are 20 feet thick. Raphael's tomb is contained within the Pantheon.
This used to be the tallest building old Rome before they built new Rome directly over the top of old Rome, raising the ground level substantially.
We managed to see a heap of the places where scenes from my favourite Dan Brown book, Angels and Demons, were.
We walked across the Angels Bridge...
Had a great dinner followed by the 'Contiki Special Gelato' it was excellent!!
Before heading home we saw the Colosseum and it was awe inspiring... I can't even begin to imagine how things would have looked years ago when it stood in all its glory, with the battles between man and beast... What a sight it must have been...
The following day we got dropped back at the Vatican for our free day. We couldn't believe how massive the line was to get inside, the line went for km's. Our guide went up and spoke to someone and said he hooked us up and had so many connections he was queue jumping!! The others in the queue didn't really seem that amused as we passed them all and fast tracked through to the front.
The others did a guided tour but Art and I decided to do it on our own. There was so much amazing stuff in there, religious or not... from fully painted ceilings to floor to wall tapestries...
We went to the Sistine Chapel where Michelangelo had done his work... It was amazing, the more you looked at it the more it became 3D. We saw the famous painting of the two men touching fingers which has been reproduced many times as just the two arms...
The Vatican has the biggest collection of art in the world and 75% of it's collection of art is in the vaults below the ground.
We also discovered most of the service stops we visited whilst travelling through Rome belong to the Vatican also... Guess you could say that the food is truly blessed!!
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Julia Zoutendijk
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Italy
Bin there Bin there There too Rgds Jon Julia Nikita