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Published: July 30th 2008
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At our Rome hotel
- the new me fresh from the Sorrento hairdressers!! The new look me arrived in Rome where there are more old buildings to amaze us!! They all have the effect of making us realise just what a short time on earth we all get!! After all lots of 'old ruins' have been upstanding for thousands of years and most of us have around 80 years as our lifetime if we're lucky. It's all a bit daunting!!
And yes, yours truly did get lost in the Sistine Chapel - well not so much lost as seperated from the group. One minute Kev and the rest of our group were in front of me and then - like a whoosh of smoke - they were gone. That was before we got into the Sistine Chapel - decorated throughout by the greatest Renaissance artists including Raphael, Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo who painted 12,000 square feet of the chapel ceiling between 1508 and 1512 - truly magnificent to see. But its a labyrinth of rooms and corridors to finally make it into the Sistine Chapel where I was eventually reunited with the rest of the mob. Wearing a radio transmittor around my neck I knew the group were in there because as soon as
Police after the bag sellers
who I mentioned sell their wares in Florence & Venice too! The person in the van was yelling at the police & telling them to leave them alone. I got close I could hear the voice of our guide - Alex from Canada. Incidentally we bought the tickets from an Australian having decied to go on an organised tour - a bit dearer but saved us about 3 hours of queueing!! From there we went to look inside St Peters Basilicia which, to me, seemed to be more glorifying the Popes than Jesus Christ which seemed a bit odd - but I'm no expert on things religious so not really sure what such places are supposed to be!!! The Vatican, which was a sacred place long befoe Christianity took over, now there's a strange place - a walled enclave within the city of Rome, approximately 44 hectares (110 acres), and with a population of around 1000, all men to the best of my knowledge. But the art-works it holds!! I reckon if I went there every day for the rest of my life I'd only get to see a fraction of what they've got stashed away.
Rome gave us our first experience of a thunderstorm since we've been away, lots of thunder and lightening but hardly any rain - by the time it started to sprinkle we were
The River Tiber
- a little bit dirty!! already at the Coliseum towards the end of our adventures for the day. What an amazing building that is too & it would have been more so in its glory days - interesting to find out that much of the marble was stripped off over the years to build churches. & the like. Its fascinating to think that new remnants of ancient times are being dug up every day too. I wonder just what they've found during the excavations to build another metro line. Little did we know it at the time but, because another metro line is being built, trains stop at 9pm & buses take over the same routes. Like us, many tourists were caught and in a bit of a panic not knowing how to get back to their hotels. The bus-line we were told to catch by some of the metro workers turned out to be the wrong one - it only went part of the way! But thankfully, due to three helpful teenagers of whom I asked directions, they managed to tell where to catch the bus we needed even though they didn't speak much English. Then another helpful Italian on the next bus helped
us to sort out where to get off. "Another fine mess you've got me into Ollie" said Kev as we finally reached our hotel around 1am in the morning!!
The Pantheon, Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Tomb of the Unkown Soldier, Castle Sain Angelo, Piazza del Popolo, Piazza delia Repunlicca, Roman Stock Exchange, Piazza Vittoriano Emanuel, Piazza San Giovanni were just some of the places we manged to see. Oh yes and I managed to find a couple of carvings of Romulus and Remus reputed to be the traditional founders of Rome, the twin sons of the priestess Rhea Silvia, fathered by the god of war, Mars and suckled by a she wolf.
AND I nearly went in a protest march!! The streets were full of public servants - each carrying lighted candles - marching to protest their wages which were due to be re-negotiated. I think we'll have to return to Rome one day to discover more of what it has to offer!!
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Neta
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New do
Michelle, I love the new hair do, very becoming