Bright and early the next morning, the alarm goes off, I hit the snooze once, twice, three times until I’m a little late getting up. The bed was comfy, so that’s my story.
My room.
Finally get up and get ready, then head for the light rail. I’d planned on getting my ticket at the kiosk along the way, but they’re not open this early. Hmm. OK, I’ll get it at the rail station. When I get there, I find that the only place to buy tickets is on the wrong side of the tracks. So I miss the first train. Have to wait 15 minutes for the next one. And I’m already a little late. All these little things accumulate and conspire to make me a lot late and soon I’m in danger of missing the Vatican tour all together.
So while I’m on the light rail, heading for the termini, I try to come up with a plan that’ll get me to right across from the Vatican to meet my tour group on time. Can’t seem to figure anyway to do that, especially after the light rail stops on the track, nowhere near a train station, and just sits there for 5-10 minutes. I have no idea why. This track is a dedicated track with only a train crossing in one place but that’s where we stopped. We do stop every once in a while at a typical stop light while cars cross in front of us. Eventually, the other train came along and crossed our tracks, the street light eventually turned in our favor, and after that, off we went. Alright, I’ll have to get a taxi at the termini, can’t take a bus or walk. Train arrives at the termini, I hurry through the labyrinth until I see daylight upstairs and I head up to the taxi station. Long line of taxis but of course you have to take the first one. Lucky for me it was a guy who spoke English, who looks like a race car driver, and whose eyes light up when I tell him the problem. Sure, he says, I can get you there on time.
You know those movies where the hero is racing through Rome like a boss? WE DID THAT!! No shit! Boy, was it fun. Even while hanging onto the grips, and with my seatbelt on, I was sloshed back and forth in the front passenger seat like a bag of rice. We zipped through parts of town without many stop lights and I could tell he was taking a route that wasn’t exactly straight…which was OK with me if it kept our speed up and the number of stops down. Tires squealing, taxi skittering a ways across morning dew dampened cobblestones, people jumping out of the way when they saw us approaching, and one ‘slam on the brakes’ to stop for a light turned red. Downshifting and upshifting as we careened up and down hills, engine roaring. Great fun. Just like the movies.
We get there, literally, with one minute to spare. I am sooooo happy about arriving on time, and the great ride, that I not only pay the guy but also give him a very generous tip, along with a hearty handshake. Pretty obvious that he enjoyed the hell out of it too. Whew. Made it. It was thrilling.
So I walk down the ancient stairs to meet my group and the tour operators sign me in. Then we wait 10 minutes or so for some stragglers. Really.
When everyone has arrived, up the stairs we go, cross the street, and into the side door of the Vatican. I didn’t get a picture but the door is rather non-descript, the wall surrounding the Vatican going either direction is very high and long so you really can’t see much, and there’s quite a crowd queued up outside. We walk right past the que and up the stairs into the doors.
And we are greeted by those Vatican cops you’ve heard about. They all have a dour look on their faces. Like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths. Our guide tells us all the things we can’t do inside the Vatican, can’t wear a hat, can’t wear provocative clothing, can’t take pictures inside St. Peters, can’t talk in St. Peters, can’t sit, and on and on. After all that, there is lots of art to see so off we go, up a wide marble staircase into a giant hall…and almost immediately run into these ceiling and wall paintings.
Wow. Some spectacular stuff right there. And we went from gallery to gallery in these oddly cramped, compared to the galleries, hallways. Every once in a while the hallway would open up to a causeway. With spectacular friezes in the ceilings.
Kinda neat. Everything is so cool, it’s easy to ignore your aching feet, neck, and back from straining to see stuff up on the ceiling. Pretty soon, 4 hours have passed and you didn’t even notice. One of the windows we passed gave us a look at St. Peters Square. Seemed that something was going on out there. Couldn’t tell what though.
And then we went outside into the square and got to visit these famous doors. Called Holy Doors by the religious, called Artistic doors by me. They’re only opened once per year or something so we couldn’t enter this way…we had to sneak around to the side entrance.
We went by the Pope’s balcony. I’m thinking that all that red tapestry would get wet if it rains.
So we finally get a good view of St. Peters Square and there’s all these 100’s of chairs set up. I had no idea what that was all about. I was thinking there was going to be a concert or something. With religious overtones of course, but still, I thought…Concert.
And then, our guide gave us some time off to rest our feet and look around. The statues up on the parapets were pretty cool.
After a nice rest, and walking a piece, we enter St. Peter’s Basilica. Home of some of the world’s best art. Now, like I said before, pictures are not allowed inside the cathedral but I managed to sneak one of the ceiling. It was very bright and colorful…you might remember that they cleaned the ceiling a couple years ago. The walls were also covered by incredible paintings. It’s very quiet in there, hushed, reverent even. By now many tours and the people that weren’t in tours had kind of caught up to our group so it was a little crowded, but not to bad.
After the Basilica, which, btw, is a private place for the pope, we walked a ways to the cathedral. This is where the Pope gives sermons and stuff, I guess. Seemed to be all set up for something because of all the folding chairs in addition to the regular churchy pews. Still didn’t know what.
You can see the crowds I had to battle most of the tour…but you slowly work your way up to the velvet rope, and then you can get pictures like these:
Pretty cool, huh? After a couple more hours of wandering around, and I have no idea where we are, the tour guide leads us down a tight hallway, and there’s a coffee bar! Hah! Boy, I really wanted a coffee. Bad news though. The place was packed with women in burkas and hijabs and their SOs making it impossible to get a coffee in a reasonable amount of time…so I had to pass on the coffee. Damnit.
And then the tour was over. We were let go back out in front, in the square. I’m still not sure what in the hell all the chairs crowding the square was all about so I finally asked someone. It’s Easter weekend. WHAT?!! If I’d known when easter was to begin with, I would have scheduled my trip for the week previous or the week after, just to avoid the crowds.
Well, that explained a lot. I’m guessing, but I’d imagine that the crowds would be thinner the week previous to easter weekend, but you know people, many might come early to tour Rome, others would come just before easter and stay long enough to tour. So I sorta screwed up choosing the week of easter, but it hadn’t been too bad so far. Anyway, what’s done is done, so outside the square, I bought another ticket for a bus tour with a different company and took another tour of Rome and an easy, comfortable, and interesting ride to the colosseum so I could get on the subway.
This bus tour was slightly different than the first one I took and also took a different route. Kind of what I wanted and I enjoyed getting a different perspective.
It was getting late so I hopped off the bus after the second or third loop around the city and into a little deli for a beer but they didn’t have WiFi so had to hike down the street a ways to a restaurant.
What the hell, went ahead and had dinner at the restaurant while I searched the internet for more adventure.
Got directions to the nearest subway station and a few minutes later, there I was.
It’s a pretty big station. Trains everywhere. I got lost a time or two trying to make my way around.
Yeah, I was tuckered out. Touring the Vatican can take it out of you. Not many places to sit down, and when you do sit, you keep imagining all the artwork you’re missing by sitting still and off you go again. When I got to my apartment, it was nice and relaxing sitting on the patio with a hot cup of chocolate and a book.
Next morning was a ‘sit around and do virtually nothing’ day. Couldn’t do that all day of course, so I did wander around the neighborhood again, slipped into a shop or two, bought some dinner and spent hours on the internet refreshing my memory about Naples and Pompeii. Here’s a few pictures of my rental:
Living room, notice, no TV, that’s a computer monitor back there…
Bathroom…taking a shower was very uncomfortable, not to mention dangerous as there aren’t any non-slip stickers in it. Sink wasn’t my kind of sink either…nowhere to put my stuff while doing my shaving and such:
Than here’s my host. Nice older guy, very quiet, has his own apartment adjoining this one. But the LR and kitchen are shared.
We kept getting in each others way in the kitchen when he or I would try to cook or eat or I’d be doing the internet, until he got a little testy, and kind of told me I should do the internet in my room or in the livingroom. The kitchen was, for me, the most comfortable place to be, so I suggested that the table was too big for the kitchen, and that he should consider getting a different, smaller table. NOOOO, can’t do that, how could he possibly entertain, etc., etc.! (I’m snickering to myself, because it sounds like he doesn’t know about loose leaf tables). So I tell him that he could free up a lot of room in the kitchen if he got rid of that huge table and replaced it with a loose leaf table. He gives me a curious look…and walks out of the kitchen. (Maybe the table had sentimental value?? Or maybe he really didn’t know what a loose leaf table was??) Well, OK, I didn’t want to piss the guy off as he was my host and all, so I moved into the living room. I’d been gathering my stuff to do that during the conversation anyway. But since I was leaving soon, no harm done. In fact, I had nothing to do the next day except wander around the neighborhood and visit the coffee bars and such. Didn’t feel the need to visit any tourist spots as I was still processing all I’d seen the last 4 days or so.
Next time, it’s onto the high speed train and off to Naples. See you then.