Part 2 - Roma

After arriving on Saturday afternoon, spending Sunday on a Colosseum tour, Monday morning brought us another tour. This was the day at Vatican City. It was the first time that we needed to use public transportation and we did pretty well. We had to take two buses to get here along with a 500 meter walk to our tour meeting spot. As we got off of the bus we immediately saw the line of people waiting to get into the Vatican. Once again I was glad we had a tour planned that took us right in, no waiting. This line was insane, and this is still supposed to be the low season. 9am and it is wrapped around the outer walls! You can see the people below in the shadows.

We arrived a few minutes early by design to get some coffee some breakfast. Deciding to sit down at this little restaurant across the street from the Vatican Museums was a costly mistake. This was our first experience with table service surcharge. A pastry that was 2 euro at any other place in Rome was 4 here, unless you sat down, then it was 10 euros. We literally ordered to American coffees, three pastries and a waffle and the bill was 61 euros! My suggestion, don't ever go to the place directly across from the Vatican Museum entrance. At least they let us use their restrooms before we left, with no additional charge.

Once the tour started one of the first things we did was pile around this monitor. The guides are not allowed to talk inside the Sistine Chapel so our guide went into detail about the frescoes that we would see in there. She did a great job talking about the meanings and the process of creating a fresco. She also talked in length about what Michelangelo experienced and his unwillingness to paint. She was a very good guide and did a great job all day.

Outside of the museum seeing the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.  

 Outside of the museum.

This was a woven textile thing, not sure what to call it. The eyes would follow you and it was very much three dimensional. Below is part of the ceiling that was painted three dimensional as well. I don't think the common person would get much out of seeing this place without a knowledgeable guide. I would have never seen the eyes or known this was just paint above. There was another textile where the table completely change perspective looking at it from one side to the other, it was amazing.

The crowds were just massive. We got stuck in this corridor for a while trying to get into the next room.

The maps on the right side wall were being cleaned and restored. The guide again gave a great description of these maps and how accurate they are even though it was a manual process along with guess work. The below map of Venice is so accurate and detailed that she said many people can find the hotel they stayed at on there. I found this interesting since we are visiting there in April.

The tour was leading up to the Sistine Chapel and we got a lot of history about Rafael and Michelangelo. We visited the Rafael rooms first. There are pictures of these four rooms below.

She went into great detail about each of these rooms and it was very interesting. The final Rafael room was even more compelling when she told us how he had sneaked in to the Sistine Chapel to see what Michelangelo had done, before it was completed. After seeing that his style suddenly changed and the figures he painted were now larger and more muscular. Below is from the final room.

We then got to see the Sistine Chapel. We spent twenty minutes just taking it all in. The room was completely packed and the security people were having a hard time trying to maintain silence. They did not allow pictures but we saw people still trying to take them. After getting our lesson early on the tour it was fun to see the paintings and know the meaning of them. The example that comes to mind is the Jonah depiction with the whale. Michelangelo did not know what a whale looked like so he based his creation on a trout that he caught nearby. She explained several areas of the last judgement that was added much later in life by Michelangelo

After the Sistine Chapel we got to skip the lines again and go right into St. Peter's Basilica.

 This is the central balcony where the Pope comes out on special occasions. 

 Michalangelo's first well known sculpture. This sculpture has a great history behind it over the years with people attacking it and damaging it. 

Tomb of Pope John Paul II after Beatification into the Basilica.  

The tallest and largest piece of bronze known, almost 100 feet tall under the dome.  

 St. Peter's Square. What a beautiful day.

Once again we took a little rest then headed back out for dinner. After dinner we had another experience with some street vendors. As we left the restaurant we came across some Prada purses, laid out on a blanket in the street, that said Prada on them, wink wink. Cindy paused for a millisecond, that was enough. The guy started making his presentation, he even pulled out the cigarette lighter to burn the leather, some how showing that it was good quality? Not sure what this proves, but he did it. After a little debate and some negotiation Cindy paid 30 euro for her Prada. This was a flash back to our 10 year anniversary trip to New Your City. Back them we were searching for fake Coach purses. Fast forward a few years we have graduated to real Coach purses and fake Prada. Now that I think about it I am concerned there is a plan in place to get a real Prada in the near future, dang it. Anyway, back in the street in Rome, Cindy gives the guy a 50 and he has another guy give her some change, he happens to be selling scarves. At this point all heck broke lose, we had street vendors coming at us from every direction. The scarf guy was pushing his stuff, the squishy blob guy came out of the shadows, another dude was selling little rubber band helicopter toys, even the other Prada guy was wanting us to take a look. It got to a point that Cindy was just laughing because so many people were shoving things in our face to buy. She actually negotiated with the scarf guy and got two for less than the price of one originally. We almost got away when yet another guy comes up and hands Cindy three long stem roses and gets Katherine to take another one from him too. We say no and try to hand them back, he says no, no charge, we can have them. I again fell for the trick and reach in my pocket for some coin. I think I gave him 3 euro, he looked back at me and said, but I gave them four roses. I told him that was all that I had, so he took back two of the roses. It was really funny, I wanted to push the issue and ask him why they are not free any longer. It was fine and we had fun with it. For a few minutes it was crazy. The whole time I had my hand in my pocket covering my money and my phone to make sure this was not a distraction to get pick pocketed. I figure with the crap that we did buy we got robbed anyway.

That was it for day 2. I will post the next two days very soon, it is already partially done. After Vatican City on Monday we had two days of exploring on our own. The final installment will be all about our trip to southern Italy, Naples and Pompeii.