Our first official sight was the coliseum. It’s impressive now-a-days because it’s big and incredibly old. Our handy audio guides told us that in its heyday, it was completed with polished marble. After the empire collapsed, it became a quarry and much of the marble from there ended up in the Vatican Museums and St. Peter’s Cathedral. So in the pictures, it looks lopsided and destroyed thus you have to imagine the benches upon which thousands of Romans sat. In the center you can see the “basement”. This is the place underneath the arena where weapons, gladiators and animals were kept and prepared.
Just next door is the ruins of the Roman Forum. We didn’t have any sort of guide so I am at a loss of fun historical facts for you. You can see columns that still stand as well as their fallen counterparts who are scattered all over. There is a temple for the Roman God or Gods that is also the tomb of Nero. Or at least that’s what I was led to believe. I don’t know because there was no helpful information was written in anything but Italian. (Oops getting too negative! Sorry!) In the same area as the Forum was the Palatine which (again I’m making an educated guess here) is the area of the gardens and homes of the Caesar’s. Like normal, all that is left is bits of wall surrounded by rubble. However! The archeologists had uncovered the house of Caesar Augustus (the Caesar who ruled during the life and death of Jesus). It, too, is mostly rubble but as it was underground, the walls are more complete and you can make out rooms and tile floors. One special annex has some of the original frescoes!
Our next big sight was the Vatican! On our way there, we were stopped by people selling tours. Our experience at the Roman Forum taught us that tours are worth their price, plus we would get a student discount! Little did we know that this was the beginning of a fiasco. The woman was selling tours in English and her particular company couldn’t offer tours in Spanish or French but another just around the corner could. This company had a tour in Spanish and in order to catch my tour at the other company I left Sara there to handle that. The tours would begin at the same time, so we figured they would end at the same time, too. Here’s where the fiasco begins. The end of the tours would be in the Sistine Chapel. Ok, we’d meet there. Super. I run off to catch my tour in time and enjoy an informative tour on the Vatican Museums and the Sistine chapel. They explain Michelangelo’s most famous painting well outside of the Sistine Chapel because, what I didn’t realize and part of the demise of our genius plan to meet in the Chapel, is that it is PACKED with people. PACKED!! My tour group arrived there and I saw the crowds and started to panic. ‘How will I find Sara in all this mess? Will they kick me out after a certain amount of time?’ On top of that, the doors to the basilica had opened allowing only tours in. My tour went in but without me because I stayed to wait for Sara. I waited for over an hour to no avail. Meanwhile, Sara had had an issue with her credit card and missed her tour entirely. After she ran halfway around the city trying to find a working ATM, she thought ‘it’s not such a big deal, I’ll head over to the chapel, and meet Christy there without doing a tour.’ Not so, young lady. To get to the chapel you must go through all of the museums. To go through the museums without a tour, you must wait in a 2 hour line and pay 18 euros THEN find your own way to the chapel from inside. She started to panic, too. Trying to find a better way to do that, she talked to some policemen outside. Because she’s beautiful, one police officer gave her a free ticket and brought her in the special way so that she didn’t have to wait in line (this comes up to help us the next day, too). When she finally got in, I was not there. We figure that about the same time she was entering the chapel, I was leaving it. You see, all of this could have been avoided if I had brought my cell phone that day. Thinking we wouldn’t be apart, I thought I wouldn’t need it and it would only waste space. So after an hour of waiting, I left to go back to the hostel to get it to send Sara a message to tell her where I was. She received the message but didn’t see it for an hour. But finally, she knew and headed back. Fiasco ended. All in all it’s not so bad to be waiting for hours in the Sistine Chapel. I mean, I can think of worse places. However, you’re not allowed to take photos as it’s copyrighted by the company who restored it in the ‘80’s. Yet, there are still the idiot tourists who ignore the signs written in every language (the only one in all of Rome) that say NO PHOTO and blatantly raise the camera to their faces and, clickety-click, take a picture with a flash no less. So while in the chapel, you hear loud, angry guards yelling “NO PHOTO!!!!!!!!!!!” about a thousand times. Of course, I couldn’t leave without a photo, so I took one but I did it secretly and stealthily. It’s not very good but, never-the-less, it’s proof that I was there. We met up later that afternoon and laughed about the whole thing.
That evening we met up with a friend of mine from Scotland, Massimo. As much as I was frustrated by the stranger-Italians on the streets, all of my Italian friends are very polite and hospitable. Massimo is no exception. We met in the most fun, lively square and he took us on a night tour to the lesser known parts of the city and took us to the best pizza place and a great bar, too. He helped us plan the remainder of our trip and advised me on Pompeii. He was a fabulous guide and showed us a lovely evening. The next evening we went to a restaurant that he suggested and it was DELICIOUS and really cool. Thanks Massimo!!
I had thought about going to Pompeii the next day but then, after Massimo’s advice, decided there were more things to do in Rome. Plus I wanted to sleep in and not catch an early train (it was my vacation, after all)! We headed back to the Vatican, this time determined to stick together, WITH cell phones to take a tour of St. Peter’s Basilica. The man who had helped Sara the day before bumped into us there. We asked about the Easter Mass and how that works so he let us in and gave us invitations to the mass then led us past security and straight up to the Basilica! YEAY!!! We missed 2 hours of waiting in line AND got a golden ticket (literally) into Easter Mass with the POPE! The Basilica is rather impressive. Just after the entrance is Michelangelo’s Pieta, a marvelous work done when he was only 20-something. The Basilica was built on the graves of Christian martyrs as well as the supposed grave of St. Peter. In the center of the basilica is his tomb or at least monument. All around are statues that mark the tombs of many Popes. If you do one thing in Rome, I suggest that you take a tour of the museums, Sistine Chapel, and the Basilica!
We were to leave Sunday afternoon and by Saturday we had just a few “must-dos” left on our list. In the morning, Sara went to re-do taking a tour at the Vatican. I spent the morning relaxing, packing some, journaling about the trip, and making a picnic lunch. We met in a piazza that afternoon and dined in the gardens of the Medici’s. We went to see Piazza D’Espagne which is like Montmartre because of hordes of tourists lounging on the stairs. The piazza guides you to THE street in Rome for the rich and famous. All of the fabulous brands are there. The brands that young au pairs only dream of! We went to the Pantheon which is also a very impressive structure. For being over 3000 years old, it is very well preserved and rather impressive in its size and design. The dome covering the building is still the original stone! It also houses the resting place of Raphael, not the ninja turtle but the renaissance artist. There’s a 360 video in the pictures, if you want a little tour.
By far the coolest day of the trip was Sunday. I am not catholic but Sara is so she was the one who suggest going to Easter mass Sunday morning. I thought it would be cool, too so we both went. In order to get good seats, we arrived at the Vatican at 7 AM. We waited in line till 8:30 when they opened the gates. 8:30 was almost 2 hours early for the mass. We got some pretty sweet seats. We knew that the Pope would drive through a certain path so we picked out seats close to there. The process started at 10:15 and eventually the Pope rode by and was not more than 2.5 meters from us! He’s very old... The mass was read mostly in Italian but certain readings were done in all different languages. The pope wished the world “Happy Easter” in 60 different languages and I caught his English and French versions on video (although you can’t actually understand what he says). So we left after, grabbed our bags and headed to the airport to catch our plane to Paris.
We had such a lovely trip, but we were ready to head back to a country where we understand the language and customs. Luckily enough, my boyfrench came to the airport to pick me up and take me home (the French one)! So here I am, back in my little city with my family and all goes well. Till next time!!
Pictures here:
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