Italy Day 15 - Rome

Thursday April 17th - Rome


We started our day at the butt crack of dawn!! Time to go on our tour of the Vatican! We got picked up and then dropped off at another bus, then picked up and dropped off by the Vatican Museum! We only got to see some statues, tapestries, and maps. I got some good ideas for handles and covered jars for my pottery, tapestries bore me, but the maps - made with plaster were very cool!!

Next was the Sistine Chapel. The painting was amazing but i always thought it was bigger! We spent about 15 minutes there, we used our binoculars to get a close up view, which was neat! (That was a neat thing that Rick Steve’s book suggested). We learned that Michael Angelo had put his face on the “skin” of St Bartoleme. And that he put the Bishop that had dissed his painting of the Judgement as the fella in hell and when the Bishop went crying to the pope the pope said, sorry, my ability is from Jesus up, down below is out of my control! He He!!! That was a good story!

After the Sistine Chapel our tour "snuck" out the side door and into St Peter’s Basilica! What an amazing church! The coolest part was that any of the “paintings” were not paintings but mosaics! Wowser!! We didn’t get to go to the top of the dome or into the crypt - grrr...

Had we known we were leaving the area and just getting stuck in a gift shop we would have stayed behind - live and learn!
Our guide was very nice and informative but i’d recommend finding another way to see the Vatican or do more diligence on what you are going to go see.

We skipped the free hour at the gift shop and took the Metro back to the hotel and back to bed!

We arose around 2 and headed out for some more site seeing!
The Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, Pantheon, Piazza Colonna, Multiple Egyptian Obelisks, and the Cappuccin Crypt

The city was swamped! kids every where! we learned later that this is the time of year that schools in europe “educate” the youth by traveling to other countries. If you don’t like American youth and their attitudes, you wont like this time if year near the big european sites! Moving on...

The Crypt was creepy...  There were multiple small rooms decorated with bones. Spine bones, legs bones, should blades, pelvises, finger bones..  pretty much any part of a skeleton was done artistically all over the walls and ceilings...

We returned to the hotel for a shower and a glass of wine. We were having dinner with one of the gentlemen that helped get 360 to Europe - Raffael and his wife.

The picked us up and brought us to one of their old haunts by Campo di Flori. Our reservation was valid but the table was not yet free, so over for some drinks. We enjoyed some sparkling white wine and finger foods for the alloted 20 minute. Then back to the restaurant with still a 5 minute wait. Then we waited inside, the wife indicated that you reservation was as good as someone else that looked better or that they knew walking in the door. We chuckled!

Eventually we sat and had a great meal - Spaghetti Carbonara for me, Hubby had a different kind of Cabonara with red sauce that is typical Romanesc. Second course I went with the recommended veal saltimbanco and hubby did his Carpaccio!  They picked a great white wine from the Alps region and desert was strawberries romanesco for me and tirameso for hubby!  We were stuffed!

We walked over to the Plazza Navona for a coffee nightcap!

It was a great night!