This is St. Peter's
Basilica
Struggled out of bed at 6:30, showered, and went up to the breakfast buffet in our hotel, the Hotel Cicerone (pronounced chi-chur-oh-nuh). Interesting selection of breakfast foods. Barely cooked scrambled eggs, barely cooked bacon (actually it was probably prociutto or pancetta), croissants, orange juice, cheese, sliced meats (salami?), etc. There was another juice that we couldn't quite tell what it was at first. We asked and discovered it is a combination of fruit juices and carrot juice--interesting.
After, we met down in the lobby and met with the group for the first time. We all piled onto our bus and drove over to the Vatican. Had to stand in line for about 40 minutes to get in but this gave us time to prepare for what we would be doing and seeing. We were handed headphones to wear and our guide Siggie wore a microphone so we could hear her without her having to yell. Apparently, it was difficult to hear your guide when there were many groups going through and all the guides were yelling at different times. This way, you only hear your guide very easily and the place is much quieter. Siggie was obviously originally from Germany--very thick accent. I call her Frau Siggie! While standing in line, I noticed that there were palm trees across the street. Palm trees in Italy??!! Yes, they are everywhere. For some reason I found this funny. There were other tropical flora--Birds of Paradise, etc. things that you expect to see in Hawaii all grow here as well. Parked across from us was a Smart Car. I had heard of these but had never seen one. It is the smallest little car you've ever seen!! It's made for areas that have a lot of traffic so as to not take up so much space and is easier to park, great on gas, etc. (assuming it runs on gas and not electricity).
We finally got inside and began the tour. The first part is the Vatican Museum. Lot's of statues, and paintings and tapestries everywhere that are centuries old. As we went through Frau Siggie explained that when these statues were created, they were originally nudes. Eventually the church decided that this was vulgar and hired artists to perform a Lorena Bobbitt on them and add the fig leaves to the statues as well as for painters to paint clothes on the people in the paintings. This is where the fig leaves came from for Adam and Eve, too. After we finished we went into the Sistine Chapel, which I didn't know was part of the Vatican. A much smaller room than I expected. Again, they explained that if you look at the paintings, you will notice that some people have on "shorts" or pants and the rest are nude. This is because of what I earlier explained. The church hired someone to paint clothes on them and then later the church changed their minds once again and had other artists come in and take the paint off to have them be in their original nude state. However, because different methods were used, some of the pants couldn't be removed so they still have them. One of the artists who painted the pants on them was referred to as "the painter of pants."
From the Sistine Chapel, we went outside to St. Peter's Square in order to get to St. Peter's Basilica. The square is where the masses meet every Wed. to have an audience with the Pope. It holds around 10,000 people. The Basilica was beautiful. It is HUGE!! Glorious paintings and statues everywhere. The Pieta is in here as well, which is a sculpture of Mary holding Christ after he was taken down from the cross, so he has the wounds from being crucified. I took pictures of this but they didn't turn out well enough to see what was there. We rubbed the feet of another statue which is what everyone does and is supposed to bring you luck or something--I believe it is a statue of St. Peter. The feet are now worn smooth from centuries of rubbing (yet they still allow us to keep doing this--go figure!).
This is St. Peter's
Basilica
Time for lunch so we all met outside and left the Square to go our own ways for lunch and to buy souvenirs. I bought rosary beads (though I'm not Catholic but what the hey). Had a quick lunch and then met up with the rest of the group to move on to the next site. We walked through the tunnels to get to the bus and apparently we lost someone on the way. The tour guide had to go back to look for her, Maria, while the rest of us rode over to the Coliseum. Eventually Maria and the guide met up with us again but this was to become a pattern of course! Maria was a pain in the ass!! Anyway, on the way we also went past the Circus Maximus, which is basically now like a soccer field, and then into the Coliseum--it's huge and holds I forgot how many 10s of thousands and can be filled or emptied within 20 minutes due to it's efficient design. Seems we have lost the art of building for many people. Never had time to go inside unfortunately. We went across the way to the Forum. Interesting place but now my feet hurt real bad and I started to get an attitude. Plus, my very heavy camera I had been carrying all day only took one picture and then broke. So I'm carrying an extra 20 pounds for nothing and I"m pissed! (side note: a trip to Nokia's web site gave me the solution to fix my camera though AFTER I returned from Italy--but kudos to Nokia!) Anyway, the Forum is cool but there isn't really that much to see anyway. We meet back up with the rest of the group and head back to the hotel which is good because my friend Bridget from London should be at the Hotel to meet us by now.
Bridget had arrived and left a note at the front desk that she went to grab a bite to eat and will be back at 4:00 so we went to the room, freshened up, and then went down to the bar for a drink. Sat there for a while and Bridget finally showed up. I hadn't seen here in about 5 years so it was good to see her. Glad she was able to find people to take her kids to school and back for a few days. We sat and chatted for a while and finally decided to go wandering around the city on our own. The rest of our group was all going to dinner together but we figured we'd see them enough later so out we went. Armed with our maps, we took a taxi over to the Spanish Steps and walked around there for a while. The streets are jam packed with people everywhere. We climbed the steps while taking pictures from every direction. From there we wound our way through the streets and found a little place to stop for a drink and get out of the rain as it was now starting to come down a bit. This place was a small little cafe/bar type place so we split some wine and just relaxed for a while and charted out our next move. Did I tell you that in Europe, the bathrooms are always an adventure? This place had the scariest steps to go downstairs to the bathroom. I'm glad I only had a little bit of wine! They were a spiral staircase but the steps were steep and narrow and you really had to pay attention and hang on or you wouldn't make it down alive, I swear!
Anyway, from there we made our way to Trevi Fountain and threw our obligatory coins into the fountain to ensure a return to Rome someday. Yes, we took pictures of each of us doing this--how lame, hey? But, everyone was doing the same thing.
Trevi Fountain
By this time it's getting pretty late and we're hungry so we eventually found a nice little restaurant for dinner. It's funny, all the stores and restaurants, etc. will not let you take your umbrella inside. They all have umbrella stands at the door that you leave them in. I had mine for a while but at some point I must have lost it but you reach a point where jetlag and sore feet make you just not care. The food was okay, the wine was better. At our request, the restaurant called a taxi for us to get back to the hotel, which now we think is funny because it really wasn't that far after all! At the hotel, we stopped in the hotel bar for a nightcap as usual. We eventually got to know the bartender, Aldo, pretty well, along with other people staying at the hotel. Especially this guy named Bob! He kept buying us drinks every night and was a real fun guy. Apparently, his wife is much more introverted and was usually in her room reading or writing. This was also the first time we had a drink called Limoncello (sort of sounds like Lemon jello) which is popular in Italy and is an apertif though some people were drinking it like shots.
Finally went up to the room. Big problem though. There are 3 of us and only 2 twin beds. Luckily, Bridget assumed this and brought her own sleeping bag (she's a very seasoned traveler). Lights out.....