Sorry if the title of blog offends, but having the Catholic Church ask for $106 Euro or approximately $160AUD for the two of us to enter is a little offensive in itself.
Before we'd arrived at the vatican we'd already looked up the ticket purchase and decided that although we'd both like to see the sistine chapel, that was more than we we're prepared to pay.
I must say that the main square at the front of the Vatican city is very impressive, including the main road leading up to the square which is very wide for a street in Rome and very weel kept in comparison to many others. Unfortunately there were some works underway around the front of the Vatican so some of the buildings were shrouded by scaffolding and hessian, and there was one "naf" as Carol put it, 60 foot high picture of Pope John Paul the 2nd hanging on one side of the square. So although it was all very impressive, it was also a little discomforting to see the absolute extravagance of the place.
Before we made it to the Vatican, we had started the day quite late, mainly due to some over indulgence of our own on the previous evening, but once up and going we walked the city from one end to the other again, and I swear by the end of this "holiday" we'll both have massive calves due to the sheer number of kilometers we're covering on foot. Anyway as usual I digress, on our travels during the morning we "found shit" which is the phrase we've coined when we stumble upon things we weren't really looking for, and because we took a less than direct route to the Vatican, we managed to find some very interesting things, we stumbled upon the Italian parliament, and even took photo's of the building without being arrested or shot at, you'll also see a picture of the tall skinny thing that's in the square (or Piazza as they're called in Italy, see I am learning something) I attempted to take an "artsy" photo of it where the sun is just peaking around the edge of it, nice eh?
Once we'd finished being nervous while taking photo's with about 15 Italian police standing around doing what they do best (smoke and talk on their mobile phones) we kept on heading in the general direction of the Vatican, the next thing we "found" was the Castel Sant' Angelo, which was originally someones tomb (Hadrian was the blokes name), he was a Roman Emperor at some stage and was keen enough to build this massive structure to house his corpse. Pretty nice digs to, with a great view of the Vatican (which of course wasn't there when he built the thing!!) As the Catholic church moved in there and used it as a fortress for quite a while after Hadrian died, there was an amazing amount of lavish decoration done (anyone else noticing a theme here?), pretty amazing to look at anyway, and they even had a recreation of one of the popes bedrooms.
Once we'd spent a few hours wandering around someones tomb and then headed off to the Vatican for a while, Carol wanted to check out the Trevi fountain again, to hopefully get a bit closer to it and maybe get a better photo, so we walked all the way back across Rome to find the same massive crowd that was there yesterday (not surprising really!) so we decided to visit our favourite cafe and drink 660ml bottles of beer again (nope we didn't learn). It was really nice watching all of the different people head to and from the Trevi fountain, as well as watching the various Statues attempt to extract money from the tourists. We even struck up a conversation with a belgium couple, where between their English and Carol's German we managed to have quite a good conversation.
Eventually we decided that we should stop drinking beer and get something to eat (after 3 bottles each!) so we went back to the hotel, changed and went looking for a nice restaurant, we found one not far from the Hotel. I had a steak, which I think will be the last one in Europe, as although it was really well cooked, it was expensive and wasn't a great cut of meat, I'm assuming that we're just spoilt in Australia and meat is soo expensive over here that this is more the norm unless you head to a REALLY expensive restaurant. Carol had a really nice spaghetti dish and we also found a nice bottle of Shiraz.
Anyway that was day 2 in Rome, tomorrow we head back to Florence to have a quick look at David's bits and then we're off to Venice....
Rome Day 2 - Vatican City and Castel Sant Angelo
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