Italy: Rome Part 1 (The Vatican)

To get to Rome we decided to take the overnight sleeper train from Munich. Apart from Kate forgetting which bunk I was in and then smiling and waving at a confused Italian guy the trip was uneventful. The train rolled into Rome at about 9am giving us the whole day to explore. We dumped our bags at the hostel and set off vaguely in the direction of the Vatican. Along the way we passed a few tourist hot spots such as the Spanish Steps, Trevi Fountain, and the Pantheon.

The Spanish Steps

Trevi Fountain

If you ever get lost in Rome just keep an eye out for a Chinese tour group and follow them somewhere interesting.

Oldest in-tact building In Rome - Pantheon 

We continued wandering through the old streets and alleys until we reached the river, then headed towards the Vatican.

The Vatican

After passing dozens of ticket touts all claiming that the line for the Vatican Museum was hours long and we could skip the line with their tour, we arrived at the deserted ticket counter and only had to wait a few minutes while the stereotypical Italian staff finished talking amongst themselves. The museum complex is pretty huge and features an absurd amount of religious art, tapestries, statues, plundered ancient Egyptian artifacts, and more painted ceilings than I could handle. Also included is the Sistine Chapel which I think is what most people were there to see.

One of the many decorated ceilings in the Vatican

More bloody ceilings

After seeing about a million paintings of basically the same 3 or 4 religious scenes my gallery tolerance levels were running low so we kept moving toward the Sistine Chapel through room upon room of decorated ceilings and sculptures. When we finally got to the Sistine Chapel it was jam packed. I wondered how many times the security guard has to say "no photos!" every day. I don't want to sound like a bad tourist, but I was a little underwhelmed. I thought any of the previous 50 ceilings we had seen were just as good, maybe I was just overloaded and if I saw it in isolation it would have been more spectacular. When we left the chapel and found out that there was still half of the museum to go I couldn't face it, so we retreated back to St Peter's Square for a Panini.

The line for St Peter's Basilica didn't seem like shortening any time soon so we joined the masses. Italians and orderly queuing aren't two things that go together so there were people scamming their way through the line or just sneaking up the edges. The guy in front of us heard us talking about a particularly sneaky old lady and he turned out to be a priest from Australia. Despite warnings from the staff that the line would take 2 hours it only took 20 minutes.

The priest was there for confession and he was nice enough to give us a little tour of the Basilica. 

We then walked the 500 odd stairs up to the top of the dome for a great view of the city.

View from the Dome of the Basilica

View from the Dome of the Basilica

The square in from of Saint Peter's Basilica

We settled in for the first of many pizzas to come, just how I like it with minimal ingredients. No corn chips or chicken wings on my pizza here please. House wine was good and cheap everywhere too, I know pizza with white wine is heresy but Kate doesn't like red.

- Joe