Day Thirty-Six
Today is the day to explore the Vatican Museums. This was not part of our Roma pass as the Vatican is actually classed as a separate country, the smallest in the world in fact. If you didn’t know this already theres a little trivia for you! A city of about 1000 people. The queues were pretty big to get in and I recommend buying your tickets online in advance, but we thought we would brave the queues since we love them so! hahaha We got some icey drinks to cool us down before the trek through the Vatican Museum! Rhys seems to think ice drinks are the cure for everything haha
We walked through on our way to the Sistine Chapel, You get to go through what used to be the popes home until the 1930’s, which is now obviously a museum. There were fantastic sculptures, paintings and tapestries. The detail in the paintings along the walls was incredible! It was a long and interesting walk getting to the chapel and when we got in I was expecting to be blown away with how amazing the art was. Unfortunately the thousands of people, everywhere you looked in every spare space, the security yelling at the top of their lungs “NO PHOTO” over and over kind of ruined the effect for me! I was so amazed with the art on the way through also that for me it was slightly anti-climactic. To be honest I couldn’t wait to get out! I had a good look though and then planned my route to get out of there! haha
We headed along to see the Saint Peters Basilica. The lines were huge! We queued up anyway in the hope that it would be worth the wait. When we got to the front of the line, went through the security gate and headed up to the entry, we were stopped by one of the security men and he pointed in the other direction and said something in italian … still don’t really know what he said but another person told me I wasn’t allowed in because my dress was above my knees haha … When I say this – it was about 3cm above my knee. hahaha! There were heaps of people turned away because their shoulders where showing and all sorts. I was angry mainly because I wasn’t wearing something showy by any means and I couldn’t believe they didn’t think to tell people before they lined up for an hour! The feminist inside me wasn’t happy about being rejected for wearing a dress when I could see statues of mens penises everywhere I looked and thats acceptable? hahaha anyyywayyyss I understand its a religious place and I respect that! I was just overcome with an initial anger because I don’t like lining up to be rejected haha
After we went on the hunt to find good pizza! We found what looked like really quiet great little alleyways with restaurants and we were sure we hit the jackpot. We found a really beautiful looking restaurant and ordered our meals. Rhys got the Bruschetta, the pizza and a glass of wine and I ordered the lemon chicken and potatoes (not very italian I know) and i also got a nice crisp glass of white wine.
The meals didn’t have any Italian love put into them which was a bit sad! It’ s a sin to eat bad food in Italy and we were very disappointed! But we had food in our bellies which is the main thing as I keep telling myself and we walked down the street to get to the main part of town. We only walked a short distance when we found ourselves in another square … no wonder the food was bad, we were practically eating in a square and we didn’t even know it! Arghh hahaha! This square made up for our disappointing meal! There was art and music and street performances! Mum you would have liked the music it was like that pipe music performance that used to come to our school, it was great! and the art was even better! If I knew it would have transported well I would have bought many pieces
We did some shopping in the main part of town and I bought a beautiful dress that I have no idea how I am going to get around Europe without damaging but I had to have it! I will be wearing it in photos coming up soon I hope haha!
We went and sat on what I think was the spanish steps and then we decided we would get a horse and cart somewhere closer to home but the 200 euro price tag was off putting! haha they kept trying to lower the price we got them to 80 euro but still decided a 2 euro metro ride could be just as romantic hahaha.
[e] 