I never would have guessed that doing a tour would be so involved. We have been having a great time, however, we have not been getting a great deal of sleep.
We were scheduled to do a walking tour of Rome, which was interesting because we got some historical background information about some of the things that we had seen for ourselves two days prior to the start of the actual Italy tour. Antonia and I also decided to take a tour of the Vatican Museum later in the day.
During our walking tour of Rome we visited St. Peter’s Basilica, Piazza Nivona, the Trevi Fountain, and the inside of the Pantheon, which we had walked by on our second night in Rome. This was a world-wind tour of many things that we had already seen, but we were happy to go again because there are so many details that one misses the first time through. For example, the tour only gave us about twenty minutes in St. Peters Basilica, but we learned a lot about the history and artwork. Still we were happy that we had spent at least an hour in the church by ourselves earlier in the trip.
Once finished with the walking tour we quickly made our way to the Basilica St. Maria degli Angeli to see if we could catch the sunlight falling on the Meridian line. I had mentioned that I really wanted to see and photograph this event, so Antonia really wanted to make it happen. I don’t know if there is anything cuter than to see Antonia jogging up the street trying to get us to the basilica in time. It was very sweet of her. This was our third attempt and unfortunately we were two and a half minutes late. Bummer….I guess we’ll try again on the 19th when we get back to Rome. After our failed attempt, we decided to grab a quick bite. We did the total American thing and went to McDonalds in the Piazza de Republica. I thought perhaps we could take advantage of free wi-fi so that we could do a little comparison shopping for hotels and update our travel journal. Alas, I was wrong. I found that one needs to set up an account and in Italy you need an Italian SIM phone to take advantage of free MacDonald’s wi-fi, as they text message your password to you upon account setup. The trip to McDonald’s wasn’t a total wash though. We tried an Italy-centric McD’s burger (the “Mozzarillo”) that had a focaccia type bun, lettuce, tomato basil sauce and mozzarella cheese. It wasn’t bad, but I won’t disappoint any of you by visiting McDonald’s for more food while in Rome.
At 3pm we met up at the tour company, boarded the bus and headed over to the Vatican Museum. If you ever get an opportunity to go to the Vatican Museum, go and definitely do it with a guide. One of the many things we saw was the Sistine Chapel. It was so beautiful and awe inspiring. To think that one man painted all of it was just amazing. It was also interesting that Michelangelo, who was an amazing painter, but disliked it compared to sculpting, dropped all of his sculpting projects to work on the Sistine Chapel for nine years. Imagine nine years of painstakingly detailed painting on the ceiling of a structure like the Sistine Chapel. MADONNA!!! But, when the Pope says jump, I’m not sure that there are too many people in Italy who would ignore him, especially in Michelangelo’s time.
One of the funny things that I experienced on the tour was witnessing our tour guide, a fantastically knowledgeable and beautiful woman, deal with a nagging American tourist. Our tour guide handled this other woman with such grace and ease and even though the American tourist complained the whole time about the speed of the tour, and the accent of the tour guide, she ended up tipping our tour guide at the end of the day. I guess patience is rewarded. (The other interesting thing about our guide was her extraordinarily long eyelashes, which she was constantly grooming. We sat next to her on the bus and watched her stroke and separate them constantly. She had beautiful blue-green eyes and dark hair in a sleek bob, and was wearing a lot of eye makeup.)
We closed our day out by visiting the Spanish Steps and going to eat with some friends from the tour, George and Michelle. We ate at the restaurant that we visited on Day One with Sam. I had a wonderful carbonara and Antonia had a chicken and mushroom dish. Here’s to new friends, good food, and a great day. Buena Norte Tordos!
