Woohoo, a day on the town in Rome, AND we had nice weather!. The Vatican is our first stop today. A nice long walk through town, stopping at Trevi Fountain, ended at St Peters Basilica. We joined a tour for the Sistine Chapel because the tours line was much quicker than the general admission line. They were recruiting people from the crowd, they were good sellers though. It took almost 60 minutes for the tour to finally get moving, but the guide explained quite a bit about the Vatican while we were waiting. The tour was nice, explaining the significance in certain paintings, statues, and tapestries. The Sistine Chapel is gorgeous. We learned that Michelangelo was completely full of himself, quite stuck up and demanding. Even demanding certain concessions from the Pope himself.
The tour ended at the entrance to St Peters Basilica Dome climb. It’s 551 stairs to the top of the dome. Theres an elevator that will cut out 221 stairs but we opted to skip it and save the extra 2 euros. What a climb. It’s all inside, some parts in narrow spiral staircases clearly made for smaller people. Nashons shoulders touched both sides at the same time. Towards the top, the walls start curling inward and you end up walking with a 20 degree lean because we were now climbing in the dome itself. The view of the city was beautiful. A nice breeze and a cool afternoon were needed after all those stairs! We spent 20 minutes soaking up the views and then started the long climb down.
We took another taxi to Piazza Navona to have lunch. Jamie really wanted to splurge on her lactose intolerance and have a pizza finally. The Piazza was originally built in the 1st century for chariot races. In the 17th century a Pope had the place redesigned and added in a fountain and church. For a hundred years, every August, the piazza was flooded by stopping the fountain drains. The rich would splash around in their carriages and the street urchins would paddle around. For us though, it was in the middle of set up for a music festival.
We visited the Pantheon. It has the largest dome in Rome. While sitting outside admiring the building and the very large crowd, a bird flew overhead and let a present go. This bird must have had GPS and laser guidance for its bomb. It was a direct hit on Jamies glasses. Some managed to get her in the eye, the rest ricocheted onto Nashons pants. Fortunately for Jamie (and Nashons pants), this bird seemed to leave almost all water with a small amount of solids. Jamie laughed so hard she cried.
We walked slowly back towards our hotel and enjoyed some of the quieter side streets. Jamie didn’t care for the pizza she had at lunch, so we had an early dinner at a nice restaurant. This time the pizza was tasty and the outdoor table we had was nice. The rest of the evening was the stroll back to the hotel and dropping our shoes as fast as we could. Our feet were very tired!
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