Friday, September 29, 2017

Our honeymoon tour of Italy - Rome



The next morning we went on our tour of Vatican museums. We arrived in Piazza San Pietro. We visited the Vatican and could enter through the Holly door. A lot of marble statues there and there were a section with Vatican treasures to visit. Beautiful Dome.  As the Vatican is a separate country despite its location downtown Rome, they also do have stamps. We could also watch the Swiss Guards in their colorful costumes.

Again we were unlucky to get the same female guide who didn’t know much. Some of the older people on the tour found her sweet and were pitying her, but I found this unfair to people on the tour, as she was paid for this and other visits and was doing a very poor job. I didn’t come to Rome to pity people. I fact I found them being very lucky surrounded by all this beauty and history.

She kept us for a long while in front of a poster. Then we finally moved to the first room with the statues. After our guide explained one first time she was restarting her explanation for 2nd time, I called my husband and we went further. I didn’t want to miss other interesting rooms, as the map room for instance. As we arrived to the entrance to Rafael’s rooms nobody was verifying tickets. So we quickly entered in and could see Rafael’s paintings at our own pace. We finished our visit, and we entered
Sistine chapel, where our group joined us a few minutes later. They didn’t have time to see much of the museum, as they listened to second and third explanations of same things over and over. The chapel was full of people and despite the interdiction some were filming and taking pictures.

After our visit we went to visit some of the places we saw the first night. Castello Sant Angelo along Tiber is very special to see. We went to Piazza di Popolo where we met a fellow Australian traveler from our tour, and then for lunch we chose a restaurant close by where they prepared fresh fish in front of us and after cooking it they put a lot of fresh lemon, it was delicious. We walked to Spanish steps, then to Trevi fountain where a well dressed man was following me very closely. I had a bag with only a guide book in it. I told him I could see him, and he went away. The Pantheon was a very interesting visit. We finished at the piazza Navona with its fountains where we stayed for a while before returning to our hotel by metro and bus.

Kids on the metro stole from people’s banana bags. Also back in the hotel a family on our tour was robbed of all their money and their small bag in Rome.

We were exhausted when we arrived to our hotel and we went for diner to the hotel restaurant, not included with our tour. The diner was actually excellent. We first ordered a sandwich plate with marinated beef meat and fries with beer and wine, and it was so excellent we ordered a second plate.

































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