Colorado Cruiser: Italy Day 2

We woke up at 8:00 this morning despite our naïve intentions of an early wakeup. Our hotel came with a free buffet breakfast, so we headed for the 7th floor to get some protein and carbs to fuel the day.

The restaurant turned out to be on the roof of the hotel with huge windows all the way around, and best of all, tables on the balcony outside. We grabbed the first table we say, then went back to get our food. Lots of fresh fruit, eggs, sausage, bread, cheese, bacon, and diet coke. What more could you ask for.

The temperature was in the mid 60s, the sun was on the other side of the hotel so we weren’t sun baked, and other than the occasional siren of an ambulance (we hear lots of those), it was a wonderful way to spend our breakfast time. I liked it so much I thought it was photo worthy and ran back to our room to get my camera and tripod. Mike isn’t a fan of my tripod habit because it always means I expect him to stand by me with a forced grin on his face IN the picture rather than taking the picture.

After breakfast we wandered the balcony and found where we should have sat with views of the Vatican and Bourghese park, but we had shade so we weren’t too upset.

This morning we walked down the hill, past the Trevi fountain (4th time for those keeping score). They were cleaning the fountain so we didn’t take pictures of the guys in white Tyvek suits.

We walked on to the Campo de Fiore. It’s an open square where they hold an open air market. We wandered around looking at the fruit and vegetables, jewelry, and other nic nacs. They had a lot of murano glass jewelry that I might have bought, but I’ve learned that my daughters and I do not share the same tastes in jewelry, so I just looked. But I did spot a hat booth, and since Koren had asked for a hat like the young women wear in Italy, I started looking around trying to see what hats they were here. After 20 minutes I determined that young women in Italy typically don’t wear hats. But I did see a couple of hats and found one that I think she’ll like (read what I said a couple sentences ago).

The last thing I did in the Campo de Fiore was to buy an apple. I picked one with a name I’d never heard, and with a bright red and yellow color that I’d never seen before. It was amazingly sweet and juicy and made a great snack as we continued our walk.

We crossed the Tiber river to the neighborhood of Trestevere and wandered the streets. Nearly everything was closed because it was early on a Monday morning. We took a few random street turnings and eventually wound up in a square with medium sized fountain. One side of the square had an old church, and since we had yet to go into a church of any type we decided to go into this one. It turned out to be Santa Maria in Trestevere which is the oldest church in Rome.

We took a few pictures and admired the ceiling and murals. A class of kids came in and disrupted the solitude. Even though the kids spoke Italian, it was generally easy to understand the joking and play.

After leaving the church, we wanted something to drink, and where do you get a relatively cheap soda in Rome??? McDonalds of course. They are everywhere here. But at least the Pizza hut and subways that we saw in London haven’t made it here yet. Oh, and we got a large fries too.

By this time it was nearly noon and time to head toward the Vatican. The guide book recommended that we wait until after lunch before going to the Vatican because the morning crowds are so heavy.

Once we were near the Vatican we started looking for lunch. All we could see nearby was junk food carts so we headed off the main roads to find a back alley café. My body was finally ready for a good salad and Mike got the same spicey spaghetti that he had the night before just to see if it would be any better. This time the pasta was real buccatini but the sauce wasn’t as good.

After lunch we wandered some of the shops on our way back to the Vatican. Mike’s grandmother is a very devout Catholic and he wanted to get her something that she’d appreciate.

As we entered the St Peter’s square, we were accosted by tour guides again, with promises of skipping lines. But our lesson at the coliseum was well learned and we didn’t even bother responding to them.

There was a security line to enter St Peter’s Basilica, but no fee or tickets beyond that. The line seemed long but took less than 10 minutes to get in. We headed straight into the Basilica itself. It was very dark inside and my tripod came in very handy getting clear pictures of the various features. We had no trouble using the tripod in its shortened form sitting on partitions or benches, but when I started to open it for a photo at the back of the church, a guard quickly told me that wasn’t allowed.

One of the major works of art in the basilica was Michalangelo’s statue of Mary holding the crucified Christ on her lap. There was a pane of glass between us and the statue, and a window on the far side of the church was reflecting off of the glass. There was just no way to get a decent picture of the statue without getting that reflected window in the shot. That’s why they invented post cards I guess.

After we had wandered the basilica a few times, we headed down to the papal tombs. No photos were allowed down there even though I saw many people surreptitiously snapping photos. As we approached the tomb of John Paul II guards were preventing anyone from stopping. But a large group had gathered back on the other side of the corridor to pay their respects.

We left the basilica and walked the 1.5 km to the Vatican museum.

There we so many statues and paintings that it’s hard to pick any one thing that stands out. I wandered in awe of the treasures in every room. But eventually we found ourselves in a steep staircase descending toward the Sistine Chapel. It was both inspiring and a disappointment.

There is nowhere to sit and take in the views, it was jam packed with people, no photos are allowed, it is darkened, the chatter keeps building and then the guards try to shush everyone, people keep trying to take photos so the guards push through to them to stop them, and the paintings are beautiful. It’s kind of like when I went to see the Mona Lisa, the experience around it isn’t fun at all, but it’s beautiful.

When we finally stopped fighting the crowd, we found ourselves spurted out the far end of the chapel and continued the tour of ancient roman copies of ancient Greek statues. Seriously, nearly every statue had that as it’s history. Several times I startled myself when I realized that I was concentrating on the statues and had been completely oblivious to the fantastic architecture of the room holding the statues. I think my brain is just on overload of the quantity of history and beauty surrounding me.

For dinner we decided to try “the most popular pizza place in Rome”, at least that’s what one of the guide books told us. The staff squeezed us through the main room and out to a tent tacked onto the side of the building, then to the very back of that. We tried not to take it personally that we were as far out of sight as possible. We ordered a couple of toasted brochette as appetizers, then got a pepperoni pizza and a mushroom and onion pizza. Oh, we also got a couple of Coka-lite to go with it all. Their pizzas are incredibly thin and very crispy crust and tasty.

On our way back to the hotel, we stopped by Trevi fountain for the 4th time, and this time we really fought the crowd to get in a position to take some night photos with my tripod.

Oh, and we both tossed coins into Trevi fountain so that we could both come back to Rome again.

Breakfast on the roof of our hotel