We watched the sun seat from the deck of the big car ferry as we left Hvar and made our way to Split, the first leg of the trip to Italy.
It was a bit chilly!
Lindsay and I arrived back in Split and pushed through the room-selling crowds of people like pros - a wave of your hand and a stern no is all it took. We bought tickets for our next ferry and convinced ourselves to actually get on. For 4 euros we bought a soggy sandwich, when 500m away on land we could have bought delicious seafood for the same price. GRRRRR.
The boat pulled out of Split, I entertained the thought of jumping off and swimming back to shore. But Lindsay convinced me not to. We went to bed and woke up as the boat was coming to to Ancona, Italy. We walked off the ferry, through the very convincing passport control. A woman standing by an orange witch’s hat glancing briefly at passports.
And then we were in Italy. There were no directions to the train station, no information. No nothing. Just a car park, a ferry terminal and a bunch of lost backpackers. We saw 2 girls with big backpacks walk off, and 2 other backpackers picked up their packs and followed. Lindsay and I thought, why not, lets just follow them. 4 backpackers behind us thought the same thing. Without any discussion between us at all just followed each other to the train station! We all worked together to find out what train we needed.
We found a helpful conductor who looked so happy to be helping all us young-uns! He cheerfully pointed out which trains we needed and we all went on our separate ways. Our train to Rome took about 2 hours. With nice countryside to look at, it went very fast. The train station at Rome was packed! When withdrawing money from an ATM, the machine sucked up Lindsay’s card and didn’t look like it was going to spit it out again! Fortunately, after thinking about itself for 2 minutes, it gave back the card. We meanwhile were having panic attacks in front of the ATM.
We found a friendlier ATM and then started to navigate our way to the hostel, Hotel Lella. Walking through the station and the streets of Rome, I noticed an awful lots of priests and nuns. I whispered to Lindsay asking if he noticed it also, and how strange it was. He then wisely reminded me that we were in Rome, where the Vatican is.
We arrived and tried to check in, and there was a debate in Spanish not Iitalian. Turned out they had decided to give us a free room upgrade because we were a married couple. Being a very obvious Catholic establishment they were really into that sort of thing. (There were crosses, crucifixes and virgin marys everywhere)
They also decided to include a free breakfast! We were happy about this - the breakfast was a croissant full of custard of chocolate with the strongest cordial ever. Not what I would consider breakfast…but it was free.
Our first afternoon we walked to the Trevi fountain via 2 pizza places (yum!)
Yeah, it was nice. But not as nice as the ones we had seen in Vienna.
What I found the most interesting were the tourists!
Most were from the USA and wearing matching things so they could easily work out where the rest of their tour group was,
e.g. the classy yellow hat gang.
After escaping the mass of people at the fountain we walked up to the Roman forum. Where we (I), spotted a fine example of a behind.
We were so incredibly tired, we sat down and didn’t have the energy to get up. We were literally 400m away from the Colosseum and didn’t have the strength to walk over and have a look!
After resting for a bit we decided to walk back to the hostel with a quick walk around the outside of the Colosseum. On the way back to our room we stopped again to share this:
I am thinking about writing a book called Julz and the giant peach, and is a story about a girl who falls into a peach and makes friends with giant insects.
We purchased bread, cheese, salami and olives for dinner.
The 2nd day in Rome: Not a happy day.
We caught a bus to the Vatican, dressed conservativly because today we were going to meet the Pope! (we didn’t think we actually would)
The bus was packed, slow and hot. So we sweated our way to the Vatican. We arrived at the court outside St Peter’s Basilica.
A man approached us and said “we have a group tour starting in a minute, it will cost you 28 euros each and it includes your entry into the Vatican museum” We thought…hmm sounds good. The vatican only costs 14 euro. So we joined the first part of the tour which is free. The girl was really nice and knew what she was talking about. Then she led us up to the Vatican museum, through security, then Lindsay’s backpack was too big so had to be taken to the cloak room.
She then tells us the prices, 25 euros ($AUD50) each for the tour, and then you must go and buy your ticket for the Vatican, which is another 14 Euros each! This made me furious! The man had lied to us, and tricked us into going on the tour. The tour guide gave us a 5 euro discount each, because we didn’t have enough money otherwise. A 2 hour tour + entry cost us about $AUD100!!!
I decided to try and enjoy the tour and go back and find the man afterwards so I could rearrange his face for him.
I must admit the tour was good.
We learnt that the chest and arm on this statue was used by Michelangelo as a model when painting the Sistine chapel.
Photo is from here.
You are not allowed to take photos in the Sistine Chapel, but I found some people on Flickr braver than I am!
Photo is from here.
There were pompous looking Italian men whose job it was to walk around the chapel shhhh-ing everyone….like school teachers shhhh-ing a bunch of naughty school kids. I could not stop giggling. They looked like they thought they were so important and special and all they did was go SHHHHHHH! One man even started to growl! The artwork was pretty amazing, but giggling is not really the best way to enjoy the place.
We said goodbye to our tour group of fail, and walked around the Vatican by ourselves. We found this:
No they are not boobs… but bull testicles, which makes perfect sense!
This ceiling is completely flat but has been painted to look 3D!
We walked through rooms of religious art
and were bored senseless.
And were by this stage practically unconcious with hunger and thirst. Our lunch was in Lindsay’s backpack which was in the cloakroom. So we had to spend our last 8 euros on a plate of pasta so small I almost cried and wanted to peg it at the serving lady’s head. We did manage to have a drink which helped!
We then braved the heat again (did I mention is was a really really hot day?) out in the court yard we spotted the Death Star.
I wonder why they have a model of the Death Star at the Vatican Museum?
After another nervous breakdown (mine again) we found the Egyptian section of the museum. Where some Egyptian Priestesses were playing chasies
And this God who had won the fruit basket at the local Bingo
I was by this stage seriously crabby and ready to Karate chop the next catholic, Italian and/or annoying tourist.
So we decided to leave the Vatican and get me some food before moving onto St Peter’s Basilica.
It was nice enough…but its a Church, with lots of gold and bits of dead people. But thats just my opinion, and as I said, I was seriously grumpy.
Finally we escaped the church and started making our way back to the Hostel. We got to end of the street and saw that the traffic had been blocked off. We hung around waiting to see what was going to happen.
After waiting for 30 minutes a motorcade drove past, with the Pope in it!
These guys traveled with their doors open!
hardcore!
and here is the Pope
and if I zoom & crop :
the Pope!
And then we walked back, buying bread, cheese and salami on the way back to our room.
Up Next the Colosseum!
