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After an early morning and a hurried breakfast at the hostel, I hoped onboard the trains and buses to get to Termini station in downtown Rome. We decided to do the Vatican today and I was looking forward to the pinnacle of church visits on the trip.

After getting out of the train at the Vatican we walked past and endless stream of solicitations for guided tours of the Vatican. I wanted a tour, but I figured there’d me more legitimate stores offering these tours. (Mom said that Uncle Kevin and Aunt Susan told her I should get one of these.) We did not find one of these shops by the time we’d walked into St. Peter’s Square though.

The square itself was very impressive. Tons of columns, an Egyptian Obelisk, statues galore. They were also setting up for the Pope’s Easter mass the next day. Metal detectors in the rows of columns, hundreds (thousands?) of chairs, big old TV screens, flowers, and what I think was an alter were all being set up. The lines were also very long to get into St. Paul’s cathedral. At this point another one of the tour guides started chatting me up, and I decided that he sounded good enough. I figured if it didn’t turn out to be legit, we’d just walk away.

At this point the tour seller walked us over to the actual guide right by the obelisk. After a solid introduction, we all walked over to a bar where we paid £45 for the tour. After a short wait for people to pay, use the bathroom, and buy water we headed over to another store where we picked up our radios. These were interesting in that they didn’t have headphones, but a tube that plugged into the radio. (The tube is also fun in that if you put it in your ear and run your fingers down it, it sounds like a jet taking off.)

The tour was expensive, but we did get to jump the long queues (yeah) and it got us entry into the museum and the cathedral. These were £20 by themselves, so I’d do it again. The lines were 2 hours long! The guide was good and told us about lots of the stuff in the museum. (Very eloquent.) It was a very long tour filled with lots of statues, paintings, tapestries, ancient maps, every kind of art you can imagine. I was very impressed by all the collections they had there. They told us that they had over 7 km of galleries, but only about 2 km of them are open to the public. We cruised through these shoulder to shoulder with around 9,000,000 other people. I thought the cooler parts were the accurate maps of Italy made long before they could get high and the 3D tapestries. As you walk by them Jesus, slabs, and tables keep looking at you (or move so they look like they’re sticking out at you…). The tour guide told us we don’t know how to make these anymore. I did not believe that at all… They also told us that all of the stuff they have there was acquired through purchases or traded for. I didn’t really believe that one either…

The tour was a little stressful because we were trying to find Christine the entire time. She apparently thought that we were behind her and started waiting for us to catch up. Meanwhile, we continued on the tour with the guide. She then tried to catch up by buzzing though the entire gallery while looking for us. I kept texting her where we were, but she was unable to find us. Annelise eventually tried to call her, a couple of times but was again unsuccessful. The whole time we were trying to get a hold of her it was draining the money on my phone. We kept asking to tell us where she was, but we never really got anything out of her. The one place she did tell us the security guard had never heard of!

We continued on the tour eventually getting to Sistine Chapel. I thought this was cool to see, but it was a little underwhelming. The art was obviously very impressive, but it wasn’t that big and it was just packed with people. I’m glad I got to see it though.

After the chapel, we waited for Christine outside on the way into St. Paul’s Cathedral. After we didn’t hear anything from out messages, we decided to continue through the cathedral. Unbelievable. Huge. Very impressive place. Unfortunately we had to hurry through the church because Christine was trying to call me costing me 10¢ every time she rang. I couldn’t pick up because there was no money left on the phone. I ended up with only one message left and quickly sent it before she could eat it up! I told her to meet at where we started the tour.

Once we were outside we just chilled around the obelisk for two hours. We both hoped that she had gone through the chapel and the cathedral, but really had no idea. She kept texting us where she was waiting for us, but as we didn’t know where she was talking about and were already outside, we had no way of getting to her. She was confused by what I meant by where the tour started (obelisk, bar, radio, or lines), but why she didn’t just check all of them I just don’t know. Eventually, I got a text from Martin telling me he’d topped me up. (I had asked him to top me up, but he wasn’t heading into town that day… Fair enough. But when Christine called all panicked, he relented and topped me up.) I called Christine and Annelise finally was able to find her. All and all I think we waited about three hours. It was good to have her back though!

After that fiasco we walked past Castel Sant’Angelo, an old castle of the Vatican, on the way to the Pantheon. It took a while to get there, but eventually we found it and got a good view of the largest poured concrete dome of the ancient days. It had been turned into a church after its days as a temple to the Roman gods. I was kind of surprised by this; I didn’t expect a Roman temple, but I didn’t expect to see a church there either. The Pantheon was a quick visit before the Fontana Di Trevi (Trevi Fountains).

The fountains had a huge crowd gathered around them so we didn’t stay much longer than to grab a few pictures. From there we went back to the Spanish steps area to grab some delicious takeout pizza and gelato. Good stuff.

The trip back to the hostel was uneventful, but I did make it back for the movie at the hostel. The original movie was Solaris, but we convinced the guy at the desk to re-run Monday’s movie: Gladiator. This was fantastic as we were headed to the Coliseum and the Roman Forums the next day. I had a few Peroni’s, enjoyed the show, and headed to bed.