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Hello, b here. (Amy)
The piture is of the collosseum at night. This is because we have already done the daytime collosseum (been there done that got the t shirt....actually we havent but we really really want it) and in a couple of hours when it is nighttime we are off on the "mettttro" to go and see it like that, all lit up in the dark. How totally fab and awesome. Annas pretty psyched. Just to let you know i can use punctuation but all my keys are in the wrong place so it takes twice as long to do so.
We are also going to see Fontaine de Trevvi in the dark tooooooooo!!
So, to start off our day we got up at 7.30 am (i knnnoooow so early but we are keen sightseeers now) and got the train to the Vatican city. Did you know that the Vatican is actually a country? Yeah, with itsa own currency and passports and driving license and serives and everything! We were told this by our tourguide today ( yes another bloody tourguide, but she was really lovely and enthusiastic and charismatic, which is mine and Annas favourite word and person at the moment)...but more on the tour later! Apparantly its the smallest country in the world as theres only as few hundred who live there, such as servicepeople for the Vatican museums and nuns.
So we got there bright and early not planning to take any kind of harassment by tourcompanies at ALL and were strolling along minding our on business when we were pounced upon with an astonishing unturndownable deal of about 30 euros for the vatican including like 3 of the main sites and que skipping (we had to do some umming and aaahing and doubtful faces to get the price down, so think about how much everyone else was paying! silly tourists) It wouldve been silly to go round the vatican without one, because they said that the vatican museum is one of the biggest museums in the world, and there are so many rooms that if you spent 1 minute looking at each thing they had you would be in there a total of 12 years. As much as we love Rome we have places to go and people to see, so....
We walked down the road in a crocodile line of pairs so we didnt get lost. We felt very touristy but you kind of have to be like that in Rome (when in rome....har de har). We have sort of got used to that now. We had little headsets and kept stopping to take photos. Quite a funny sight.
In the vatican we had to cover our shoulders and our knees, although apparantly cleavage was acceptable (our funny tourguide said). I looked like a desperate housewife. Like Bree, Anna said. Not the cheese. The first bits we looked at were the information boards about the Sistine Chapel which were outside in a famous courtyard which has now been seperated into three sections and restored partially, which made it a bit less impressive than the other things i thought, which had mostly been preserved as they were found which is much better to look at. We were told that Michelangelo didnt even want to paint the Sistine Chapel but he was forced to by a Pope who threatened war on his homecountry of Florence if he did not agree to do it!! Crazy pope! (very sad eh? poor michelangelo, the tourguide kept saying) Anyway it took roughly 10 years on and off to complete the ceiling, and also the Final Judgement wall. The wall is really religious, and has a picture of Jesus selecting people to go to heaven and also to go to hell. There is also a picture of someone who was grilled to death apparantly, like on a barbeque. Nice! We also got told about lots of things that were related to one another, like the features of one of the Popes in the painting portrayed as Minos the gatekeeper of Hell. It was all really interesting but as we were hardcore absorbing facts it is really hard to remember all of it!
The insides of the museums were really beautiful, they had spent so long on the ceilings and on the floors and they were all either paintings (that loked 3 dimensional) or tiles or sculptured. Lots of the sections of the museums had not been designed to be museums so were originally rooms, one room had a floor made of tiny little mosaiced pictures and appparantly took yeaaaaaaars to import all the mosaic pieces. It was impressive though. There was also a bath that belonged to Emperor Nero. It was massive. Huge! Whopper of a bath, made of the most expensive marble apparantly. Youd have to be massive to need a bath like that. Werent materialistic at all were they? "arent they meant to be humble?" (anna)
Then we got to the sistine chapel and even though you are not meant to photograph everybody was so we managed to get some non flash pictures of the walls and ceiling. It was amazing to see all of the paintings in the flesh, and it is something that you really need to see and may only get one oppurtunity to see and so we are glad that we saw it. However i feel like it was very bigged up and that the size of the sistine chapel was nothing compared to the Basilica we saw later (oh yus theres more), and it was only the years of hard work put into the painting of it that made it at all impressive.
The Basilica in the vatican was a HUUUGE (they seem to do everything in great proportions here) church thing, that had domed roofs and gold plated bits and holes in the ceilings where the light came through in beams. It made you look very holy if you stood underneath it, and we took some photos of that because it tickled us. Anna also touched a bronze pope statue's foot and got blessed. Got a pic of that too i did. However the que to get blessed was too long and so I did not. Then we saw the body of a pope that they had covered in wax because he hadnt decayed properly when they found him. That was weird, but kind of cool.
Then after looking in awe for a while at the tall rooves wedecided to go and get some luinch at the same pasta place we had stopped at twice before because it does amazing portions and sauces and pasta choices for cheap prices! We also got some really nice bruschetta. Then we did some more perusing and came back to the hostel because it was soooooo hot. It is seriously in the thirties today, degrees wise.
The thing I personally did not like about the whole thing was the fact that there were so many people, everywhere, non stop, and naturally everyone stops in front of eachother to take photos, and there are so many slow moving queues of people and flashes from cameras and it seems a bit like it is ruining it all. But i suppose you cannot change that because given the chance everybody wants to see the vatican, or most of the things in Romaaaa for that matter. Alot of it is really well preserved, and it was a really good cultural and artistic experience. I think i preferred seeing the Basilica because it was just alot more impressive to walk through, and i think Anna did as well. However am glad have seen the sistine chapel and come face to face with the artwork there.
Will say tarah for now. We will update on tonights sightseeing another time, we are off to Florence tomorrow for a couple of nights so shall probably post then.
Cheerio! Amy and Anna, dot
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