Rome Part II - Mostly Just the Vatican City

Then next day, Monday April 2, we took the train back to Venice so we could catch the bus to the airport and fly back to Rome. Waiting for the bus to take us to the airport, we saw this on the back of another bus. Pay attention to the little sign that shows it has a "W.C" (bathroom). ewww.Yes, our route was kind of illogical, and if we would have put a little more planning into it we probably wouldn't have come back to Venice but oh well. It was a really odd sensation to fly back to Rome because in my mind since we were on an airplane, we must be going to Santiago. Nope, we still had two more days in Rome.

We took the bus from the airport to the Termini train station again where we met up with Mindy's friends Eric and Leah who were also in Rome. We all went to check in at the same hostel, and the check-in guy was kind of confused to see us again. Once we had put our things in our room, Mindy went out with her friends and Kate and I went in search of food. Since we were in a kind of sketchy part of town we didn't stray too far - just to the other side of the train station. We had a pretty good dinner - not much to choose from since they were almost closing - and when the waiter asked us for dessert Kate said we wanted it only if it was free. The waiter smiled at us then brought this out -Pretty fancy, huh? When we got our bill, however, we saw that he charged us for it. JERK. He spoke English too, so it wasn't another casualty of the language barrier. To teach him a lesson, we took a page from the menu -Yes, it was petty but it made us feel better for spending those 8 extra euros. Walking back from dinner we learned just how sketchy our area was. We had to walk down the sidewalk where we had at least 10 pairs of homeless eyes follow us as we walked briskly by their makeshift cardboard beds. When we walked past the Metro stop we heard this echo of someone hitting someone else really hard, and when we peered down it on our power walk past it we saw that there was guy who looked passed out/dead getting wailed on by another man who was putting his whole weight behind his blows. At this point Kate and I join hands and all but run back to the hostel.

The next morning we had only one thing on the agenda: the Vatican City. Kate decided to make a political statement to the Vatican - We were warned that it would be a long wait to get in (about 4 hours) so we were sure to eat/go to the bathroom ahead of time. Once we Metro'ed over there and saw the line, we couldn't believe how long it actually was - It almost curved around 1/4 of the whole Vatican. Yikes. It was crowded since it was Easter week. But we had lots of time to chat with the people who were behind us. They were from France and asked Kate for directions and Kate used what little French she knew to tell them what she could, then we tried to small-talk but it was quite stunted by the fact that a) we don't know French and b) they don't know English/Spanish. We also had a lot of time to notice that there were security cameras on the Vatican so God could watch usWe finally got in after only 1.5 hours, which seemed like no time at all since we prepared to wait for 4 hours. This is Kate by the first crucifix we saw in the Vatican Museum - Me by some ball thing in the courtyard leading to the museum that is probably famous - The first part of the museum consisted of a lot of Roman god statues. I am assuming they were there purely for historical purposes. So we picked our favorites and copied their poses!Our experience in Rome summed up in a picture - historical things that are probably famous for some reason unknown to us - Once we made it out of that wing, we went through the courtyard again to find what we had really come to see - The Sistine Chapel. This sign was one of many horrible, horrible lies. There is no way to see the Sistine Chapel without walking through the whole museum. And let me tell you, it is one big/crowded museum. There was hardly any time to stop and look at anything because the wave of people would sweep you away. This got really irritating, and combine that with being on your feet for about 4 hours and you'll understand a little of what it was like to visit the Vatican Museum. That isn't to say that we didn't enjoy the beautiful, ornate artwork. Unlike most museums that I have been to, every single little part of the Vatican Museum - from the ceilings to the floors - seemed like a work of art.We FINALLY made it to the Sistine Chapel and I couldn't believe how big it was. I was pretty much expecting a little chapel with the ceiling painted. No, this was a gigantic room with every surface area covered in paintings. They said "no pictures" but in a room packed with 200 people no amount of scolding from security guards or warnings from loud speakers can deter the determined tourist.This is the famous "touch" - it was right in the middle. It was easy to miss if you weren't looking for it. Sorry these are so dark!We had an overpriced lunch at the cafeteria, but we were so hungry/tired/thirsty after almost 5 hours on our feet that we didn't care. We then set out to see St. Peter's Square, but we took a wrong turn and wound up walking around the whole Vatican.When you think about it, the Vatican City is really a country, so it is like we literally walked all around a country. :) We saw a lot of graffiti, which was kind of sad to see on the Vatican of all places, but this one in particular surprised us. But why? We tourists sustain your whole economy!We did finally make it to St. Peter's Square!Some nice young couple offered to take a picture of the two of us, and come to find out the guy was going to UMKC law next fall. What a small world!Since it was Ash Wednesday the next day, there were thousands of chairs set up for the mass.We decided to not see anything more in the Vatican because anything else would have included several more hours of waiting in lines. So we decided to get gelatto and then go see the Trevi fountain. EVERYTHING in the Vatican was super expensive - for example, gelatto which we would have paid 2,50 euros for in Rome was 6,00 in the Vatican. Ouch.

Walking to the Metro stop we again got lost, and this time so much so that it was less time to walk to where we were going instead of back-tracking and finding the Metro. On the plus side, we walked off that gelatto and got to see a lot of the city. We saw a lot of what makes Rome a difficult place to see. On one hand, there are incredible historical monuments that beautiful and interesting. On the other hand Rome seems like a city on the edge, there are a ton of homeless people and a lot of graffiti. Rome is a city of severe contrast, and most of the time you don't need to look more than five feet away from anything "rich" to see something desperately poor, such as these homeless people sleeping under one of the famous bridges.The Trevi fountain was really cool, and legend has it that if you threw a coin into the fountain you'd return to Rome.And just like with everything else we saw in Rome, there was a wall of people.By the time we made it back to the hostel we were really tired from the 14 hours walking around, and it was raining, so we skipped dinner all together and went to bed. The next day was really like a half a day since we had to make it to the airport by 3pm. We did manage to see the Spanish Steps -And Kate bought her ciao bella shirt - And we saw a store that pretty much summed up our experience in Italy - We flew back to Santiago that evening, enduring for one last time the circus that is Ryanair. I loved our week in Italy, looking back it is amazing that we did so much. If I were to do it again I would like to go with a guide or a tour group, because we saw so many amazing things that we knew nothing about. I think it would have enhanced our experience if we would have understood why things are famous. Not that it detracted from our week at all, I had a great time seeing a country that I have always wanted to see and it was more than I could have ever expected.

Florence: the Highlight of Italy

We went to Florence pretty much on a whim, not so much because we wanted to see Florence, but more because we ran out of things to do in Venice. We didn't really know anything about Florence besides the people who we know whom have been there really like it, and it is one of those famous Italian cities that everyone visits when they come. So we forked over the 30 euros and hopped on the train!
Rail transportation is all the rage in Europe. I am pretty sure it is because it is a lot cheaper than flying and every single dinky little town has a train station. Which is super convenient if you want to go somewhere less-known but kind of irritating when you are on the train for 3 hours and you think about how you could have probably shaved an hour off of your transportation time if you didn't stop every twenty minutes.
Once we got of the train, we snapped into our unknown city routine which is

1. Obtain a map of the city
2. Find out where you are on map
3. Ask random people often to no avail where to go, how to get there, costs
   
4. Secure lodging
5. Eat

Unlike Venice, we were able to do all of this in the train station. The information desk also did hotel reservations, and for less than we paid in Venice we were able to get a room with three beds and breakfast in bed. Also, there was a McDonalds - we weren't thrilled to eat there but it was cheap and we were really hungry.

After we dropped off all of our things and told the lady when we wanted breakfast, we went exploring. According to the map Florence has this museum called The Galleria dell'Accademia, which apparently has the famous Michelangelo sculpture of David. In route to the museum, we quickly found an open-air market where we spent most of the day. They had all sorts of things - mostly clothing and jewelry. Kate bought a really cute Italian track jacket, Farashta bought jewelry and souvenirs, and I bought a red necklace with matching earrings, a ring that I had been looking for, and a purple Florence shirt. We all bought pashminas which are cashmere scarfs and are all the rage here in Europe - By the time we were done shopping we went looking for the museum again. But we couldn't find it, and we assumed it was closed anyway. And the stupid city maps were no help!Instead we decided to explore the city a little before we were hungry for dinner. We encountered this sign, which made Kate and I sad because we had spent a lot of euros shopping so that meant that we couldn't go to one of these -
We took pictures by this sign because Kate exclaimed "Venice to Florence! Just like we did!" and after we took the pictures we realized that it said Valencia not Venicia, the former being a city in Spain and the latter being where we just were. :)We walked by a couple of these, which are laundromats with internet access. At first I thought it was an unusual pairing, but the more I thought about it the more genius I thought it was. You don't have anything else to do while your clothes are washing, so why not pay another euro and surf the internet?Later, we did find this creepy/adorable sign for the museum that we were looking for - We walked past a few typical Italian restaurants before we decided we were hungry and went into one of them - We ate at the Caffe Duomo and had tortellini, the best I have had yet.After dinner we went walking around the city at night. It was really a fun experience because there was so much street life - a lot of vendors, street performers, and people walking around. Florence really has a rhythm to it, and it really enjoyable at night.This was one of the first American flags that I saw in Europe (USA! USA!) -
Farashta saw this bridge on a postcard, so we decided to see it during the day too - We somehow found ourselves in the really rich shopping district, and we had fun window shopping. A lot of the expensive fashion was really weird, to me at least, and I kept thinking that if I had the money to buy actual designer clothes I probably wouldn't buy something like this - We saw a lot of these stickers on motorcycles and cars. We have no idea what it means. It begs so many questions - who is John? what was he doing? why is this in English?Speaking of random signs (I think they'd have better luck if they would have made their statement IN ITALIAN) -Walking home to the hotel we saw one of these stores, which made us laugh because why would you want to go through the hassle of being carded to enter when you can buy your porn guilt-free at any newspaper stand? (ps. that is my new ring on my left hand) - The next morning we experienced the disappointment that is the Italian breakfast. We were only served coffee, a croissant, and a cookie. Not very filling at all. This makes no sense - this is Italy, land of great food. So why do they cheap out on breakfast? Lame. We decided to play European Dress Up, basically where we wore all of our new things and wear our hair like the locals.
On the agenda was seeing the Accademia for real this time and seeing the fortress we saw on the map. We walked past the museum and there was a line around the block, so we chose to see the fortress first.
On our way, we saw this arch - Then we decided we were hungry. This time for lunch I went the healthy route and ordered the Greek salad which consisted of tomatoes, cucumber, plain yogurt, feta cheese, and green olives. Quite tasty!Once we were back on the road, we discovered that the fortress was just across the street -We went inside and saw this really pretty lilac tree so we braved the bees we heard buzzing around the flowers and took some pictures - Then we saw that there was a red carpet leading into the building! Kate had the idea that it was like a runway, so we pretended like we were models - While we were taking our pictures some weird/random guy walked by and whistled at us and told us we were very beautiful. We pretty much ignored him, and he took this to mean that we must want a picture with his dog (?) - After our model pictures, we made our way to the museum of the fortress. We walked down some stairs, into some doors into a bright room where some lady handed us bags full of information. It took us a few seconds to realize that this wasn't a museum at all, and after walking around for a few minutes we realized that we were in the middle of a REAL ESTATE FAIR.It was all for really high-end places too. This was absolutely hilarious, here we were, three early 20's American tourists/students who don't speak a word of Italian, in the middle of a real estate fair. So we cruised around with our bags, took some free candy, smiled politely at the people in suits at their booths, used the bathroom, then left. As we were leaving we took a picture by the sign - wouldn't you think this was really a Real Estate fair and not a museum if you also didn't speak a word of Italian?The funniest part of the whole ordeal was the big "NO TOURISTS" sign we saw as we were leaving. Apparently dressing up in our best European attire really did the trick! :) So after that misadventure, we made our way to the legitimate museum. On our way we saw this sign warning about crossing the street (pretty direct, I'd say) -The line wasn't any shorter when we got there, but we really wanted to see it, so we waited about 50 minutes to get inside. Once we were in, we got to see the famous David -Which was really the only thing worth seeing in the museum. There were a lot of Renaissance-era paintings but I'm not really into that period, so it wasn't that interesting to me. It was worth it to see David, though. I couldn't get over how tall the actual statue was. I didn't know this before, but David=David from David and Goliath. And the thing he is holding is a sling that he used to throw the rock at Goliath. Learn something new every day!

After the museum we took a gelatto break, then walked over the to Cathedral. I really liked the Cathedral because it was really unique looking, there were a lot of whites and greens - Then we walked back to that bridge and took some pictures by the river - That night for dinner we had a donner to go because we were, uh, running short on cash and still had to return to Venice and then to Rome. We went to bed early that night so we could catch the morning train back to Venice.

Florence was my favorite city of the three. There was so much to do, so many different things to see, and the market shopping was a lot of fun. I would highly reccomend Florence to anyone who is thinking of seeing Italy - (it is a lot cheaper than Rome or Venice) unlike Rome it isn't wall-to-wall people and unlike Venice there is more to do than appreciate the scenery.