Day 22 14/4/06 - Italy

Rome -> Vatican -> Rome

Highlight

• We woke up early to try to beat the crowd to the Vatican museum, but because we had to wait for brekkie at the hotel, we didn't get there as early as we hoped. When we got there the line was massive. There were people toting that they could get us in without waiting in line, so we thought it might be worth it to save some time. It cost us 42 Euros EACH and we could only pay in cash. Little did we know that once we paid the money, we were also waiting, just not in the Vatican line, we were waiting in the people who ripped us off's office for about 30 minutes, then we did skip the line. We then waited another 15 minutes for our personal guide, 5 minutes to check our audio guides were working, so we didn't save any time at all!
• Slokky being sick again, this time with a stomach ache. He kept having to visit the toilets every couple of minutes, not a very pleasant experience.
• The amount of people at the Vatican and the inefficiencies and lack of crowd control. The Sistine Chapel was amazing, but the experience was ruined by the noisy crowd, and the loudspeaker announcements constantly telling people to be quiet.
• After almost a whole day of wondering, we still haven't seen the whole museum. We visited the famous sites briefly, the highlights for me were the Maps Gallery and the Tapestries.
• We made our way to St Peter's for Good Friday Mass. After we made that special trip yesterday to get the tix, we thought we would be allocated a seat. Little did we know, the tix meant nothing at all. You have to line up like the rest of the world to get into the mass. We found out later that we could've skipped the line if we waved our tix, but when we asked the Vatican guards, they weren't any help at all. We ended up seating at the very back, I wasn't able to see a thing, especially when everyone started standing up. There were people everywhere, and about 10 minutes into the mass, Slokky had another stomach ache so we had to leave the mass anyway.
• After such a disappointing day, we did manage to discover a bit of magic. We wandered back to the hotel instead of catching public transport, visiting many lively piazzas and several famous fountains at night.
• We visited the foodie shops, were beautiful displays of all sort of antipasto products available. We didn't end up buying anything though 'cos there were so many people there.
• After complaining that our bathroom leaked and being assured that it would be fixed, we went back to discover, of course, that this was not the case. So we had to put down a whole bunch of towels on the floor so that the water didn't leak all over the floor.
• Finally got to the Internet after a looong stay away. We discovered that Mac Bank stuffed up my scheduled transfer and one of the bills didn't get paid.

Food

• Welcome Residences breakfast:
  • croissants
  • danish
  • chocolate croissants
  • brioche
  • apricot pie
  • chocolate tart
  • sliced white bread
  • jams, butter
  • donuts
  • coffee, tea, hot chocolate
  • cereals
  • yoghurts
• Almond Porky.
• Lollies.
• Chocolate, pistachio and coffee gelato with cream (1.8)
• Stuffed/crumbed vegetables (3.5)
• Biscuit with cheese.