I apologize for taking so long to post this. The Internet has not been cooperating with me lately and it has taken all my willpower not to bash my laptop with a hammer. Anyway, on to the details. Our trip was awesome, except for the off-and-on rain and snow. Our hostel in Florence, as a mentioned earlier, was absolutely wonderful. What kind of hostel encourages you to graffiti the walls?! This one does! We thought we'd take advantage and etch our names in.
No joke, the entire hostel was like this :)
When I come back in 60 years, I can be reminded of the good ol' days.
Rome at night. Since we arrived in Rome the first time, the river had risen at least 4 feet.We decided that we might as well see Vatican City since we were in the area and all. All the religious fanatics were out in force and it wasn't even prime tourist season. St. Peter's Basilica was enormous and it took us 20 minutes just to walk the inside. I have no idea why, but I have always invisaged the Sistine Chapel as it's own building. We kept looking for a sign that was pointing to it, but there was nothing. So after looking at the very creepy corpse of John Paul II and the Pieta, we went in search of the illusive chapel. We saw a long line of people and decided to get in it. Where there are toursits, there's usually something important to see, right? We waited. And waited. And waited. Finally, we got to the front of the line. There was a little sign saying that the entrance fee was 7 euros with the use of an elevator and 5 euros to go on foot. There was no way that we were going to pay extra just to use an elevator, so we took a deep breath and started climbing. After the first few turns on the spiral staircase, my head was spinning. About 15 minutes into our climb, we came to a landing. I looked at Lindsay and said, "That wasn't bad at all." I had spoken to soon because we walked a few feet more and then we saw more. Ten minutes more of climbing and then we came to a balcony inside St. Peter's which looked up at none other than the Sistine Chapel. It turns out that we had been searching for a non-existent building, when we had been walking right underneath it the whole time. The angle that we were at on the balcony did not give a very good view of the painting so we decided to go back done and look up from the ground level.
We were heading back to look for the exit when I saw some people going up a staircase. Feeling adventurous, we followed them into what was the scariest staircase I have ever been on. It was a spiral staircase that was no wider than two and half feet wide (I'm being generous here). We were climbing into the rotunda so we had to lean our bodies to the right while we walked up steps that were extremely steep and had a "handrail" that was a rope hanging down from the ceiling. I admit that I am slightly clausterphobic, but Lindsay agreed that it was not a fun experience. People were dropping like flies while climbing up and everyone else had to squeeze their way by. By the time we finally got to the top, we were gasping for breath and holding our sides. Luckily, the view was worth it. We came out at the very top of the rotunda and the entire city of Rome was laid out beneath us. So beautiful, but my ears were popping! After 15 minutes of gawking, we headed back down, which was as, if not more scary, than the way down. Side Note: When the workmen were building the chapel and Michaelangelo was painting it, they lived at the top and had food and water delivered to them. Can you imagine having to climb the stairs everyday to deliver things to the workers?! I think I'd rather be unemployed.
We went back to the ground level again and checked out the Sistine Chapel from 500 feet below. Sadly, you can't see much.
This was taking from the bottom with my zoom all the way out.
The Pieta. It was behind glass because some crazy person tried to sabotage it. The Vatican guards are no joke. We were sitting on a ledge in the basilica looking at our guide book and a guard almost escorted us out.
The Vatican. See those columns at the very top? We were above that.
Doesn't look that crooked from here.
From here it does. Supposedly it is completely safe because they have stabilizers under the building, but I'm still not so sure.
Went back to Florence for one last night, but under mitigating circumstances, we took a very late train back to Rome. We arrived at 1:30 in the morning and got to our hostel around 2. The kid who was in charge of the hostel was not there (found out later that he was at the bar)and we didn't know what room we were in, so we sat in the kitchen waiting. A Mexican couple came in, took pity on us, and gave us some "water" they had brought from Mexico. It was 2:30 at this point and we were tired of waiting around so we left our stuff in the hostel and walking around looking for some place to sit and wait for morning. Where else could we go, but the Coliseum? We sat on some rocks, which I'm sure used to be columns, sang, talked, and slept for about 5 minutes. I can officially say it: I slept outside the Coliseum. In retrospect, I'm pretty sure that it's illegal to sleep on Roman ruins, but ya gotta do what ya gotta do.
Our last day in Rome we walked around (our favorite activity) and window shopped. We decided to come back to our hostel early to get ready for our 4 am wake-up call. As we were contemplating going into a divy-looking restaurant, a furry black creature scurried away in front of us. Lindsay turned to me and asked, "Was that what I think it was?" We just kept walking and found a restaurant...far away.
Going through airport security was interesting as well. Poor Lindsay got her water bottle, face wash, and treasured basil sauce confiscated, while I got my sauce, 2 lighters, fingernail clippers, and way too many liquids through without a problem. Airport security fails on so many levels.
This weekend is our trip to Nice. Here's hoping that it will be nice. Thanks Lindsay :)
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