All roads lead to Rome...

Within Rome, all roads also lead to a central point.. in spite of this, it is possible to get lost in Rome today. Google Maps comes in very handy!

The previous post on this Europe trip (day1) is here..

On day 2 we got up, had breakfast at Hotel Canada (they have a very good breakfast for 10$/person) and walked to the train station. We were taking a local metro to the Vatican. The local metros in Rome are really good. On time, every efficient and people on the trains are friendly. The ticket buying system is also very easy to use. 

We were to meet our tour guide at the bottom of the steps directly opposite the Vatican entrance per instructions. This is like telling a Penguin, you walk up that island of ice and your partner will meet you there.. It looks like all of Rome is at those steps, trying to find their tour guide. There are a zillion tour guides holding flags with the tour company names and some other little beanie baby or toy tied to their little flags. The trick is to go early so you can be united with your guide. Then it is easy.. or not.. depending on, if you belong to our family.

The tour guide looked at San and the girls and shook her head. My guess was she was thinking "if you girls dress like this to Vatican, what do you wear at home? do you wear anything at all?" and my answer would have been "I have been married to this woman for 19 years and I have seen her ankles only three times in public and her knees once when she came to our Christian friends wedding in Napa. she is usually covered head to toe and gives middle eastern burka wearing woman feeling under clothed!"..

Anyways, I don't know what got into San and the kids. They decided that given Europe was going to be hot and all we had was one carry on and a backpack each for this trip (to save time at airports), they packed and dressed "light". Short skirts and shorts everywhere for the most part. Out of all of those, they decided to pick the shortest for Vatican day. Turns out the Vatican has a dress code. No exposing shoulders or knees when going into the place. 

This was interesting because most of the tourists were stuck. This problem was solved by a bunch of African and Middle eastern immigrants who were selling scarves with pictures of vatican for anywhere from 10 to 3 Euros.. "knee cover. shoulder cover".. they kept shouting and were walking among the penguins trying to find their guides doing brisk business. We bargained with two or three of these fellows, found the LCM on the price (kids, note how math comes in handy) and got three of these. The boys just pulled down their shorts to cover the knees and started walking funny with a rap star gait! I now know why these rap star folks walk funny.. when you are constantly trying to avoid your shorts from falling off your hip, you walk like that!

Where were we? yes, Vatican..

We had booked trips on Viator. The tour guides were good. They had all the tickets pre booked and it was all "jump the line". Also they made sure most of our group was from USA/Canada and they grouped families with kids together. We had a 14 people group and the walking started. 

The Vatican museum is amazing. The Christian leadership went out of their way to create this place and they made sure it will be preserved well. 

We had seen a lot of stuff in Uffizi that was repeated here, which was good. We had already been conditioned on what to expect. There is a lot of history in this place... and also some statues that put the previous one in Uffizi to shame.. like this one..Take that Uffizi!

The photographs in Portrait format in slide show..

another slide show..

 

We went to the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately there were no Photographs allowed. Some of the folks in our group were taking pictures by holding their iPhones at waist level. I thought that was not right. If me being a non Christian could accept the rules there and put my camera inside, these folks with their Crosses on their neck chains could have done better.. San told me to mind my business and we kept walking out. We also found that there were lot of folks who did expose their knees and shoulders and no one said anything. But the scarves were not exactly returnable..  I liked the ceiling but thought it was too depressing. Loved the ceiling in the Palace de Vecchio better. 

I did find a new favorite painter after this trip. Raphael! The one painting on a wall above a window where he painted a prison room with amazing shadows stayed with me for a long time. Pity this guy died young. His work was the best in that place..

The basilica is a completely different story. The place is well lit compared to most of the other churches we visited and I loved it. I like places of worship that are not dark and dinghy.. a place that can lift up your spirit. Saint Peters Basilica is amazing. I could kneel down there and say a prayer and feel a sense of calm that you get in some of the grand temples in India. Totally awe inspiring place.

Once we were done with the Museum tour, the Sistine Chapel and Basilica, the morning part of the tour ended with us in the open courtyard. That in itself is grand. (see the Pano pics below). The Pano feature on iPhone was best to capture these places.. 

this is a Vertical Pano shot by doing backbends.. 

We had a tricky situation. it was already 12:30. We were supposed to be at the Coliseum to find our guide there at 1:45 for a 2PM tour. Now that we knew that finding your tour guide takes time, we rushed out to the metro. It was a 20 minute walk. We took the train, changed trains, then went to the stop for the Coliseum. Our first thought was let's get there, check in with guide and hope to find something to eat. The kids were starting to strike saying "lets eat here and then go there". 

Eventually we ended up right in front of the Coliseum and there was a restaurant where we found food. They had sandwiches, fries, juice, etc.. so it worked out. The outside temperatures were close to 100F. There were no trees in the area. Mostly ruins for touring around. It is a good idea to have a hat or an umbrella if you are doing these tours in summer. We walked through multiple levels of the Coliseum with our tourguide Ursus. He was a family man with three kids of his own and given our group was just the 8 of us and a Canadian family with two kids and a grandma, he made sure the kids were the focus of the tour. They were all attentive and he was giving them a history lesson. The adults mostly trudged along taking pictures. 

The Coliesum in an interesting place. Human depravity knows no bounds. At least that was my one line takeaway after walking around this place and the surrounding ruins for almost 4 hours. Good news here? Free water fountains everywhere in Rome with great cool drinking water! 

After the tour, he gave us an option to continue on the other side. We said "we are all extremely tired. We will pass". Handed him the head phones and went back to take the metro to the hotel. 

A video to cover our Day 2 of the Europe trip..

We did laundry at a Laundromat near the hotel, the ladies decided their hubbies should get something for being nice the whole day and sponsored a Thai massage at a place one block from the hotel. I promptly got an allergic reaction from the oil the lady used for the massage. We ate a nice dinner again within a block from the hotel at a restaurant that played world cup games on the big screen. Think it was the Belgium Japan match where Belgium came from behind and won. It was a Monday evening.  After the dinner we called it a night.

We were going to go our different routes on the trip. We said our byes and it was time to pack up everything. The hotel part of the trip was over.

It was B&B time..