Rome - Vatican City

April 2006

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We started our second day by having breakfast in the hotel's glassed in roof terrace which afforded us great views of the whole of Rome. This was to be our day at the Vatican. We set off on one of only two Metro rides that we had while we were in Rome and, at the appropriate stop, flowed with the rest of the crowd off the tube and towards the Vatican. To get out of the crowds for a while we walked on the opposite side of the road where Annie found a shop with clothes she liked the look of. Inside one of the sales ladies adopted her and told her exactly what to try on, down to not liking the colour of Annie's T-shirt and making her change that for the trying on. Annie walked out with a whole pile of new clothes and, even though we later discovered another branch of the same shop next to our hotel, the sales lady was an experience not to be missed.

After the shopping interruption we continued on to the Vatican. The queue to the Sistine Chapel was enormous so we headed off to the main area of the Vatican. We thought we were in a queue for the open area but in fact we ended up inside St Peter's Basilica which is HUGE. We wandered around stopping every now and again to listen to tour guides talking about different parts of the Basilica. We then wandered around the outside area where everyone sits when attending a Papal sermon or service before braving the queue into the Sistine Chapel. It was a good queuing time as it had started raining so we spent the next hour or so slowly snaking our way around the walls of the Vatican City under our umbrellas until we got into first the gardens, then the Raphael Rooms and finally the Sistine Chapel, it was all worth the wait. As expected, we spent quite some time just looking up at the ceiling in amazement before leaving the Vatican City.

We wandered through some of the side streets to our next stop, Castel Sant Angelo which has great views of St Peter's as well as a secret passageway between the two for the Pope to escape through during time of war. We crossed the Tiber River via the statue lined Ponte Castel Sant' Angelo and walked along the river's edge stopping often to look at the views of St Peter's and various other buildings along the way. We also stopped in at a little deli to buy some bread, cheese and olives which we were going to eat while sitting on the Spanish Steps but, as we walked along Via Condotti, THE trendy shopping street, which leads up to the steps, the heavens opened so we had a picnic in our hotel room instead (-: