Joey and Jill’s Travel Blog

Hello friends. We have survived our trip to Rome. You know, as they say, Rome wasn’t built in a day, but we did it in a day, sort of. We got up early somehow and made an 8:25am train to Roma Termini. It was a beautiful train ride but there was suprisingly a lot of elevation change during the trip so we looked like we had a nervous tick the whole journey because we were clearing our ears the whole time.

We arrived at 10:15am in the nicest train station we have been to yet, Roma Termini, and yes it had a McDonalds, like every train station in Italy (and just a side note, we are yet to see a Starbucks in Italy, I am thinking they are banned). We walked from the train and into the main area and got a map and headed into the wonderful chaos that is Rome.

So far, I am a fan of walking the city we arrive in first to get a feel for what it is like then take what ever mass transit is available. So we decided to walk to Vatican City from the termini and it was a relatively long walk but we really got a chance to take in the city and see how it has evolved from ancient Rome to modern Rome. It is amazing to walk by the pillars that used to hold up their Forums and other buildings now set with the back drop of modern buildings that hold Disney Stores and Gucci shops.

After about 2 hours and passing a huge student protest we made it to St. Peter’s Square. There was a ton of people filling the square and it was all gated off. It was a little confusing as to why things were gated off because so far everything has been pretty obvious, walk around the surroundings, find the line to the museum then go in. But this time we ran into a special guest, the Pope. Apparently, he gives public audiences every Wednesday, we happened to show up on Wednesday just after his talk. So we can now say we saw the Pope as a little white dot on a white car thing amongst a bunch of colorful dots, cool all the same. Once everyone was over the Pope being there we were able to go into St. Peter’s.

Let me tell you, never come here in the Summer to see super tourist hot spots. We are here at the end of October, not really the super high season and this place was packed. What I don’t get is why people can’t form an orderly line, and why the majority of the people in line feel inclined to bump and grind. Jill and I had a large tour behind us and these three people would know when to stop moving forward when they ran into us. It lasted for 30 minutes, which wasn’t as bad as we thought based on how long the line was looking, but I couldn’t stand getting constantly nudged and prodded, I thought I was going to lose it, but since we had just seen the Pope I was feeling pretty calm and forgiving.

Once inside we were blown away with how overwhelming the beauty was of St. Peter’s basilica. It is grand and ornate and huge and despite the enormous amount of people making it hard to appreciate it I would recommend anyone to go see it. In the frenzy of people we forgot to see the tomb of the Popes, which I was pretty bummed about because they have Peter’s tomb down there and that would have been amazing to be so close to. Next time.

After St. Peter’s we went the Vatican Museums. We walked through more security places (there was tons of security…worse than an airport). Then, we walked up to buy our tickets. We got 2 tickets and at first the guys said it was 28, then he looked at us again and gave them to us for 20…still don’t know why. After we got our tickets we walked up to the ticket thing, which we have used a million times, all the underground train places use the same machines, and I proceeded to drop my ticket in the place where it comes out. It dropped in there, and I could feel it slip away into the abyss of the machine and I now shot Jill and I into an awkward scenario. The turn style wouldn’t turn obviously because I had just thrown my ticket away, and so Jill gave me her’s so I could get through and talk to one of the guys to explain how cool I am, and that I just put my ticket in the wrong way. Basically, they eventually let Jill in but not before I managed to create a huge traffic jam of people wanting to get by and totally embarassing Jill, she’s a good sport and let me off the hook sort of, she still laughs uncontrollably when we talk about it. Woops.

I won’t even begin to try and explain the vastness of the Vatican Museums, they have everything from Egyptian art to modern religious art and everything in between. So, we saw a lot of amazing works and got a lot of visual history stuffed into our memories. The big one though was the Sistine Chapel. It was amazing, but not what I had expected. It is essentially a larger rectangular room that has one of the most iconic paintings ever painted on it’s ceiling. It is a very funny experience, because you aren’t allowed to talk or take pictures but everyone talks and takes pictures. The crowd noise starts to rise as new people come in and then one of the guards goes, SHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH! Then a flash goes off and the guards freak out and look around and go NO PICTURES! We actually saw a couple get escorted out because they were video taping. I talked and took pictures, I am a such a rebel:

After the Sistine Chapel Jill and I were exhausted. We left the Museum as fast as we could to find pizza and wine. So far we couldn’t go wrong with Ristorantes, but this one was the worst place we have eaten at since we have been here. We both got pizzas, mine strangely tasted like a quessadilla with hot sauce at times, and to top it off we got a half bottle of their house red. It was a very nice wine presentation when the waiter brought it up, he showed it to us, we frowned because it looked like a Rosè, he said no it’s our house red, he then unscrewed the cheap screw top, dropped this lid on the ground, as he tried to get the cap from the ground he placed the bottle on the table, he dropped the cap again so he resorted to kicking it out into the street. He then filled our mismatched wine glasses and smiled, we smiled, he left and we noticed that we were about to enjoy a fine chilled red wine. But we didn’t care, we were so hungry, we even had Cappucinos after our meal, they tasted like warm milk, yummy!

At this point we didn’t want to walk anymore so we found the over crowded but nice Metro and went off to the Colosseum. It was really amazing to stand out in front of such an old construction. It was surreal at how many people come to visit it as well as thinking that it used to be a place where such horrible things took place. Either way it is an architectural feat and a piece of history. I had really wanted to go to the large Roman Forum, but by the time we got there it was closed but I honestly am not sure if I could have managed walking through it seeing how tired we were. Roma Termini was just a short ways away from the Colosseum so we slowly walked back to the station. We had an hour to kill when we got there so we got some drinks and relaxed. The train ride back was awesome, seeing how I could sleep. Rome was amazing and I need to go back and see the rest of it. It was a major dream come true to walk the former center of the world, and would recommend everyone else go too, just not all at once.

We love you all and can’t wait to see everyone and eat Tracktown pizza and have a couple Jubelales.

<3 Joey and Jill

P.S. Here are our Rome pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9547617@N02/sets/72157608502923652/

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 3:25 pm and is filed under Italy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.