Day 17 – Rome

The Spanish had left at 7.30am wherever they were going and woke me up, of course my girlfriend slept on. As I was up, I spent a long time looking at Vatican City tours to do today as I really wanted to see it all without the queues. It took ages to find a good one that was reasonably priced and I finally did at 10am. The tour was at 10.45am. Both of us were still in bed, not dressed or showered and definitely not ready. We needed to just get up and leave but my girlfriend obviously didn’t know that it was literally on the other side of town. She took her time getting ready despite me urging her to hurry up or it will be a waste of money for this tour!

Finally she was ready and we headed to the shop to get our croissants. The girl had remembered us and made a chocolate filled one for my girlfriend as she asked yesterday. Today though she didn’t want it so I hd to take it. We got round the corner to get tickets for the train and whilst I was doing this, my girlfriend was being chatted up by an old man asking her to marry him. When she explained to him that she was actually with me his response was “ohh fight, fight?”. Thankfully we left him without any punches being thrown and waited for the train in peace. I was calculating times at the same time as eating my croissant and it dawned on me that the train doesn’t even come for another 10 mins, it takes 10 mins, and we would still need to run for 10 mins as well – not adding up.

I ran out and asked the nearest taxi driver about the time and price and told him about our dilemma. He agreed to not only take us there, but get us there on time as well. The drive was mad, he was driving up tram lines and around cars and following the back roads but somehow, we got there 10 minutes early, and alive! The annoying thing was that we had to wait for 25 mins in the tour office anyway to wait for other people who were late, so we could have taken our time after all. Then entered a small blonde girl with a backpack and a very strong American accent. I thought this tour will be tough listening to her for 4 hours but she was actually really nice and my girlfriend loved her, until finding out that she was in fact a married mother in her late 20’s. Apparently when you get older and have kids and a husband, you automatically lose your cuteness.

The tour was amazing, learning about the history and the funny facts involved with the sculptures, paintings and maps around the Vatican Museums. We also were told in depth about the Sistine Chapel and told not to take pictures. When we were inside, there were of course so many tourists taking pictures and it was hilarious watching the numerous guards standing over them telling them to delete that, and that, and that. One girl had taken 20 pictures and had to go through her camera and delete one by one. The tour ended in the chapel but I had actually booked a tour of St. Peters Basilica as well, so to my girlfriends surprise, when she said thank you to everyone, she called out my name and 3 other girls as we would be getting our own private tour of the Basilica and the crypts.

This wasn’t as enthralling as the earlier tour but still worth it. When it finished, I wanted to climb up to the roof but we had to pay €5 each and we only had enough cash for one of us. My girlfriend said she didn’t mind so I climbed up 511 steps (opting not to take the lift like so many others up to 300 steps) and saw Rome and the rest of the Vatican grounds from the rooftops behind the disciples. Seeing the line for St. Peters, which actually curved the full length of the square, I knew the tour was worth it for that reason alone. My girlfriend had done her own exploring when I was up above, and found the exit and met me at it when I came back down.

We left the main vatican area and travelled into Rome again looking for a restaurant. After spotting 4 people who were in our tour before our St. Peter’s tour and seeing the portion sizes of their pizza, I persuaded my girlfriend to go to this one. Afterwards we had planned to go to Castel Sant’Angelo but it was too expensive to get in. Especially as we had just spent money on a tour of the vatican. Instead, we looked at it from outside and imagined the interior before slowly making our way back to the main square. It was here that we found a street artist that was actually incredible. He made people look unbelievable (although the girls were already decent looking. I was not allowed to say this in front of my girlfriend). I wanted my girlfriend to get hers done so she would look amazing but it would have been too hard to take home. Excuses, excuses.

All joking aside, we spent a long time walking back and forth between the street performers and artists and evaluating their progress. I also went on a hunt for a water tap, which ended up being right beside us, but of course I started in the wrong direction and only saw this when I circled back round with my empty bottle. With the clouds getting darker and the suggestion of rain, we decided that we had people watched enough and headed home to be greeted by the spanish couple, and their new Spanish hostel buddies and talking loudly. We tried to get our accommodation sorted for Florence and as the Spanish had taken up the whole common area including dining table and chairs, we crammed ourselves into our small kitchen and cooked some pasta. We also ate it here because we obviously didn’t want to invade in the fun. One Chinese boy did though, he took his food and sat with them, not having a clue how to speak Spanish but sat and listened to this different language as if he were one of them. The food we made was actually so nice and so filling compared to some of the places we had been, but maybe we are just sick of eating out all the time.

We eventually fell asleep after dinner and the Spanish were actually nice and were quiet when going to sleep for a change. We got in before them so had left the window open tonight, with the hope that we won’t be puddles of sweat in the morning.