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Monday 10th August 2015

Rome

Claire and I were up at 6am today, as we had a cunning plan. We'd moved St Peter's Basilica back onto the must see list after Jen had told us it was the highlight of her trip, so we thought we'd get there early and try and beat the crowds.

We arrived at about 8am, after we'd caught the Metro, walked from the station and bought ourselves some custard filled croissants (highly recommended). The view across St Peter's Square was amazing: no queue, and hardly any people. We went straight through the security checks and inside, with no hidden queues to be seen.

The Basilica is huge, and incredibly ornate both inside and out. The ceilings are painted and there are statues and things all over the place. In the middle is a giant sculpture thing which apparently was made by a famous sculptor called Bernini out of bronze acquired from the Pantheon. I though the giant sculpture thing was a pretty impressive monstrosity, but was careful to express my opinion quietly to Claire, as there were lots of nuns and priests in earshot. St Peter's is a bit like lots of small churches in one, as there are lots of sections at the edges with their own pulpits and pews.

We spent about half an hour in quiet contemplation on some chairs, awaiting the opening of the Vatican Grottoes at 9am. When I say quiet contemplation, I mean that Claire read the guide book and I went through my photos on my phone and picked my favourites.

The grottoes are an underground crypt and contain, amongst other things, the tombs of all the popes. There are more crypts and tunnels deeper below called the necropolis, but you can only go down there by special arrangement months in advance. It would have been great to go down there as the necropolis features strongly in Angels and Demons and it contains the bones of St Peter, who was one of Jesus' disciples and was the first pope. We just want to go down there because it sounds exciting.

After emerging from the grottoes we did another lap of the basilica so Claire could point out all the things she'd identified from the guidebook, and then headed off for a drink and a snack. The first cafe we went to was obviously far to close to the Vatican, as they wanted to charge us €8 for a cup of coffee and didn't even dare put the prices on their breakfast menu. We stomped off in search of somewhere cheaper, and found a much nicer cafe a few streets away where the coffee was only €3.

The day was a lot cooler (at least 10 degrees cooler than yesterday) and it was cloudy, so the sightseeing was much easier going. We got back on the Metro and went to visit the Capuchin Crypt, which is a crypt below a church right in the middle of the shopping district. The interesting thing about this crypt is that none of the bones are in tombs, they're all arranged in rather macabre artwork all over the crypt walls! There must be hundreds of skeletons down there. My understanding from the information boards is that the Capuchin monks were, for some reason, impounded in the crypt, and one of the arty ones was a bit bored and managed to convince the others to let him unearth all their deceased colleagues to make pretty patterns on the walls. Very strange.

After that, we walked to the Pantheon, which is Rome's oldest church. It was originally some sort of pagan temple and was later commandeered by the Catholics. It's an unusual building, rather chunky from the outside and with a massive circular hole in the middle of the roof called an oculus, I assume to let in light. It also lets in rain which is what it was doing when we were there. We stayed there for a short while and then went to take the weight off our feet at a cafe round the corner. We had a couple of beers and some nibbles and then lunch.

It started throwing it down with rain while we were there. Within minutes the selfie stick sellers had switched their ware to ponchos and umbrellas, and were equally persistent with their sales pitches. We managed to come away without any of their merchandise, and even though it rained quite heavily on our walk to catch our last Metro of the trip, we were dry within about 10 minutes as it was still pretty warm.

We caught a bus to the airport, and at the time of writing, only have €1.50 left in cash! Pretty tight budgeting. We do pay for a lot of things by credit card so it is not as reckless as it sounds.

Rome airport is a most unpleasant experience. It makes Brussels feel like a yoga retreat in comparison. They changed our departure gate 3 times whilst we were there, there were way more people than seats in the airport, and multiple queues for the same gate. We were late boarding and late taking off, but our pilot assures us that we will be arriving in Munich at our scheduled time. I hope so, as Claire is once again getting twitchy about making our connection. Unlike our outbound flights, we have been given free drinks and have even been offered a free sandwich. You may not believe this, but we have both turned it down. Yes, we have turned down free food! Only because we bought a sandwich from the airport that looks nicer. If it had been a cake it would have been a different story.

We have both enjoyed our trip to Rome, but if we return one day then it will definitely be out of season when we hope it will be both cooler and less busy.

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Overheating

Sunday 9th August 2015

Rome

Jen and Andrew had decided to have a morning off sightseeing, so Claire, Kim and I set off to see some of the ancient attractions of Rome - the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. I soon began to suspect that maybe Jen and Andrew knew something I didn't, because it was unbearably hot. I had struggled with the heat the previous day, but had just about coped with the aid of air conditioning and shade, which we managed to find enough of. Today seemed a hotter day with no cool respite in sight.

The queues at the Colosseum rivalled those from the previous day, but despite the fact that we had prebooked tickets, we still had to stand in the same queue to get in. As the Colosseum was definitely on the must see list, and as we'd parted with money in advance, we had no choice but to join the queue and wait our turn. The Colosseum was a pretty amazing sight, from inside and outside, and I just wished it was 10 degrees cooler and less busy, as we didn't stay as long as we'd have liked to in better conditions.

We had lunch in one of the few nearby restaurants, which had mediocre food, poor service, and awful toilets, and then went for a look at the Roman Forum, which was included in our Colosseum ticket price. In hindsight, I should have stayed in the mediocre restaurant (or found a better one) as the only thing I can remember about the Forum was seeing 3 parakeets and feeling hotter that I've ever been in my life or ever hope to be again. I'm still unsure whether the parakeets were a heat induced hallucination or not, as no one else saw them. I really don't know how Kim and Claire were coping with the heat.

We ended up cutting our visit short (I think) and Claire and I went back to the apartment so I could cool down. This was after Claire refused to let me go back alone because she was worried about me getting back safely. I'm sure I've faced worse dangers than Italians in the past but she was having none of it.

The afternoon consisted of me sleeping for 3 hours and Claire going back out. Not very interesting really for blogging purposes, and I won't write about what Claire did because we did it again together the next day.

The only things I can say in my defence are that a) I have developed a cold since arriving which I think made me feel worse, and b) it was 38 degrees centigrade.

When everyone had cooled down later we all went to a nice little restaurant nearby with air conditioning where they were selling a litre of wine for €8!

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Holy Queues

Saturday 8th August 2015

Rome

We were up fairly early with a view (or so I thought) to travelling over to Vatican City, getting a quick breakfast and then picking our pre booked tickets up and doing the tour of the museum and the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately, my travelling companions seemed to have forgotten how important food is to me and the plan seemed to be to skip breakfast altogether in favour of the museum. I think Claire must have warned everyone of an oncoming meltdown as when I emerged from the toilets in the foyer everyone seemed rather keen to go to the cafe.

The cafe in the Vatican Museum is one of the worst cafes I've ever been to, although as it served food I'm not really in a position to complain too much. This was our introduction to Vatican queuing. I swear they love queues even more than the British do, and almost as much as they love the Pope. We had to queue to order, then join a separate queue to pay and then another to get our food! I had something that was supposed to be a cold pizza, but that was even less recognisable as pizza than Asda Smartprice £1 for 6 mini pizzas. It was calories though which was the main thing.

The queue to get into the Vatican Museums was huge and in full sun, and if we hadn't had the foresight to pre book tickets I would have given up and just not bothered with it at all. As it was, we were able to go straight to the front so all was well. It was extremely crowded inside the museum though, which was a shame as I'm sure we could have spent hours in there if it was a bit more relaxing.

The main thing I wanted to see in there was the Sistine Chapel - the one with the famous ceiling painted by Michaelangelo. It was very busy in there too, and my planned quiet moments of reflection sat on a nice church pew were not to be, as there were no pews and it was not quiet. There was also rather a lot of jostling going on. We stayed for as long as we could cope with (about 5 minutes) and then followed the crowds out and managed to find a nice bench in the shade outside to eat an ice lolly.

After that, whilst looking for a shortcut to St Peter's Square, we came across a mini museum housing the Popemobiles, including the Fiat that looks a bit like a Landrover that one of the Popes (John Paul I?) got shot in. There was hardly anyone in there which made a welcome change from the crowds of the main museum. We failed to find the shortcut to St Peter's so had to walk round the long way (we later found out it was via the Sistine Chapel).

Although the Basilica was on our must see list, when we saw the queue we quickly moved it to our "would like to see" list. We found a nice little restaurant with air conditioning and a very helpful waitress and on her recommendation, enjoyed some nice salads and focaccia with some wine whilst considering our options for the afternoon. The waiter was rather taken with our "beautiful blue eyes" and gave us some limoncello before we left.

We decided on visiting Castle d'Angelo in the afternoon, which is also known as the Church of the Illumination in the Dan Brown book Angels and Demons. It was much less busy there and the only disappointment was that we didn't get to see the secret passage to the Vatican.

While we were there we literally saw the blind leading the blind. Two blind people with white sticks leading two other blind people round who must have lost or forgotten their sticks. We didn't get a photo because there was some sort of policeman or security guard giving us disapproving looks. I'm sure you can imagine the scene.

After that, we walked back to the apartment, which was quite a long way, but only slightly further than the nearest metro station. I made sure I checked this myself rather than just taking Claire's word for it.

We were plagued with selfie stick sellers, tour guides and of course, selfie sticks themselves throughout the day, especially near to Vatican City. We even considered buying selfie sticks just so no one would try and sell us one. Once people had attached their phones/cameras to the sticks, they couldn't be bothered to take them off, which was pretty inconvenient when they were taking non-selfie photos, or texting or answering the phone.

We went out for dinner later at a popular little traditional Italian restaurant which, unbeknown to us, we had walked past the previous day, and then walked all the way back to the apartment, which felt like about 10 miles, but was only 2.1km according to Google maps.

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Home to Rome

Friday 7th August 2015

We're spending the next few days in Rome on a bit of a last minute trip. Claire's sister Kim is visiting from Australia, and in true Aussie fashion has decided that a little trip across to Europe is nothing compared to what she's used to, hence our rendezvous with Kim as well as Jen and Andrew in Italy instead of England!

There were no direct flights from any airport near us so we have had to fly Manchester-Brussels-Rome. The first leg of the journey - home to Manchester airport was fine and we arrived with plenty of time to spare for a croissant breakfast. Unfortunately, Manchester airport was experiencing a serious croissant deficiency so we had to settle for a far inferior Danish pastry. To make ourselves feel a bit better about the situation we had a pint of lager to go with it.

This is the first time we've flown for a while (I don't think we've flown anywhere since we've had George) and so it was the first time we've been able to try out Apple Passbook's digital boarding passes. Despite my doubts, holding my phone over the scanner worked just fine and we were soon through to departures.

We did not really enjoy the flight to Brussels. I never really enjoy flights but this one was even less enjoyable than usual. We'd accidentally booked seats at the back of the plane so there was no window. I felt a bit sick for most of the journey and was glad to get off at the other end. At least there were no children nearby.

I have always thought that Manchester airport is a pretty grim place, but although the Belgians have obviously made an effort with the appearance of Brussels airport, it turned out to be far more stress inducing than Manchester.

Firstly, the passport control officer looked at my passport, then me, then laughed and waved me through whilst refusing to tell me what he was laughing at. Admittedly, my passport photo isn't a very good likeness but no one's ever reacted like that before.

Then we had to go through security again (don't know where they think we could have got hold of any contraband from) which was a much slower process than in Manchester. Maybe the Belgians don't trust the British to do a proper job of security. The digital boarding passes caused some confusion here, as they wanted to see our passes as we walked through the the metal detector, when our phones were in the scanning machine. We eventually got through and started the lengthy walk to our departure gate.

Claire was getting a bit twitchy about making our connection in time but we arrived before they'd even started boarding, which was a good job because it took me about 10 minutes to get two drinks out of the nearby vending machine, which was a mixture of very modern and very old fashioned. Then the diet coke fell on the floor from a height of about 2 metres so we didn't dare open it for ages.

The second flight was a bit better than the first and we were surprised to suddenly arrive in the outside bit of Rome airport without having been through any sort of security or passport control.

Then we had the usual challenge of getting into the centre of Rome from the airport. We managed to get a bus to some sort of bus station thing, which Claire assured me was only a short walk from the apartment. This worried me slightly as we appeared to in the Bronx, but it turned out that we weren't actually staying in the Bronx, but that Claire's idea of a short walk was somewhat different to mine. As you know, I'm not normally averse to walks, even if they do turn out to be a bit long, but when it's 35 degrees outside and humid then it's a different story.

Claire eventually managed to drag me across the city where we collapsed into the apartment only to be told that we could have caught the tram thing for €1.50 each.

We saw a few of Rome's famous sights on our walk, although I was a bit too hot to be interested. The Pantheon looks like it's definitely worth further investigation when I've acclimatised.

We went to the nearest restaurant to the apartment for dinner, which turned out to be lovely, and quite amusing when the waiter went through the menu with us and explained that one of the pasta dishes was "goldfish and tomatoes". Jen and Andrew had it just to find out what the fish really was, although we never quite made our minds up. Whatever it was, it was a bit too big to be a goldfish though.

Tomorrow we are going to Vatican City.

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