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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