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Vatican City, Italy
Thursday, Jun 30, 2005

A tale of two cities

David Murray
2007-02-21 19:13:51

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So we have arrived now in Rome. My last memories of Rome was that the Colloseum was quite shit actually. The worlds biggest building site\dump !!!! So I was keen to give it another go, plus we were here to meet the new Pope in the other city. The Vatican City.

We grabbed a hotel and proceeded to the Colloseum. Now, we have seen quite a few of these mothers over the years but this is actually the biggest one out there. Prices have risen since 1998, and this a huge rise. Still, we paid as we were not here for a haircut and we hit it hard. Like before, I never really got excited over this. It still is a huge building site\dump but it is impressive. The underneath section that you can only look at is massive but after running around El Djem a couple of months ago, I still felt a little let down by the whole affair. We left and went out the side door and went into the Roman Forum. Last time, I was pretty ruined out, so I left quickly, this time however, we took it in. This site is big, and there is a lot to see if you like ruins that is, and Lucy and I never really seem to tire of them !!!!! So we walked around and found the supposedly grave site of Romulus, whom Rome is named after, (a little history lesson for you all !!!), and then we were kicked out. We walked up and did the touristy photo thing at the Trevi Fountain and the Spanish Steps, and that was all we could achieve on day one

Up early, as we were hitting St Peters for our Pope meeting and then the Sisteen Chapel. We arrived, and the Pope was actually having a service so no Aussies were being let in, so we marched on around to the Sisteen and went up to the door, but it was closed as well. As we had not seen the Pantheon since 98, we walked over to that, but found that this was closed as well. Asking in the tourist office, we found out that it was a holiday and everything was closed, so we shut up shop and had another walk around the Roman Forum

We knew we had to hit the Vatican City stuff today hard as we had lost a day, well, kind of. We went to the Sistine Chapel, and there was a line, but this was no ordinary line, it went around the corner, down the hill, around the corner, around another corner, around another corner, down a straight, and then we were at the end. We joined, queued, waited, and an hour and 20 later, we were in. We walked, actually herded all the way to the Sistine Chapel. We saw loads, and my usual thought was swimming around about how the church are the biggest thieves in the world, and then we arrived. Last time there was scaffold, this time there was not. We both took a few sneaky pictures, got caught as well and told to put my camera away, then we left as we had this meeting to attend to. We walked out and the line had receded a little and we lined up again to go into St Peters. This place is impressive, no matter what you say. The murals are great. We looked and realised we needed to line up again, as we wanted to go onto the roof. We are not Americans, so we climbed the stairs. Halfway up, I fucking wish I was American. I was fucked. Sitting behind a desk at BT had fucked me. Eventually, I made it to the top. Actually, the halfway point. I still had another 320 steps to go. There was no lift, and we made it up. Back down, we heard we could line up to meet the Pope. So we did. What they didn't tell us was that these were the dead ones !!!!! Saw all the tombs including Johnny Paul 1 and 2. I took photos as I was never sure whether he had faked his own death and was now hanging out with Hitler, Morrison and Elvis !!!!!

That was about all in Rome. We have been gorging ourselves on pasta and gelati

Croatia, here we come !!!!!