Monday October 12, 2009 – Rome

Shannon and I both slept great since we had been exhausted. We got up pretty early to get ready for another busy day. For the first time on this trip we were coming back to the same place that night so we didn’t have to repack and could just keep our stuff where it was. That made us both pretty happy. The weather was okay – it had been raining off and on, but probably about 70. So we had to dress for that.

Breakfast was included with our room, but it consisted of prepackaged pastry type things – none of which look very appetizing nor were very good for you. I grabbed one of them so that I could take my allergy meds. I think it was supposed to be like a granola bar, but tasted more like bird seed.

We were then on our way. The bus station was adjacent to the train station, so we walked there and bought a pass for the day. Rome does not have a great system for its bus/train tickets. Once you buy your ticket you have a certain amount of time (I think an hour) to validate it. On the trains you need to stamp your ticket in the terminal before you get on the train. Generally on the train someone comes through and checked to make sure you ticket is validated, if you are caught without a validated ticket you are hit with a 150 euro fine. Ouch!! The buses are another story. You need to stamp them on the bus – which is more challenging than it sounds, especially when the bus is crowded, just to get to the machines. Yes I did say machines, there are often more then one type stamping machines to accommodate the different types of passes and there is no consistency of machines on the different buses. More than once I was trying to put the bus pass in the wrong machine or the wrong spot on the machine. By this point in the trip Shannon and I would sometimes shake our heads at ourselves and mutter “stupid American” thinking that is what the natives were saying about us. Trying to stamp bus tickets caused many stupid American moments.

Our first destination for the day was Vatican City. We needed to take bus 40 Express to get there and we easily found the bus and were on our way. I have to say the Vatican was one of the places I was most excited to visit. In school history and religion were my favorite subjects, and the Vatican was full of both. Before the trip we had talked about visiting the Vatican and that we were going to take as much time there as we needed. Yes we had lots of other things we wanted to see that day, but we also had the last day of the trip to go to any places we missed. We had decided to go to the Museum first – since we had read the lines were shorter going there first instead of going to St. Peter’s. I also really wanted to go to mass at St. Peter’s for a couple of reason – when was I ever going to get that opportunity again? Plus I was missing 3 weeks of church and felt a bit bad about that. Mass was held every hour until noon and then not again until 5 p.m. I knew based on lines and how long it took in the museum there was a chance we would not be at St. Peter’s by noon, but wanted to keep the possibility open.

Once we got on the bus it was about a 20 minute or so ride to the Vatican. It was our first look at Rome in the day light and it was pretty exciting. We got to the bus stop and had our first look of St. Peter’s Plaza. So of course we had to get some pictures.
The Plaza Shannon and the Plaza Me and the Plaza We tried a self portrait. At one point Shannon made a comment about how many Nuns were there. I kind of laughed thinking well we are at the headquarters of the Catholic Church.

We then walked around the side of Vatican City to get in line for the museum. The line was pretty long.

Here I am in line. Here is Shannon. While we were waiting in line there were several tour guides soliciting people to buy their tour – they were promising no waiting in line and a special tour. It was really interesting to see how they were allowed to be right in the line and mixing with those waiting. We wondered if they had an agreement with the Vatican or if they could just get away with doing it. There were a few people who took them up on their offer, but most did not.

After a while we came to this sign. And then this one. Here is St. Peter’s dome from the line. I think we were in line for about an hour when we got to the entrance, where we found this sign. No bathing suites in the museum (or as someone commented no ugly bathing suites)

We then went to go buy our tickets and start our adventure....