Check the price of a Coke!

One last nutella-fest for breakfast.  Deeee-lish!  Then I left my bags in Mom’s room and we took off for our last morning in town before I had to head off for my afternoon flight back to Amsterdam.

The Pantheon was closed when we were by a few nights before but it is open in the daytime.  It’s beautiful.  As with most of these landmarks though, it’s tough to get the perfect photo so I mostly just made ‘mental-photographs’ and sat back and took it all in. 

We then wandered back over to Piazza de Navona for lunch.  I learned a new lesson about eating in touristy places!  So imagine you use a pizza or a bowl of minestrone as your price gauge for how expensive a restaurant is.  You can determine which restaurants are over charging for the same thing fairly easily as you go from restaurant to restaurant.  Never did I think to check the price of a Cola Light!  I thought the waiter had made a mistake when our bill arrived after an admittedly delicious lunch.  16Euros 50 cents for drinks?  But we just had 3 Cola Lights.  Yep – 5.50 each!  Holy crap!  We got taken.  Well – now I’m wiser in that respect and will keep an eye out to include drinks in my gauge-system from now on.

A few last shops to visit on the last walk back to the hotel before heading back to the train station.  I bought myself a little purse intended to replace the M.E.C. purse I bought for $15 in 2001 for my Peru trip.  Somehow I always come back to that one but here’s hoping my ‘Italian leather purse’ can class me up a bit!

Walking to the train station to leave for the airport was tough on me.  I felt like I did when I’d come home for weekends during university at Sunday dinner knowing that I’d have to hit the road shortly and leave back to Edmonton.  I didn’t want to say goodbye to Mom and Kari.  Family is a big missing part of my life this year and it’s been a tough year.  I won’t be home at Christmas this year either but back for Susan’s wedding in March.  I was sorry that the weekend was over so fast but am glad for the 4 days we all had together.

Vatican City and the Sistine Chapel

Nutella again.  I don’t care.  We’re walking a lot and it’s delicious.  One of life’s guilty pleasures!

We left the hotel early enough to plan for a couple of 64 buses to pass that we couldn’t get on on our way to Vatican City.  We jumped onto the 3^rd but Mom got on at the front and we got on in the middle.  The bus was so packed that we couldn’t see her for most of the journey and we were worried she’d get off at the wrong stop.  Fortunately the bus emptied further on and we re-grouped. 

As soon as we got off the bus the skies opened up.  Those hawkers are clever though and within moments umbrellas were for sale everywhere.  Mom got one for 5 Euros.  Not a bad deal.  Regardless, our feet got soaked while walking to find ‘Mark Anthony’ (our guide from the Forum the day before) at the Foot Locker of all places near the Vatican.

We paid 45 Eruos for our ~4hour tour to see the Sistine Chapel and St. Peter’s Basilica.  We were in the ‘fast lane’ and still waited for about 45mins in line.  Mondays are apparently the busiest day.  A Monday in October though seemed surprisingly busy.  Ah well.  Once in, we lined up for our headsets.  Technology is amazing and Mark Anthony had a headset with a microphone and we all had headsets set to channel 3 and we could hear him talk (most of the time).  This meant that I could wander a bit to take pictures and still listen.  Love it.  He said that there are more than 1100 rooms open to the public and if you stopped at each piece on display for 3 seconds you’d be in there for more than 7 years.  He shared the highlights with us which was just fine.

We got a nice story on Michaelangelo and the Sistine Chapel and information on many paintings, statues and tapestries.   The highlight was the Sistine Chapel despite it being packed with rude, rule breaking tourists.  Tisk tisk.  My favourite part of the ceiling was the Creation of Adam and the Garden of Eden.  Cool to see the before and after differences from the restoration work (about a 10 year effort in the 90’s).   They did a great job.

We all looked at each other with shock when we saw the line for St. Peter’s Basilica.  After 4 hours we didn’t have any desire to stand in THAT line!  Too bad but we were tired and hungry and wouldn’t have enjoyed it.  Best leave something to see next time! :o)

A tasty lunch (pizza for me again), another cappuccino and then nap at the hotel before dinner re-energized all of us.  Given that it was my last night, I suggested wandering in the direction of the Coliseum for dinner.  We had passed through a funky little neighbourhood on our way there Sunday morning and sure enough we found a fantastic and DELICIOUS restaurant where we had our ‘last supper’.  Pumpkin (zucca) ravioli for me and some wine made me happy.

After dinner we wandered down to the Coliseum.  It felt good to walk off the pasta-baby.  The Coliseum at night was eerie and beautiful and best of all – practically deserted.  I got some great night shots from several angles as we walked around the giant amphitheatre.  That’s the way to see Rome.  At night, when everyone is indoors eating!

Yay - the Coliseum!

We walked down the hill after breakfast and it only took about 10 minutes to have our first view of the Coliseum.  It’s impressive from any angle and daunting as you approach and see the hordes of tourists in line to buy entrance tickets.  Good thing for pre-purchase tickets on the internet!  We ended up on a tour for 8 Euros for the Coliseum and the Forum in English.  Not a bad deal and it was a warm and sunny day – which is lucky for the end of October.

The Coliseum is more amazing in person than pictures and we were all suitably impressed.   We didn’t have long to sit and absorb the atmosphere since our tour to the Forum was leaving 30mins after our guide set us free.  Just as well, you’d never soak up all the historical details and again, the place was so busy with tourists that it was tricky moving around and avoiding being the doofus walking right in front of someone about to take a picture.

The Forum is more in ruins that I realized.  It is also an amazingly photogenic place.  At this point, several hours into our day, we were hot, tired and getting hungry.  I’ve discovered that I don’t have ‘tourist-stamina’.  I have to do my visits in several short bursts otherwise I just go on autopilot and stop caring about anything other than the nearest seat or cafe or loo.

We hopped on a bus and headed back into town to grab lunch.  Kari and I split yet another pizza.  Mom tried again for her Panini but she was still on the hunt for a good one!  We wandered around, stopped for a coffee at this funky bar and were surprised to learn that our bill was only 5 Euros for 3 cappuccinos and one piece of cake (3 forks obviously).  Amazing!

We headed back to the hotel for a snooze – which was a nice luxury.  I remember our hotel was on a completely different island in Venice.  No napping there.  I crashed hard and my legs felt paralyzed!  I think all the walking and standing was taking its toll.  I guess I’m an old lady already!

For dinner we tried to hop on the 64 bus but several passed by stuffed to the brim.  We walked.  The Campo di Fiori was about 20-30 mins by foot but along the way were several shops.  I was getting the hangries so I had to ask Mom and Kari if they could please hold off shopping until after dinner!  We found a cute restaurant (or make that cute waiter!) just off the square for dinner.  Heineken, bruschetta and lasagne for Kari and me.  Mom had her usual soup and salad. 

Then we wandered over to the Piazza Novano for gelato.  Yum.  It’s beautiful there and the moon, one day past full, was gorgeous.  I wanted to do a geocache and so I plugged the numbers in to my GPS sitting outside the Pantheon.  The hints weren’t great and the signal was poor in the alleys so we gave up once we were supposedly 15m, no 20m, no 3m (!) away from the destination.  Instead we managed to find a cute wooden bench with a Pinnocchio to pose with that we wouldn’t have found otherwise.

[note – It was only a few days later that I clued in that the geocache was probably at Pinnocchio’s bench.  My suspicions were confirmed as I checked out the logged comments for the cache once home.  Grrr....how frustrating.  Well, maybe I’ll just have to go back!]