Day 16...Rule #165: Always pay attention to the details

Day 16, June 30th:

Let’s begin by visualizing Day 2 of Italy in your own mind at home!  Close your eyes and dream of the most detail you have ever seen in your life.  Now with your eyes still closed, imagine that much detail in every piece of artwork in 1,000s of rooms with each square inch of each wall, floor, and ceiling being detailed with paintings, statues, patterns, mosaics, sculptures and beautifulness.  Hey!!!! You fail…you either opened your eyes or didn’t follow directions because you are obviously reading this right now!  Hahaha The detail in the Vatican Museum and the Vatican was absolutely unbelievable. 

We began the day around 06:45 and took the metro to the Vatican Museum.  As I just mentioned, it was soooo full of detail.  After a while, it was very overwhelming and we just had to walk through it and not even stop to look.  You could spend weeks in there and still not see everything fully.  I bet the museum experts could walk around the museum and still find things they haven’t noticed before.  It is so detailed that I can’t even describe it…you will just have to wait to see the pictures!  We went through the Sistine Chapel and it is absolutely beautiful (sorry…no pictures allowed).  After several hours in the museum, we headed around to St. Peter’s Basilica.  The Pope holds mass there every Wednesday and Sunday and we were lucky enough to be there on a Wednesday.  By that I mean, we didn’t go to mass, but that means that everyone including their mother, father, second cousin’s wife’s dog groomer and mail carrier were there too.  It was crazy.  After snaking around in a line that was a mile long, we finally made it to the front doors.  It was stunning!  The detail from the museum continued throughout the Basilica.  There were sculptures galore, each representing a different story.  I was amazed at how large the Basilica actually was in size.  You will just have to see it for yourself too. 

After a full day inside the Vatican City walls, we left for gelato at a nearby store called “Old Bridge Gelato.”  This was a suggested find by our inter-port student from Rome.  It was amazing!!!!  I had a huge bowl of melon, coconut and walnut for only 2 euro.  Please don’t go through my blog posts and count the number of gelatos I have eaten so far or how much money has been spent on gelato.  It may be frightening!!!!  But it is well worth it…I promise!  We sat on the side of the road watching this poor guy try to tow a car from the side of the street and he failed miserably the entire 20 minutes we sat there eating our scrumptious gelato.  After our break, we took the metro to the Tiber River, which runs through the middle of Rome.  It was not as beautiful as I expected, but it was still kinda cool.  Along the way, we stopped by Piazza del Popolo.  While we were there, Kirby (the vacuum cleaner company) was doing a photo shoot for an upcoming advertisement and they had vacuums all over this piazza.  It was kinda cool and funny…it made me think of the days when we had a Kirby vacuum (mummum and pa’s lasted longer therefore I remember those days more vividly).  We then headed to Piazza Napoleone and Pincio Park, which provided us with panoramic views of the whole city.  It was so neat to see all of ROME at once!  We parked ourselves in the shade of a tree and rested for about 45 minutes before making our way back to the hostel to pick up our bags. 

We then took a train to the airport.  It was very fun trying to figure out how to buy our tickets because the ticket machines were broken and no one spoke English.  We finally found a guy selling the tickets that he had to hand write for us, since the machines were broken.  You don’t realize how nice it is to have ticket machines with the option of changing the language until you, well, can’t use them.  The train ticket was 15 euro to get to the airport for our flight to VENICE.  Once we got to the airport, the check-in machines didn’t work either.  It was not our day for ticket machines.  We finally got them to work and we made our way through security.  Daniel and Danielle got some of their bathroom stuff taken because it was too big, but Daniel totally brought a pretty descent sized Swiss Army knife onboard.  We laughed that you couldn’t have shaving cream or smelly lotion, but the pocketknife was okay.  Anyways…we ate dinner before our flight.  I ate a chicken and tomato sandwich with some McDonald’s fries.  It felt so good to be able to have McD fries!  After we landed, we had to take two taxis to the hotel, since we had 6 people, for 35 euros apiece.  What a rip off but you got to get there somehow!  We immediately fell asleep on our beds…I wonder why!