Vatican City and Ancient Roma

After seeing all the off attractions around the city, we decided to devote an entire day each to the Vatican and ancient Rome.

We headed to the Vatican on Thursday with Brooke and Tash and had a good look round the square - with it's life size nativity scene and huge Christmas tree. Then after going thru the airport-like security screening, went into St Peter's Basillica. That place is huge, and lavishly decorated, but unfortunately the low light makes is hard to get good photos without a tripod. Somehow I think they purposely do that. We also checked out the very pristine catacombs under the basillica.

After that we had some lunch and headed to the Vatican museum around the corner. For some strange reason they close the museum entrance at 12.30 during winter and we missed out by about 5 minutes! The girls took off to do some shopping while Jeni and I went to the Colloseum. We spent the rest of the day exploring it and Palatine hill... And taking lots of photos.

Yesterday we went a bit earlier to the Vatican to the museum and spent a good 2 and a half hours exploring until it closed. While the first rooms we saw were all boring religious pictures of various biblical events, the later rooms were full of ancient Roman and egyptian artifacts which turned out to be very interesting. Lots of rooms full of statues and marble furniture. All the ceilings were exquisitely painted and some of them seemed to continue forever. There was also a fabulous map room and one with micro mosaics in it. The 'highlight' and the reason most visit the museum (including us) is the Sistine chapel. The chapel is just one square room but some of the paintings are amazing. They say no photos but the room is packed with tourists and they can't really enforce it. After leaving the museum, we again headed over to the Colloseum to see all the sights of ancient Rome we missed the day before.

One thing that is beginning to annoy me is the cost of entering the museums and attractions over here in Europe. EVERY museum charges entry, between 3 and 15 Euro per person. This includes the Vatican museum which was €13 each (but lucky for us the had student prices of €8 and a special student ticket line which was shorter than the normal line) and the Colloseum which was €11 each plus more for the 10 minute tour. We are actually spending more on entrance fees than on food at the moment thanks to the kitchen at our guesthouse.

We are on our way to Florence now for the food, fashion and art. Ciao!