rainy monday in rome

so as i mentioned monday was a bit rainy...torrential downpours was more like it but it lasted only till around noon so it was ok!

we went out and just walked. walked to some bridges and walked to piazza de popolo and to the spanish steps, to the trevi fountain and over to the colosseo....stopping along the way to admire all the old stuff!

just sort of using the map and wandering. we had fun dancing in the rain and speaking in our silly italian!

we waited until the afternoon to do the vatican. the hostel was a ten minute walk from there. so we went back to the store and to the hostel around 2 or so and recharged with lunch and a bottle of wine and went back out to the vatican and wandered around there a while and to other parts of the city....so monday was 'associate with cattywompus streets of rome'.

we eventually found ourselves back at the hostel with three bottles of wine. this was probably not the best of ideas but susan and i had a blast drinking it and catching up and chatting about life and so forth. it was probably one of the only times we truly just relaxed a bit and soaked up each others company. she's a good egg....she's 24 and moving back to canada to go back to school....she was living in koblenz germany and hopes to move back one day...

met this great family on monday as well from heidelberg who had two kids. they were super cool and i ended up making friends with them again after susan left and i have their contact information and they have invited me to stay with them there and i think i shall! the dad is an improv theater performer and their two kids are 8 and 14 and they were just super laid back....nice people. we talked about politics, why germans wear their wedding rings on the right hand instead of the left and about me teaching their son english!

so after our wine we gathered up lindsey, trooper that she was, and set off to see the vatican at night! lindsey told us that in the building near the vatican is where the pope kept his study and there was one light on so me and susan were yelling up at the window asking the pope to come down. we had a good time!

then lindsey and susan talked about the differences between eastern and western canada while i navigated us the very long way back to the hostel. don't give a wine filled meesh the map to rome. ever.

it was really something. the whole of rome at night was so different. so many people were back inside so it was as if we had the vatican to ourselves. we got yelled at by some german police guy which was funny....

we decided to get up early and head to the sistine chapel and vatican museum early to beat the crowds. good idea that was!

so tuesday morning we got up and i walked to the bakery but it was closed for tuesday was a holiday in rome. monday was as well but i guess tuesday may have been their independence day. i will look this up right now! okay so the 2nd was the celebration of the birth of the italian republic.

http://tinyurl.com/mso2fy

so i stopped elsewhere for my coffee. no worries. had some corn flakes....off we went!

it was 14 euro to get in and i wonder where all this money goes. to the pope!

i have to say it really was beautiful. most people rushed to get to the chapel where the michelangelo was but it was nicely unbusy so we just took our time wandering around looking at the raphaels and other arts around! simply neat.

got to the room. the chapel! it was neat. i did a report about it i think in sixth grade and kept thinking about michelangelo being on his back a lot...also about some dude who kept annoying him and so he painted him in the right hand corner of the wall mural with a serpent around his legs with the mouth on his groin and going into hell. the man asked the pope to have michelangelo take this out but the pope said he wouldn't make him do that!

i snapped two photos of the ceiling while no one was looking by placing my camera on the shoulder bag. no one was any wiser.

the dudes were pretty good about it. some idiots seriously took out their giant hulking SLR's pointed them at the ceiling and use the flash! there are giant signs saying no photos. with big photos of cameras with the circle with the red slash!

okay. that was that. we left. more later.