October 5 - Roma

Got up super early to go to the Vatican!! We had to line up for almost two hours before it opened (and even then we were relatively at the top of the line which went almost around the entire Vatican City) but it was well worth it. We blazed through the Vatican Museum (although there were rooms of REALLY pretty stuff) and got to the Sistine Chapel. You weren't allowed to take photos in there, so I had to do it on the sly. Heh. After that we went all the way through to the end to get to St. Peter's Basilica - my only regret is that I didn't get to find Raphael's School of Athens painting, but oh well. St. P's Basillica was awesome; it was in St. P's square (which is incidentally circular) and the day we went there were all these chairs and stuff lined up in the square because apparently the Pope was going to come out and talk!! I didn't get to see him though.

But yeah, the whole setup was really impressive even before we got into the Basillica. The whole Basillica was built on the site where he was crucified, and inside, it was gigantic and there were sculptures of ex-Popes and paintings on every surface and gold shiny parts and right in the middle under the biggest dome was a black four-poster looking thingy with little stairs that led down to a box, and the remains of St. P were in there. It was a pretty small box though; I think it was a pile of bones (not like all tomblike or anything). When we got out I wanted a picture with a Swiss guard in their funny uniforms but the one I asked said no.

Then we caught the bus down to the Victory Square thingy where the tomb of the unknown soldier was and had a really bad ripoff lasagne for lunch. Boo! After that we went on a walking tour of the ancient city, and we saw the place where Julius Caesar was cremated, the place where Marc Anthony did his "friends, romans, countrymen" etc. speech, the palace of the Vestal virgins or something, the Casa di Romulus and the old senate hall (which had a really cool floor). There were lots of arches and cool bas-reliefs and stuff as well. From there we went to il Palatino (which is the hill where apparently the she-wolf that raised Romulus and Remus lived) and got our tickets to the Colloseum (which saved us standing in line at the Colloseum for 40 minutes). We went into the Colloseum and I can't really describe how awesome it is in there; it looks pretty good from the outside but inside is something else. The arena floor had broken away so you could see all the way into the tunnels that would have gone under the arena (where they would bring lions/tigers/christians up and whatnot) and you could go up an extra level to see how stadium seating really worked at that time. They randomly had collapsed marble columns everywhere you could sit on and touch and climb on (and I discovered I was a really tactile person and liked touching all this really old stuff (as long as I had enough hand sanitizer on me). We actually walked through the gladiator's entrance (there are tons of entrances obviously, but four main ones - for the gladiator, the emperor, the magistrates and fancy people and one other one) and so when we got into the colloseum we did the "I [insert name], who is about to die, salute you!" speech which the glads used to do to the emperor - not that anyone could pay me enough to die for any leader of a state or anything. :P

From there we headed to the north of the city where the Spanish Steps are, only we went up a hill on one side in a side street so we ended up at the top of the steps and walked down them! The view was nice from the top, only you couldn't really see the steps because there were so many people on them. The street directly across from it is the one in Rome with all the swanky shops like Gucci, Prada, Armani, Hermes, etc. I did not buy any pretentious shit, but from there we went to Piazza del Popolo which was like the people's square (and they used to execute people there too). There was a big obelisk in the middle of the square which was stolen from Rameses II in Egypt and we walked to the street next to the park at the Piazza and had dinner while street vendors on the other side of the restaurant barrier thingy (in the outdoor area) tried to sell us stuff. It was a really good night out. From there we got the Metro back to the campsite but there was no shuttle (boo, another Contiki clusterfuck) so we bussed it back and then walked up the hill, and had some fun adventures on the way, like seeing frogs and geckos, a roadside bathroom issue, not being allowed to taste the wild mint plant I found on the side of the road and contemplating how to build a goatdrawn cart out of firewood.