Vatican Treasures

Thursday morning ( I am now in the early early hours of Friday, unable to sleep, so blogging) was our earliest exit from Trastevere. We caught the 23 bus up the Tiber just 10 minutes to Vatican City to join our Dark Rome Skip the Line Vatican tour group with the most amazing Georgia as guide. We walked for three hours, covered over 4 miles of corridors in the museums, photographed amazing treasures, and carried on after the tour into St Peter's Basilica and the crypt of the popes.

I cannot begin to describe this except to say that skipping the line is a wonderful thing to do -- we did it with our Roma Pass at the Colosseum too -- no one should come to Rome and not go to the Vatican. We sat in the Sistine Chapel, saw The Last Judgement and The School of Athens frescoes, heard lurid details of the personal lives of Michelangelo and Raphael, marvelled at Bernini statuary and Dali art, and finally fell down the Via to a sidewalk cafe and a rest.

From the Vatican, we caught the metro to Termini stazione to buy our tickets on the EuroStar for the early afternoon journey on Saturday to Florence where we will meet up with Jan and Frances. We get there ahead of Jan who is coming from France so we will just have to hang out in Florence for a little more than three hours before Beppi comes to pick us up and drive us out to our farm holiday in Tuscany. This took an hour of waiting in line and probably could have been done online. We have done everything else this way, stopping by internet shops until we discovered we could get internet here in the apartment.

From Termini, we hopped back on to the metro to find the Spanish Steps and then to walk to Trevi Fountain. Both are astounding, but I do have to say that the magnitude of this Bernini fountain sculpture simply takes your breath away. I lied -- I am not hopping on to anything. Feet continue to be a problem ... but then today was over 10 kms on the old pedometer.

In a few short hours, we are booked out of the Piazza dei Popolo on the Dark Rome Angels & Demons Tour. There is always so much consideration of maps and bus numbers required but we think we can do this on one bus ride and two metro stops, via the Vatican! We will see more Bernini statues, and the Pantheon, and end up at the Castel Sant'Angelo. From there we have a few hours to find our way to our booking to view the art of the Villa Borghese. We have realized that we are simply out of time ... but we have been caught wholly in the spell of Rome. I must now plan to go to the Villa d'Este and Tivoli on my next trip here!

Heard today from Alan Z who is here in Rome ... but my message arrived too late and we are unable to meet for birre or caffe lattes.

Stay tuned for more news!

Moira