we got our little earbuds and transmitter thingy and waited for the tour to start. the first part involved an electronic board that was probably 2.5 x 4 ft and a touch screen. she talked about the layout of the vatican, some important art, the scenes depicted on the sistene chapel's ceiling and it restoration , etc. she also told us what to expect, instructed us to keep an eye out for her orange-ish umbrella, and off we went.
it turns out she left out some key points, though...
1. this place is CROWDED as all get out. as in, independently of one another we all thought about the likelihood of being trampled in the event of a fire. there were all sorts of bottlenecks that impeded our process. which brings us to...
2. your guide will pretty much walk the whole time. this means if you pause, for even ten seconds, to tie your shoe or take a picture, you will be behind. and you will miss a lot of stuff trying to catch up (albeit stuff you would've flown by anyway). also those lovely earbud things? yep, they stop working after a very short distance from the guide. like 120 ft or something. so when you get caught up in the bottleneck and lag behind, you stop being able to hear all the details that you paid good money to hear...
even with these drawbacks, the tour was still pretty amazing. EVERYTHING is beautiful or historic or really, really old or has some significance. or more than one of those things. I loved all of the ceilings and the geometry and the old pieces of furniture.
we eventually did catch up and then stuck to our guide like glue, sometimes walking in front of her just to be absolutely sure we didn't lose her again. and then we had a little snack in the cafe, and were able to get our change entirely in coins without any exasperated sighing on the cashier's end. yay, coins!
next up was the sistene chapel. there were warnings all over the place--NO talking, NO photographs. and we entered the room to a dull roar of various languages and flashes firing off. it was frustrating and definitely took away from the experience. the guards shushed people a few times, but they didn't listen.
we stayed for a few minutes, checked out the walls and the ceiling, noted the scenes depicted and moved on. and then, since we were tired, disoriented and jet lagged, we sat for a bit. Carrie wrote some postcards and mailed them, and then we left the vatican.
we walked around looking for a place to purchase some cell phones--which we found quite quickly. there are stores called "Wind" that have bright orange print and that will sell you pre-paid phones. We paid ~$100 for our phone with the €15 of minutes, which was a little more than we wanted, but it allowed us to speak to our family and to one another, which was especially important since we would be spending a little time apart. also, since it took until the next morning for the phones to actually work, our timing turned out to be impeccable. :)
then, the rain arrived. it was no joke. but we found a place to buy an umbrella (for €3 I believe), Carrie got gelato #1 and we decided to get a cab back to our hotel.
another thing we learned: ask the cab driver how much it will be to take you to your hotel. fortunately Courtney cleverly snagged a business card from the front desk so I just handed it to him and said "quanto costa?" He said "venticinque." More than twice what we paid to get there. I said "no grazie" and asked the next person, who spoke some English and said €10-12. sweet!
we freshened up, took a mini-siesta (like 40 minutes) and decided it was high time for dinner! we walked for ~15 minutes to reach the hotel's suggested location--which was closed. we learned another important thing there (though it confused us then)--the big blue bow on the front of a door apparently means they aren't open. At first we thought maybe it meant a baby boy had been born! but nope!
So we walked. And walked. And walked. And found nada for food, other than a sandwich shop that was very picked over and didn't have wine. And then (cue heavenly "aaaah!") we found a cute little place right next to our hotel. It's called Tiepolo!
We ate outside and immediately decided appetizers were in order. And a liter of wine. And we got the most amazing caprese any of us had ever had. EVER. We liked it so much we ordered a second one at the end of the meal (which sadly never arrived) and it was the reason that Carrie spent the whole rest of the trip in search for its equal. nom.nom.nom. The mozzarella was made in-house and had the most incredible flavor. And the olive oil was SO good. And the tomatoes were perfectly ripe. Holy moly! The rest of the dinner was delish, too! And we were so close to our hotel! Turns out that others thought highly of this place too, see?
Once we finished up we tried to get gelato, but the place was closed. But (after a little confusion) the guys at the bar next door actually re-opened their shop for us! We enjoyed our gelato, had a glass of wine in the hotel lobby while a nice guy fixed Derek and Courtney's air conditioner, and off to beddy-bye we went. What a lovely end to day 1!
here's some pictures from our day!
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