So, we didn't get up in time to meet the tour group of the Vatican..it started at 930 and we didn't get up until 915. No problem though.... we got there around 1030 and walked past the HUGE line.... I mean, it must have been at least a km long....a couple of thousand people in it. This line was just for the museum, with the Sistine chappel and such. So we walked past it, relieved that the line for St. Peter's Basillica wasn't even close to that, and walked around the church.
Compared to the elegance of Notre Dame, St. Peter's has a grandur that's unmatched.... it was almost to the point of being guady. There were so many huge and intricate marble statues, and mosaics in gold tile, and paintings, and of course the famous Dome designed by Michelangelo.... it was immense. In Notre Dame, you could feel the intense emotional history the church had.... hundreds of years of devoted followers, worshiping and preying, joy, sorrow...it was all wrapped up in the church. St. Peter's, however, was sterile, conservative, awe inspiring, but there was no real emotion attached to it...except in the one little corner they had marked off for private prayer. It was an amazing site to see, regardless.
After touring the treasury at St. Peter's we had intended on going to the museum only to see that it closed at 130, with the last visiters being let in at 1240... it was 1230 when we left the treasury. So, we decided to go see Trevi Fountain instead. We hopped on the subway, and walked to the fountain....really big, quite an impressive sculpture.... and we threw our coins in, to ensure our return to Rome, and had our picture taken.
By now it was about 230 ish.... what to do with the rest of the day? We decided to take the subway back in the direction of our hotel and look at Circus Maximus.... now, a really big oval field that used to be a stadium that fit 300,000 people. From there we headed next door to Palentine Hill, where the city of Rome, according to legend, was founded by the twin brothers Romulus and Remis (you know the story....abandoned in a river as infants by their evil father, they washed ashore only to be raised by a she-wolf who had lost her pups).
Anyway, Palentine hill is now a site of massive excavations containing palaces of various Emperors, as well as the temple of Cyble and remins of a 9th centure BC Iron Age village. So we got there at 328, only to discover the last visitors were let in at 330, so we quickly got our tickets and wandered around the ruins for an hour. After that we had late lunch from a pizza vendor and head back to our hotel.
Thoughts provoked by this trip....
Everwhere we've gone we've been whitness to beggers in many different forms.... claiming to be refugees who don't speak the language, old women shuffling or kneeling on the floor holding a cup, and the most heart breaking, women holding babies. I don't mind giving charity, when it isnt asked for.... but Im uncomfortable with beggers, mostly because 9 times out of 10, its just a scam. I pointed this out to my husband, how the women with babies hurt my heart, being the mother I am.... he said that they're probably gypsies...infact all the beggars we've seen probably have been gypsies....its an interesting thought.
That's enough for now. Tomorrow we'll be seeing the vatican museum, then heading to the airport to try to pass time until our flight leaves early Monday morning. So this'll be the last time I post anything in my blog. I'll write again once I'm home.
Thanks for reading!
0 comments:
Post a Comment