We went on a grand tour around Rome today, and saw maybe 2% of all the amazing things here.
Liz and I left around 10am to walk from our apartment over to the Vatican. After ending up on the wrong side of the Vatican (there's only one tourist entrance), we eventually met up with Dorothy, Marianne, and Larry for a walking tour.
Our guide was great - she had a degree in art history, so she was able to tell us quite a bit about everything we saw. We walked through the Vatican museum, and saw lots of ancient Roman sculptures and Renaissance paintings. We also went through the Sistine Chapel, which was amazing, and St. Peter's Basilica, which was truly awesome.
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| The dome of St. Peter's from a distance |
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| A very unique arch between two rooms in the Vatican Museum |
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An incredibly long room, with very accurate,
detailed map frescoes on the walls |
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| Lizzano! (on one of the maps) |
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| St. Peter's Basilica - pictures can't do it justice |
Aside from the amazing artwork and history, a constant throughout the day was people. Well, to be specific, tourists. Tourists everywhere. Thousands of tourists. Apparently more than 5 million people visit the Vatican every year. That's more than 13,000 per day... but it felt like we saw a lot more than that shuffling down the hallways of the museum with us. It was a little overwhelming at times, but overall not as bad as I would have expected given the sheer volume of people.
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Ahh! People everywhere!
This was pretty standard throughout the Vatican Museum |
Our "3 hour tour" ended up lasting almost 5 hours, and by the end of it we were all ravenous, so we found a sidewalk cafe and had some pizza and pasta.
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| A much needed lunch after our tour |
On the way back to the apartment, we stopped off at the Pantheon, which is covered by a gigantic concrete dome. Apparently the dome used to be covered in bronze, until Bernini "harvested" it to make the canopy over the central altar in St. Peter's. The canopy is not the only "recycled" material in St. Peter's - apparently most of the marble originally came from other ancient Roman buildings.
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| The dome over the Pantheon |
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| The canopy in St. Peter's made from stolen Pantheon bronze |
After the Pantheon, we headed back to the apartment, and relaxed with some wine before heading out to dinner at Sofia's, a nearby restaurant recommended by TripAdvisor. As the Italians say, it was "molto buono".
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| Marianne and Larry at dinner |
A tiring and successful first day in Rome - tomorrow, the Colosseum!
awesome pics! So pretty! Don't get the cheap bubbly champagne that on a lot of touristy menus. Jackie and I were in Italy for a trip and of course it's all we drank.. to later find out that only the bums on the street usually drink it... BUMer
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure I should justify that pun with a reply... but thanks for the tip! We're learning some of the other tourist traps the hard way. We were charged 4 euros for a 1L water at lunch that day!
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