Italy Day Dieci

Caio bella Sorrento! I would have loved to have swam in your beautiful waters, but your weather just didn't cooperate.

Off we go to Rome!

Unfortunately we had to take the filthy train again. I'm surprised we didn't share a seat with a mouse or a cockroach.

We rode the cheap train from Naples to Rome. It took 40 minutes longer but was €40 cheaper for the two of us. Everyone else in Europe saw the value of this train ride also. There were no seats left, so we had to stand in the aisles and sit in a little jump seat. Not a fun ride.

We arrived at the central train station in Rome and had to meet our hotel owner at a Metro (subway) stop. Although quick, the metro is really gross.

Our hotel, actually a b&b, was in the middle of nowhere. We found it with good recommendations from Trip Advisor, but no one told us it would be in the middle of a neighborhood in suburban Rome.

Francesca and her four kids run the place and live on the bottom floor. Her son, Giovanni, walked us to the train station to get to town. We had to walk several blocks to the station and it was a little shady--the neighborhood, station, AND the train.

After a train ride and two metro trains, we arrived at the Vatican stop.

St. Peter's Square was HUGE and all that I expected. I was really impressed with it. We booked tickets to the Vatican Museum, and to our surprise, they had availability for that evening. And I noted a major misspelling in the Vatican Museums brochure. I’m pretty sure Sistine is not spelled “Sixtene.” Oops! The Vatican should hire me to be a proofreader. I would be glad to do my work in person.

First order of business was to find the four churches of the Illuminati. (If you haven't seen Angels & Demons (1) you're missing out and (2) this paragraph and photo will have no meaning for you.) We ended up finding the second clue first...but not to worry. We found Santini's tomb the next day.

We decided to sit, eat and re-group, so chose La Caravella, a restaurant that offered a $10 set menu--a main dish, salad, beer, and gellato. Sounded great! Well, I ordered spaghetti and the Kraft spaghetti kit that I make at home was way better than that. The "salad" was lettuce and tomato with olive oil, the beer wasn't even Italian, and the "gellato" was Nestles in a cup like you get with school lunch. La Caravella will not get a good Trip Advisor review!

The highlight of the day was the Vatican Museum. It was filled with rooms and rooms of artifacts, and not just relating to Christianity or the Catholic churh. There was an Egyptian exhibit and lots of Greek statues.

The former papal apartments were highly decorated, one of them with some famous Raphael works.

The best part was the Sistine Chapel. We sat in there for at least 30 minutes staring at the ceiling. It was so awesome to see in person! Michelangelo’s work definitely made up for the bad day we were having. Photos were forbidden. They had people walking around that would yell at you if you tried to take a picture. I speak from experience. I still don't know what it would hurt. I didn't have the flash on.

But then the bad day returned. We took the subway to the ghetto train station, only to learn there were no more trains going to our stop. I cried. Really, I did—real tears and everything. Fortunately we found a nice cab driver that only charged $20 to take us to the b&b. He got a little lost, but thank goodness cabbies now have GPS, even in Italy.