After a long night’s sleep for both of us (sleeper trains are never that great, although this time we did have an okay bed) we woke up and were offered breakfast and tea or coffee. In my usual style I asked how much it was, only to be told it was free! Yay.. well we did have to pay a 31 Frank reservation fee each for the couchette (you have to reserve most overnight trains, plus other busy ones), so I guess it was included, but it was nice all the same. We arrived at the main station in Rome with no accommodation booked, as it was REALLY expensive to use the internet anywhere in Switzerland, and in the limited time we did spend looking on the net, accommodation was crazy expensive too. We headed towards the Tourist Information office and organised a Hotel for E60 per night – a little more than our usual budget of E50 max per night, but we’ve been in dorms for a couple of weeks and felt we needed some space. After being shown the street to walk down we headed off on the 15 minute trek in the hot, hot sun to our hotel. We discovered that it is run by an absolutely lovely lady called Melissa from Chicago, and she spent a good 15 minutes with us showing us on a map everywhere to go etc, and the buses to take. We are just a 5 minute walk from the Coliseum, and many other sights are just as close by… but we decided to do the big one and go to Vatican City! Melissa had said it was best to go in the early afternoon, as most people go in the morning, so as it was 11am by now, it seemed like perfect timing to go after a shower and lunch. There were no queues at all and we walked pretty much straight in. Over the last week or so, we have been starting to feel like all the European cities are very much the same – beautiful, with distinct differences, but very similar overall. We were totally unprepared for how amazing and different Rome is. We spent several hours looking through the Vatican Museum, totally in awe of the many artworks that we passed. Art History buffs, this is the place to go! You can absolutely lose yourself in here, and that is precisely what we did! There is so much history in this museum, it is incredible. A few hours after entering the museum, we found ourselves in the Sistine Chapel, which I think even if you only went here, you would be happy to pay the Vatican City E12 entrance fee. It is just incredible – there is so much detail everywhere you look, and although most of the works are painted flat, they look so 3D that you have to go right up to the wall to check – and no, they’re not 3D at all, in particular, a set of decorative columns that are just amazing. Every couple of minutes you hear a ‘shh’ – you aren’t really allowed to speak in the chapel, and although everyone does, it is fairly quiet. It’s not very obvious that you aren’t allowed to take photos though, so we were asked to put our camera in our bag after being caught – this happened to a lot of people though, so we didn’t feel too bad! Melissa had said to us to wait for a tour group to leave the Chapel, as they are allowed to use a separate door that takes you straight to St Peter’s Basillica, instead of walking right back to the other end and back around – saves a good 15 minutes of walking. There weren’t many tour groups that late in the day though, so after waiting quite a while we just headed out ourselves with no problems, and with not a queue in sight we headed into the Basillica. To be completely honest you have to go to understand just how massive all the buildings here really are. Inside housed many smallish chapels, a main chapel, many statues, large foyer and lots that we couldn’t see, or get to. But we didn’t stay too long heading outside and into the main square. A short walk later we found ourselves at the Castle of St Angelo, which happened to be very close to our bus stop back so we had a look around before heading home.

Can’t wait to see Rome by night…

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