The Vatician Looks just like on TV!

The Vatician looks just like on TV!

Until you get on the roof. The coolest part of the day, sitting on the roof of St. Peter's Basilica and writing postcards to Tina's Mom and Mine. There is actually a snack shop and a small gift store with prices described by Rick Steves as "Sinful". We bought a couple of the obligatory rosaries and considered it a donation to the church.

Alex and I made the dome climb to the top of St. Peter's dome (advertised as 322 steps). The climb included some interesting stairwells squeezed between the outside and inside dome, with slanted walls just so you'd remember where you were. We were able to take the steps two at a time since a thunderstorm was headed in and the place wasn't crowed. Once up the slanted stairs we switched to a short series of tight spiral staircases and finally popped out at the top.

Working backwards now, we went through the Vatican Museum (I hope they have a good database of all that, uhhh, art). I was suprised by the sheer volume of statutes. The Map room didn't look anything like on the movie Hudson Hawk :)

The Sistine Chapel was much smaller than I was thinking it would be, but the ceiling and alter wall were more impressive. The room was of course packed. It was fun listening to the guards trying to quiet the people (it is a church after all). Every few minutes as the roar of the crowd rised, the guards would clap and ssshhh everyone.

Yesterday was a fun trip to the Colesseum, Arches and Forum. We spent a bit of time on Palatine hill, enjoying the very nice weather. It had rained a bit earlier, but a cool breeze and some clouds to cut the sun a bit made it perfect weather for stumbling around broken stuff oohhing and ahhhing.

A couple of arches off to the side of the forum were being prepped with a stage in front. The show that night was to be Averil Laveine and the Black Eyed Peas (I'm sure Tom has their entire collection).

We ate dinner at Target. Seriously. McDonalds the day before and Target today. Not the same as the stores you're familiar with, and probably pronounced differently, its a small restaurant on a side street not far from Piaza Repubblica and our hotel.

The hotel has been great. It's a small place (18 rooms) run by two brothers, very clean and squeezed into the fourth floor of a big building. There is a nice enclosed rooftop terrace we stop by in the morning to have some pastries and coffee. It's also a good spot to update our journals with the previous days activities.

Now were back at the same Internet cafe we were at last time. It is four subway stops from St. Peter's square, and about a 7-10 minute walk from our hotel (opposite directions from each other), so we just jumped off the subway here to check in. Its a very busy and big internet cafe with about a 100 computers on two floors.

No more interesting stories of being sick or attempted robbery. Even the street beggers seem to have calmed down. The scooter drivers and traffic are still nuts, and the subway is unreal with masses of people packed into the cars. It looks a bit like vertical body surfing at the bigger stops when locals will fling themselves at the doors to squeeze into an impossibly crowed car, only to be held in place by the doors slamming shut behind them. We watched how it worked for one train and duplicated the move on the next much less crowded train and it worked out fine.

Enough said. It is almost 8pm and time to get dinner.