Rome: The Short Continuation

Waking up this morning was so sad, because for the first time on this trip, Yvette and I found a room with a lovely soft bed. We’re still waiting to find a place with equally lovely, fluffy pillows; they’ve all been very flat so far.

We spent our morning doing house-keeping: buying tickets to Venice, arranging a place to stay, etc. We ended up buying plane tickets from Venice to London on Sunday, because trains are even more expensive! After that we needed to buy some luggage: me because my shoulder is going to fall off if I keep having to cart that duffel around, and Yvette because her bag exceeds the weight limit of the airline. Once all that was done, we could finally go sight-seeing!

Today’s tour was of the Vatican Museum/Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s Basilica. I have never been in a museum so hot! Saw a lot of mostly unimpressive sculptures (although I did learn that the Roman’s painted all their statutes, and that, instead of the empty eyes they always seem to have, they actually inserted glass or crystal eyes to bring the statues to life. Saw an example and was so impressed. It completely changes the look!), some weird things, heard a lot about the popes, and then , the main event: The Sistine Chapel. So beautiful! I’ve seen pictures, but really, there are just no words. I was very disappointed that I couldn’t take any pictures in there, but it’s not allowed.

The rest of our day consisted of running back to the hotel, grabbing our stuff, and booking it for the train station for the trip to Venice. We had some difficulty, because the ticket guy, when we bought our tickets, told us we could sit anywhere, but the train was actually a sleeper train to Munich. We asked where we should sit, and the train employee said the last five cars. But most of those were sleepers too! So we asked the guy on the 3rd to last car, and he said the last car. We finally got to that car, with 10 minutes until the train was supposed to leave, and sat in two seats in the a compartment in the middle…which two women then came and told us were there assigned seats. There are assigned seats on this train?! Eventually, a nice guy explained to us that our “sit anywhere” tickets mean that we actually got the jump seats that fold out of the wall in the aisle. Uncomfortable! By the time the train, an hour late, finally took off, I had a migraine. And it is noisy sitting in the aisle. After about an hour and a half, we moved into an empty compartment, figuring we’d move if we needed to, but we were tired of being in the aisle while there were still seats available.

At the next stop, 3 really nice girls who are missionaries in Moldova (on vacation) joined us in our compartment, and we spent the rest of the trip keeping each other entertained. Since all five of us got off in Mestre-Venice, we made plans to possibly meet in San Marco’s Square the tomorrow to go in together for a gondola ride (because they are rumored to be quite steep). So tomorrow: Venice, and maybe gondolas!