We woke early again today @ 5 am & our thoughts were with all at home as we remember the 3rd anniversary of Nathan's passing.
The weather has certainly turned overnight. It rained on & off all night & today dawned cool and wet - steady light rain continued to fall for ages.
But with an umbrella from the hotel we set off for our Vatican Museum / Sistine Chapel tour via the Metro - all good. However we met our guide outside St Peter's & then she proceeded to escort us about 1 Km through the heaviest rain of the day to the entry to the Museum. I ended up paying 5Eu for a tissue thin raincoat that tore & barely kept any rain out. But a wet day in Rome is better than being at work!
What to say about the wealth and grandeur of what we saw? Some of it from a purely historic perspective was very informative & interesting. And some of the art was truly wonderful, but again my mind turned to the capacity of a church to accumulate such wealth and opulence when so many of its followers live in poverty. And it would appear that entry fees alone generate over 300,000 Eu a day! I don't mean to be too critical but...
After a few long & busy (though very enjoyable) days we decided to take it a bit easier today - window shopping, strolling, buying train tickets to get to Civitavecchia (the port) tomorrow. We hadn't had a gelati - one of Rhonda's favourites - so on the coldest of days here we sat & filled our insides with cold gelati!
On the way home on the train was a ruckus when a woman started saying - "check your bag, she had her hand in your bag" at which stage a woman got off the train & took off quite briskly, while the other woman checked her purse and then sprinted off after the thief. Certainly reminded us to be vigilant. (There are quite a few signs around about being vigilant about pickpockets - so it is obviously a significant issue.
We used the auto-ticket machine to buy our train ticket for tomorrow - with the "help" of a persistent local who wanted 5Eu for the "help" - I don't think so. We managed to buy a ticket, however the train leaves at 8:10 am. Earlier than we would have liked but given how early we've been getting up I don't think that will be an issue.
We got home just on 4pm & I was aware that the Italian National Library is within about 100 M of our hotel, so I thought I'd go & take a look. Well - great Italian bureaucracy - a barrier to entry staffed by 5 people whose job it seems is to keep people out. I saw others swiping a card to get in & when I asked how I could get in I was sent to a counter to fill in a form to apply for a temporary visitor's card. After divulging more personal details than my bank requires to give me a loan I was declined entry because I did not have my passport on me. I did mention that I could walk into any library in Australia - including our National Library without these rules - but of course I was dealing with those charged with enforcing the rules that were not of their making, so off I trudged home in the rain.
This episode reminds me of yesterday where we went to buy 2 stamps to send postcards to a few friends who are not online. We got a number from a machine and then sat in a hall with 30 counters (but only 5 staffed) and waited for our number to come up. 20 minutes later we got our 2 stamps. And this seems to be normal as we saw locals seemly happily prepared to deal with this level of inefficiency on a daily basis.
Anyway - this pretty well concludes our first visit to Rome. Its been great & I can see that a further visit with a half empty suitcase will be in order at some stage in the future.
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