We all slept well last night! I think we are finally out of jet
lag now. We all slept until about 07h30 this morning, or roughly
about 13 hours! I dressed in long pants and we made our way back
down to the Vatican to get in line for the Sistine Chapel. 
The
previous day a couple we had met had told us that they came about an hour
after opening and the line went way around the Vatican. That is entirely
true. By the time the doors opened the line was beyond where I could
see it. On the way out it went for at least a kilometer. This
first shot is in one of the halls on the way to the chapel itself.
You can see the crowd of people that were there. The kids got in
free and the price for an adult entry is 15,000 Lira, quite reasonable.
This place is HOT! There is almost no air flow in the place until
you get to the chapel itself. If the Catholics aren't into suffering
like us Russian Orthodox, I'd be surprised. One would think they
would have better air flow to try and protect the paintings. The
carbon dioxide must be destroying the works. I don't have any pictures
of the chapel itself. No one was taking pictures and Kristie was
not in a good mood at this point. 
The heat was really getting to her. I think I was lucky we made it
through the place considering how uncomfortable she must have been.
One thing the Vatican should do is label the exhibits. I'm sorry,
but I didn't have any idea what any of the items were. I don't think
a lot of people can really appreciate anything unless they purchase one
of the guided tours or the tape tours which, when traveling with little
kids, is an impossible thing to complete.
There were some magnificent displays like this stained glass window that,
for all I know, is simply a stained glass window. When we left the
Sistine Chapel the line did indeed wrap way around the Vatican. Since
the chapel stops admitting people at 13h00 I'll bet there were a number
of disappointed people. It is a long wait, in a hot line, next to
heavy traffic so you get to breathe a lot of exhaust smoke. Not my
idea of a fun time. And wait until those people in shorts or halter
tops make it to the door and get turned away! Boy, that would be
a miserable memory.
We then made our way to Basilica St. Pietro and didn't get any hassles
from the guards about getting in. Although several people in shorts
were arguing fruitlessly with them. They really should relax that
rule. There was no one in either the chapel or the basilica to really
care if one was in long or short pants. We made a quick run through
the basilica and on the way out saw the colorfully dressed Vatican guards.
This was the end of our morning as it was now around 11h00 and we all needed to get some food for lunch. Since the local grocer closes at 13h30 I didn't want to get there too late. We went to the grocer, got some salami, sausages and bread and went to the hotel for lunch and a quick rest. One of the things we bought was a bottle of water. I failed to look closely at the label and picked up one of the minerally waters, that tastes it too. I wish I had the camera out when Stephen took his first swig of that! Was that ever amusing. Although I'll say one thing, as the day grew longer and the mouth drier, that water sure tasted good going down! The maid finally came around 14h30 to kick us out of the room which was good timing for us to head out to the Colosseo.
Of course, at this point, most of the tabacs where you buy bus tickets
were still closed for lunch (nice long lunches, eh?) so it took some walking
to find one that was open.
We asked an older Italian man at the bus stop which bus we needed to get
to the Colosseo. He directed us to get off at Piazza Venezia.
There he got off the bus with us and pointed directly at the Colosseo in
the distance and said (all in Italian) that the walk would give us something
to look at on both the right and left. Boy was he ever right!
This place is scattered with ruins. But first, we stopped at Piazza
Venezia and took a picture of this magnificent building. I don't
think this picture does the enormous size of the building any justice.
I've got to start taking some more hi-res photos instead of these low-res
ones.
We walked from here towards the Colosseo in the distance. It is
simply amazing that the kids and I had the chance to see this place.
One doesn't see something with this kind of visceral impact very often
in life. Kids being kids though... adds some character to the image
I suppose.
There are two levels to the Colosseo, the first level is free, but rather
limited in scope. You can only walk about one fifth of the interior
of the Colosseo. This is also combined with the fact that there are
scores of people here, so it is next to impossible to get some good pictures
in. The second level has a charge of 8,000 Lira (less than $4US).
We opted for that and again, the kids were let in free! So the shots
you see here are from the second level. 
You can see that we had pretty much the run of the place up here.
Very few people opted for the fee to come up here. What a shame because
you get to walk the entire perimeter of the Colosseo and can basically
pick your shots. And you can see that we have very few, if any, other
people in the pictures.
There are a tremendous number of ruins seemingly out of place.
This column is actually inside a small vestibule on the side of the Colosseo.
It had to have been placed there because there was no space for a column
here. I don't understand why it was placed here. It does help
to provide some seating after the long walk around the Colosseo.
One thing I read about was the rampant crime in the Colosseo area. Either that information is out of date or the police have really beefed up their security around the Colosseo. I didn't see a single incident and after a while felt quite safe there.
There were some more ruins across the piazza from the Colosseo that
we simply didn't have the energy to walk through. The sun was really
beating down, although the temperature was fairly cool, I think the low
humidity was fooling us. 
And , you can see, I was getting too tired to even check my pictures!
Sigh, fortunately my finger is not covering up some columns in the distance.
We made our way back to the bus stop. By now it's almost 17h30. We did see a number of small electric busses that I didn't get a chance to photograph. But they are mini versions of the full-sized busses. Quite neat to see that electric busses are actually in service somewhere.
We stopped at a gelataria and had some gelato before going back to the hotel. We ate some more of the salami and sausages. I let the kids have a couple of their chocolates that they brought from the states with them. I figured better to have them set up to make the train ride to Bologna tomorrow. I decided we'd go to Bologna because we do have to make our way up to Trento on Monday. According to the Lonely Planet guidebook, there are regular trains to Trento from Bologna. Since I don't have internet access from this hotel room (I'm still missing the proper adapter for my RJ-11 jack) I can't check the train schedules myself. I'm hoping the guidebook is correct. We made reservations at a hotel in Bologna that is in the center of town and not far from the train station. So it should be a short taxi ride at the worst.
Well, the kids are in bed and it's about time I turned in for the night. I am tired after all the walking we did today. Even the kids fell asleep almost as soon as their heads hit the pillow. One interesting thing about Italian television is they have comics on even fairly late into the evening. Some are in their original English without any subtitling. This wasn't the case at all back in Paris. All the comics were re-dubbed in French. So this is nice to know that the kids will get a chance to see something they can understand once in a while. And they are picking up on Italian words from watching comics in Italian. Although I don't know how often the word nickompoopi comes up in everyday conversation [-grin]. I hope the place I end up renting in Trento has cable.
Some more observations about the digital camera. With all the sights we saw and the few pictures I had taken, 15, I could have easily taken a lot more of either hi-res or lo-res. I've been skimping on taking pictures afraid I'd miss a good one because I had run out of memory but that doesn't seem to be the case. So I'm going to start trying to shoot more hi-res shots and not to be worried about my memory availability. There does seem to be enough memory for one days worth of tourist pictures. Granted, I am downloading the shots every evening into the laptop. I doubt there would be enough memory to take more than a days worth of pictures. So you should be seeing more hi-res shots in the subsequent days.
Copyright @ 1997 Alexandre POLOZOFF. All Rights Reserved.
