Very early start at 7.00am to "beat" the crowds! Our group had a reservation for the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel for 8.00am and the crowds waiting at that hour were unbelievable. The galleries of the museum were just fantastic, containing many ancient Roman artefacts and carvings, especially the maps which were unbelievable. The paintings on the ceilings were incredible, in fact, one could nearly be a Philistine and say they were more spectacular than the Sistine Chapel. The Chapel itself was just mindboggling, the colour so bright and strong, much more so than I had ever imagined.
Next was the Colosseum and the absolute hordes of people. What a great building and to think we walked up stairs and over cobbled floors which were 2,000 years old. A long walk through the streets of Rome, and the traffic, led to the Pantheon. This church was built 1,900 years ago and has not been changed, except for some frescoes which had been added at a later date. The marble lining the walls had never been removed by the Popes to build/decorate the Vatican (as happened to all the other ancient buildings) and the original marble floor still has the drainage holes in the marble – the centre of the dome is actually open and the rain comes in. The hole also acts as a sundial (we all remember the Da Vinci Code!). Another decent walk back to our bus and on the St. Peter’s Square and an horrendously long queue. Some of us returned to the hotel by taxi (we had already been on our feet for 8 hours by this) while the hardier decided to stay and queue for about an hour before getting into the basilica. It took another 1¼ hours before Les actually got into St. Peters – evidently the problem was the Pope had an audience in the square during the morning and a mass was being conducted during the afternoon as the statue from Lourdes had been brought to Rome.
The "highlight dinner" of the tour, held in Rome, was one of those dinners probably best forgotten. Held in a large barn of a place, the atmosphere was comparable to a K-Mart cafeteria with similar acoustics. One really had to feel sorry for the two singers trying to make themselves heard.
The traffic in Rome is "deficiano" according to our Italian bus driver! The chaos is unbelievable, with cars going in all directions, horns blaring and cars just parking wherever they stop. It is nothing to see cars parked literally around a street corner, even two deep!
31 May – Thursday
Departed Rome for the ancient Roman port city of Ostia, ruins which have been excavated to show a working town of the Roman Empire. The excavations were just amazing, especially the open air theatre. The acoustics were so good that a person talking naturally on the stage area could be heard quite clearly at the top of the seats. The mosaics on the public baths were still intact, as were the public toilets, sewered of course. The weather was superb and as we were so early arriving, there were NO CROWDS, just our group! Such luxury.
On then to the medieval city of Sienna, famous for its horse races around the piazza. Each town or city is so different, but all beautiful in their own way.
Dinner this evening was in a Palace – absolutely sumptuous with frescoed ceilings, many huge, gold and crystal chandeliers, gold plasterwork, medieval musicians and dancers, okay food and lousy wine. In fact, the wine so far has been pretty ordinary; our Australian reds leave the European wine for dead!
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