Rome

11/06/2010

Not much sleep last night as some Hungarians decided to park their car right next to our van, literally at arms reach, and spent up until midnight continuously and maliciously slamming the car doors. They resumed slamming at 6:30 when they got and started to get ready to go out. A pox be upon them.

We hit the vatican museums today, figuring that the weekend crowds would be significantly greater than on a Friday. Quite a big line up to get in and our Roma passes weren't valid to skip the queue. Doors open at 9am and we joined the queue at 8:30, when it was already down one side of the block, around the corner and halfway down the next. A lot of folks were wandering up and down the queue trying to flog guided tours, most seeming to want to charge €40, a €25 markup on the normal entry price. The advantage being that you could skip the queue. One gentleman insisted we would be waiting for 2 hours in the hot sun and that we'd be mad not to take up his offer. He finally racked off after the 5th or 6th polite refusal. As it turned out we entered the building at 9:20 and most of the queuing was in the shade. (I can't believe a street spruiker would lie to us!)

The Vatican museums are huge and just go to show in a way how wealthy the Catholic church is. Huge collections of Egyptian, Estruscan, Roman and Renaissance art plus stacks more. The Sistine chapel comes towards the end of the tour and, although is explictly signed to be silent and for no photos, every second person was taking photos and every 5 minutes a recorded message was played over loudspeaker in about 8 different languages asking for silence. It's smaller than I thought it would be and bigger than Catherine thought it would be. I don't know if that means anything but either way it was completely packed and we were forced to elbow your way through the crowd to move around. The Michelangelo frescoes are pretty stunning though, even though you get a sore neck from staring at the ceiling so long.

We didn't exit the museum until after 2:30 and were hellishly starving so descended on a nearby cafe selling filled foccacias. Excellent they were too. While we were waiting for them to be made, we noticed that the walls of the cafe were lined with photos, some signed, and other memorabilia of Max Biaggi. I said 'Maaaaax' to Catherine in the voice that we always use when we see the word 'Max' written anywhere, in homage to our Max the moodle. This caught the attention of a man sitting down at nearby table. His English was limited but he drew our attention to his cap, with Max Biaggi's number (I assume) on it, the 'Max' tattoo on his shoulder, and other paraphranlia. We nodded and smiled at the crazy man. We had a very brief chat about the weather and then we grabbed our foccacias and left. It was only then that it dawned on us that the man talking to us bore an uncanny resemblance to Max Biaggi, in fact probably was him. Kicking ourselves for not realising earlier, we went back to the cafe where I tried to take drive by photo, being too embarrassed to now to ask for one with him. While Catherine was lining up at the gelataria next door, I tried to covertly take a photo from outside through the doorway but the cafe interior was just too dark compared to bright sun outside.

As it turned out it wasn't Max Biaggi after all. Although he looked incredibly like him, after googling photos of Max Biaggi later this evening, I could see that the man today had much more uneven teeth. Lucky we didn't swallow our pride and ask for a photo. Would have been embarrassing and weird.

After gelati, we were getting a bit tired and decided to walk down to the Janiculum and see some of the Pines of Rome. After walking for about half an hour, the footpath we were on abruptly ended and, thanks to an unbroken high wall, we had to walk back to almost where we had started in order to go by a different route. By this time we couldn't have cared less about the Janiculum and just wanted a place to rest.

As these things sometimes turn out, every place on the map that seemed like a good place to rest turned out to be unsuitable and/or you had to pay to get in, so by a very circuitous route involving twice crossing the river we ended up at the Janiculum after all. A very tired boy and girl who arrived back at the campsite this evening.