Back to Rome

After the day before I needed an easy day in Rome. Plus it was All Saints day and just about everywhere in Rome was closed. So we slept in and then Andrew took me to Piazza Geraldo which is close to his school. This was a beautiful piazza and had an awesome view of the city. The problem with our outing is that it started to rain... hard. We were soaked by the time we got to Piazza Santa Maria to eat. All I wanted was a coffe but their machine was broken or they just didn't have one, either way no coffee in sight. So I ordered a red wine thinking it would at least be something room temperature. Nope, the coldest Montepucciano (or any red wine for that matter) I have ever been served in my life, we're talking almost like it had been in the freezer. Fail. We stayed there for about 2 hours before we had a reason to leave and had to venture back out. That night we met up with Andrew's friend Jen and bought snacks and ingredients for Sangria. We had an evening inside, where it was warm and cheap, and watched Superbad. Well, they watched Superbad, I fell asleep in the chair and woke up with a sore neck. BUT it was a much needed easy night.

The next morning was an early one as we wanted to make it to the Vatican Museums, to see the painting for real this time, at a decent time. When we arrived we knew we were in the correct line because we had tons of people hassleing us to join their tour groups. We were told by one tour salesman that it would be a 3 hour wait, a few minutes later it was a 2 hour wait, we actually waited for only less than an hour. Good thing we didn't fall for their trickery. I did see one victum of the salesmen though, a man bought a book of postcards for €2 and around the next corner another salesman tried to sell him the same book of postcards for €1. You could see in his eyes that he felt dumb. When inside the musuem I forced Andrew to bee-line with me straight to the Sistine Chapel. On the way we were lucky enough to see the other painting I really wanted to see; the School of Scholars. We finally made it to the Sistine Chapel where a room crowded full of people was continuously shushed by the guard as they stood with necks craned towards the ceiling. It was beautiful. After this we walked back around and saw all the things we zoomed past earlier. 2 1/2 hours later we were museumed-out and headed back to the apartment to pack for Hungary.

As I rolled up my clothes and stuffed them into their ziplock baggies I reflected on the fact that this could be another place previously only of my dreams that I was about to leave, maybe forever? And another time I successfully fit everything into my bag. We left the apartment and headed for the airport arriving at our gate just in time to stand in life for boarding. Our plane was about to take off at 9:30pm and I sat between Andrew and the Hungarian that kept elbowing me while singing in my head, "I'm a wanderer, I'm a wanderer, I wander 'round and around and around..."