Today was a very early start with breakfast at 7.00am and then heading up to Piazza Del Risorgimento for a meeting at 8.15am by the green newspaper stand, opposite side of the footlocker store. Here we met the group organised by Romaroundtours for the Vatican Museums early morning tour. The girls were both able to benefit from the under 25 discounts as we had brought copies of their passports! The group was so large we were split into 2 and we went with Emma, a lovely and gentle Irish girl – ours was the smaller group.
Getting into the Vatican took ages, the group tour entry was extremely poorly organised with only 2 girls issuing the headsets needed to hear the tour guide. What made it worse was that Tuesday turned out to be the cruise ship guide day, the place was packed beyond belief! Fortunately, we were going to see the Raphael rooms (highly recommended), which the cruise tours missed out to rush around the Vatican Museums. You need to dress respectfully (knees and shoulders covered) and remember to take plenty of water and fill up at the water points in the toilets on the way through. The Sistine Chapel was as stunning as we were led to believe but the organisation of the museum leaves a lot to be desired.
St Peter’s Basillica, also included on the tour, was staggering. Words could never do it justice.
We rushed back to the termini and had lunch at a place nearby, the Washington. This turned out to be expensive for the mediocre quality, although the service was friendly enough. Hubby and youngest daughter collected the cases and we saw the children off on the airport coach. Only afterwards did I realise that I got my timings wrong and sent them 3 hours before check in and not 3 hours before the flight time, for a 1 hour coach ride!! How silly, as we could have had a chilled lunch near the Vatican at a small and reasonable priced recommended eatery! Oh well.
After sleeping for the rest of the afternoon hubby and I headed out by bus and headed back to Piazza Navona and Pace 44 for dinner before very tiredly heading to the Residenza for a well earned rest and sleep.
Just a note on what could have been a bad incident. As we were heading away from the Piazza Navona back to Corso Vittorio Emanuele, via a quiet side street, a moped rider with passenger came towards me. The passenger reached out to grab my bag (around my neck, so it could have been a nasty time for me) when they realised that I was with someone (hubby was on the other side of the small street from me) and veered away from me. Hubby was in a position to push the moped rider and passenger off their moped and cause them some injury so, luckily, they thought better of attacking me for my bag.
diet, dieting, Rome, marriage, wedding anniversary, travel log, family, Residenza Cellini, Rome Restaurants,Rome hotels, Rome walking tours, Romaroundtours, The Vatican, The Vatican Museums, The Sistine Chapel, St Peter's
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