THURSDAY, September 10, 2009
So today was a decent day, but there were a few mistakes that weren’t so great and one pretty big mistake that was way too stressful. But we’re both alive and ready to tell the tale.
We started out today pretty early. We had a nice continental breakfast at our hotel and then headed over to Vatican City. We first went to the Vatican/Sistine Chapel. There was an extremely large line. (Extremely doesn’t even cover it…it was just so huge!) But luckily I bought tickets online so we surpassed the massive amounts of people and walked right in.
We decided to do an audioguide and that ended up being pretty cool. They said you wanted to have 1 per person since there really wasn’t a speaker on the audio machine, but we opted for just 1 and I told Sam he could just repeat what it said. After the first couple of minutes Sam realized that there was a place for headphones. I realized that I had the splitter and our headphones in our backpack, so boom bam, we could both listen! We found a loophole, and surprisingly didn’t get in trouble!
The Vatican Museum was pretty amazing. There was just so much to take in. So many statues and frescoes (the paintings on the walls/ceilings). They’re called frescoes because it means fresh in Italian and they would paint on the walls/ceilings before the concrete was even dry. Just an interesting fact we learned due to our audio guide! YAY!
We took our time and then sped up a little to get to the Sistine Chapel. It was extremely amazing. There were also a lot of people inside, but we were able to find a seat and listen to everything the audioguide had to say. The amount of time and effort put into this one room is incredible. To think that Michelangelo painted the entire walls/ceilings when he was 33 and then came back when he was 60 to do the wall of the Final Judgment. Pretty awesome. We were very taken aback by the Sistine Chapel.
After this we went to St. Peter’s Basillica. This is apparently the place where Peter was buried. It was a little too churchy for us…Sam called it a “Great and Spacious Building”. The architecture was quite stunning, but I just didn’t get excited by it. It was interesting to me that they had a dress code, such as no shorts – but apparently that wasn’t very inforced…I think it was more so as to no knees showing, but there were plenty…No bare shoulders, lots of women wore shalls. It was quite packed, so we made it through pretty quickly.
We then wanted to find a place to eat. We were quite hungry by this point, but we weren’t in a very good area for good food. I’m sure it probably would have been fine, but on the menu it said that all the pizzas and pastas were frozen products. No thanks! So we headed towards Palantine Hill and found a cart with some prepared foods. It was a little more expensive for a snack, but we were able to get a little energy from it to head on to the rest of our stops.
We then headed over to Palantine Hill. We were a little confused and decided that this would have been a good place to have an actual guided tour. We didn’t have any kind of map or book that talked about the history of the place. We were just a little confused, but it was cool to see nonetheless. Just a lot of eroded architecture. Couldn’t really tell what things once were.
We were really really tired by this point, along with being really hot and really hungry. So we hopped on a bus and got to the Pantheon. We were able to see it from the outside yesterday and lit up last night, but we went inside today. It was another stunning sight of architecture and paintings, but again quite churchy.
We then found a spot for some food. It wasn’t the greatest, but we aren’t complaining. It was definitely a tourist spot, right there in the Pantheon square. We were just so hungry that we didn’t want to spend the time searching anymore. So we ate and enjoyed.
Now, onto my big mistake…We made it just fine to the airport and arrived with plenty of time. We got in a very long line to check in and while standing in this very long line I realized that I booked our flight for Friday, September 11 not Thursday, September 10. I was really shocked at the date printed plainly in front of me and the date shown clearly in front of me at the airport. I had no idea how I could have made such an awful mistake!
So we waited in line and got to the check-in counter only to find out that we had to go to a different station to change our tickets. We talked with the man at the ticket office and he was pretty helpful, but I think he was either new or filling in for someone because he kept asking the other woman questions. He also wasn’t giving me any indication that we were going to be able to get on the flight tonight. My nerves were not doing so well by this point.
Finally he told us that this was going to work and that made me feel a little better. But come to find out that after spending more time rearranging our flights he had to void what he just did for Sam’s reservation. He ended up having to leave to go to a gate, so the woman took over. She was the only one there and the phone was ringing non-stop along with a line beginning to form.
She finally got our reservations printed and we paid our fee which was actually quite less than I expected it was going to be. Then we headed back over to the check-in counter. The woman there was expecting us, thankfully, but it turned out that the woman at the ticket office printed 2 reservations for me and none for Sam. She was pretty frustrated….and so was I. I kept hearing that menacing beep from her computer – you know the sound that comes up when you click something you’re not supposed to…yeah, it was pretty awful. But finally, it all worked out and we were headed to security.
There were a lot of people, but we had about 30 minutes until our plane left so we figured we’d be ok. And thankfully we were!! We even got seats together – the plane isn’t too full, and it’s quite nice. They just fed us a meal…something we’re definitely not used to in the US. I don’t think very many people sleep on these planes though. The lights are all on and there’s a guy behind and someone in front of me who both have their music coming out of their laptop speakers.
Oh well, the dinner was quite yummy, a potato salad, quiche – not for me, and a sweet dessert. I was pleased…So hopefully we’ll arrive at our hotel just fine and sleep in! We need to give our feet and bodies a break from walking 8 hours all day. Sam says he feels like a missionary tracting. We actually saw 4 missionaries at the main metro station tonight. That was pretty fun, but they were late for their English teaching class, so they had to run.
So we’ve finally calmed down, relaxed a little, and will hopefully sleep very well tonight. I’m going to upload some pictures tomorrow, so look for the link for those!! We plan to go to the beach tomorrow as long as the weather is good, which I don’t know why it wouldn’t be. It has been pretty nice days so far! If anything, just a little too hot, but we’re surviving! Just about an hour to Athens! YAY!!
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