Italy Vacation – Day 3: Rome – 9.11.13

Day 3 was our last day of Rome until we went to Venice. We were back one last day on the last day of the trip but stayed in another area. This day was mainly a trip to The Vatican, which I dubbed the most hellish place on Earth just for the amount of people that were there.

Since we were in the Piazza Navona area, we ended up walking over to the Vatican instead of taking the bus. It’s only 15-20 minute walk so we enjoyed the sights as we walked over there. It was first thing in the morning there but you can already tell that the Vatican was going to be a chaotic madhouse later on and it was. We purchased advanced tickets before we came over to Italy, which is the way to go when booking tickets to the Vatican. You don’t have to wait in the extremely long line to get in. You just have to go through the airport security style security and check your bags. I had to check a bag which was kind of a pain for this because we couldn’t just go to St Peters square after the museum visit.

I wore pants that day since I heard how strict the Vatican is with the dress code. A lot of other churches were more relaxed in the code but if a woman’s shoulders or knees were showing they would tell that person to cover up. I hated wearing jeans in the beginning of the trip because it was just awkward…down there if you know what I mean. Didn’t make it easy to walk and I ended up just saying screw it and wore shorts for the rest of the trip. The weather was just so humid in Rome but thankfully weather was better in Venice and Florence.

So we got into the museum and it’s overwhelming with all the sections to see. You kind of just pick a spot and then just walk through it all. I didn’t want to do the Sistine Chapel first like some people do, because you have to walk through everything to get there. I ended up liking the museum a lot, and there was a lot to see. I was just happy we could take pictures inside, just not of the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was certainly the highlight of the Vatican, and quite impressive. You try to secure a spot to sit down in and just look up.

After the museum, we wanted to go to St Peter’s Square and try to get into the basilica. We thought there was an entrance to that to the Sistine Chapel but couldn’t find it but needed to go back to get my bag. So we ended up going outside and trying to go in that way, but it was closed for some reason. I guess it was closed for a big mass they do on Wednesday? I don’t know, but it was a lot of people around and quite hectic. We found out they weren’t opening up the square until 1pm so we had 2 hours to kill. We ended up trying to find something to eat but was kind of tough to find in that area. We did manage to find something and then head back to the square. It still wasn’t open and the guards weren’t nice or friendly at all. They weren’t really informative either, and frankly I just wanted to get the hell out of the area as soon as we could. They finally opened up the gates and everybody stampeded over to the entrance way to the basilica, but we didn’t go on line because it was already way too long. We took a few photos in the square and got the hell out of there.

We ended up going shopping and went back to the Spanish Steps area again. We walked down to the Piazza del Popolo and then grabbed some dinner at Il Gabriello, which was an excellent restaurant. It was a nice way to end the first part of our trip before heading up to Venice, which was the highlight of the whole trip for me!

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Tags: Italy, Italy Vacation, Nikon D800, Rome, St Peters Square, The Spanish Steps, The Vatican, travel photography, Vatican City