Rome Wasn't Built In A Day
19 juin 2016, Cité du Vatican ⋅ ⛅ 24 °C
Having gotten in quite late the night before (or early that morning), I decided to have a sleep in, and headed into the city with Brooke and Nicolette at around 10am. We headed towards the metro station (thankfully running into some American girls who were heading there who showed us the way) and jumped on the train to the Vatican. Tamara had told us it was sounding like the Pope would be doing a eulogy in St Peter's Square after Sunday Mass at 12pm - unmissable.
We had plenty of time, so went through a few souvenir shops on the way. We arrived at Vatican City at around 11.30, and found a good viewing spot, and waited for what seemed like forever in the hot, hot Roman heat. Then a window opened, and a red banner was draped over the window sill. People had filled the square at this point, and started cheering, and around 5 minutes later, Pope Francis appeared at the window.
I'm not sure if it was the hangover setting in or something else, but I was completely overwhelmed and started crying. The old Catholic heritage was getting to me, and I couldn't believe I was seeing the figurehead of my faith. I'm sure my Nan was there with me, hopefully proud we'd made the journey, although she probably wasn't so proud when we left after about 5 minutes... The heat was becoming unbearable, and Pope Francis obviously wasn't speaking english, so we couldn't understand him anyway...
I composed myself, and we headed off in search of food. We found a little restaurant a couple of streets out of the Vatican, and sat, ate pizza, and used their wifi for about an hour.
Next up was a colleseum tour, and we had plenty of time to get there, so we began the 40 minute journey across the city. We stopped a couple of times along the way for photos, ice cream and water.
We arrived with time to spare, and sat for a little bit, watching the world go by.
We met up with the group, met our tour guide, and wandered through the Roman Forum and saw Julius Ceaser's resting place, before heading over to the main attraction, the Colleseum.
The beauty of being in a tour group, skipping the massive queues! We went straight through, and learnt all about the gladiators, and how the colleseum was ruined by earthquakes.
After the tour we had a bit of free time before we were supposed to meet Tamara who was going to take us on the metro home, however Brooke and I were exhausted, and knew how to get home ourselves, so we headed straight for the trains.
After getting slightly lost when we came out of the station (it's the main station with trains to the airport), we asked some police for directions and finally made it back to the hostel.
Exhausted, we napped on our beds, and when Jacinda and Carly returned, they did the same!
We got ourselves up and organised for our included dinner at the hostel (lasagna) and headed down for our final goodbyes with a few more people.
After the huge night last night, I decided to not have a big one, so when everyone decided to head out in Rome, I stayed at the hostel bar with Tani and Terryanne, and said more sad goodbyes to those leaving us.
About 20 minutes later they all returned, as the bar they were heading to was closed, and my small night turned into yet another huge one... I think I got back to our room around 4am...En savoir plus