We started the day with a plan: take the subway to the Vatican, mosey around there, see what struck our fancy, then make our way southeast through Campo Dei Fiori to the ancient city, pass through the Coliseum, check out the Circus Maximus and then catch the subway back to Roma Termini and catch the train back to Florence in time for (a late for me, early for Florentines) dinner.

We started off with a coffee and a brioche at a little cafe on the corner near the hotel and then made for the subway. The guidebook talked alot about pickpockets and thievery in Rome and even mentioned the "hot spots" where it's quite prevalent. We went to those places and didn't see or get picked, so either we didn't look like a good target, or all the pickpockets were taking the long weekend off. The subway was one of the spots that was pointed out, so I was on my guard, but not at the expense of just enjoying where I was. We got off at the Ottaviano - S. Petro metro station and walked down the Viale Giulio Cesare to the Via Ottaviano and walked through the collonade into the center of the Piazza San Pietro.

There are tiles in the ground named after the various winds, based on which direction they blow in from...i.e. the sciroccos which come from Africa to the southeast. Tina pointed out a few places where if you stand directly on that spot, the two rows of columns are precisely lined up so that the inner ring completely hides the outer ring. We wandered around the piazza and looked at the fountains and the big obelisk in the center. We lined up to go inside and it seemed like a really long line, but it moved pretty quick. We thought we read in the book that you could check a bag and cut the line, but it turned out that we were both mistaken, as that was actually in Venice. There was a funeral procession going into the chapel, so all the tourists were blocked from entering while they filed in to the cathedral and then off to one of the chapels along the side. After that they re-opened it to let people in. We paused momentarily at the threshold to the cathedral. Tina turned back and asked me why I stopped. I held my breath, stepped across the threshold and... nothing happened. So at least I have that going for me.

We slowly wandered through the cathedral itself, stopping to take pictures and read the little descriptions (and inscriptions) on each of the altars and paintings and carvings. I took a lot of photos in there, but mostly they turned out slightly blurry because I was shooting without flash and without a tripod. A few of them turned out, including this one shooting straight up into one of the cupolas on the north side of the cathedral. The photo actually picked up the sunbeam streaming in through one of the porticos in the dome itself so it turned out pretty cool. The scale of the cathedral is just staggering. You could literally spend years looking at all the details and barely even scratch the surface (no pun intended). The pictures I took inside and that turned out are posted over at Flickr under the Vatican tag. We made our way up to the main altar which is seven storeys tall and made entirely out of bronze. Like holy... something... Beyond that was St Peter's throne and the dove-in-the-window thing that Tina said had some special meaning or size but we didn't know what it was at the time.

Checking Wikipedia, it says: "At the apse of the church is the Triumph of the Chair of Saint Peter (1666) by Bernini, a focus of the Feast of Cathedra Petri celebrated annually on February 22 in accordance to the calendar of saints. The triumph is topped by a yellow window (made of finely cut alabaster)in with the image of a dove, portraying the Holy Spirit, surrounded by twelve rays, symbolising the apostles. The rays protruding from the window also symbolize the grace of God, supporting the Chair of Peter to show the source of the authority." We stopped and took a few minutes to relax and read up on some of the things we had seen on that side of the nave, as well as look up into the cupola itself. The chapel where the funeral was taking place was Blessed Sacrament Chapel, which was just further up from Michelangelo's sculpture Pieta. We crossed over to the other side of the nave and started slowly criss-crossing our way down that side of the nave. You can see in the pictures that the whole middle of the cathedral was blocked off and set with hundreds (thousands?) of chairs so you couldn't walk right up the middle. We made our way back down that side of the nave, and paused to check out the tomb of Pope Alexander VII which is a red marble carving of a BLANKET, with a bronze skeleton trying to escape from under it with an hourglass in it's hand. The crazy thing about this sculpture by Bernini is that it has to be at least 1000 lbs of red marble, but it looks JUST LIKE a blanket, down to the folds and the way that an actual blanket would bunch up and flow if it were thrown over a struggling golden skeleton... It's SO realistic (aside from the thought of an animated skeleton made out of bronze) that it's a bit unsettling, almost falling into the uncanny valley.

We wandered into the treasury as far as you could without paying admission and then on our way back out stopped to check out the huge carving of all the popes and the year they died. We noticed that the last line had a slightly different "font" so we looked closer at it. It said "Ioannes Paulus II 2005" and Tina remarked "Hey, someone's been added to this list recently!" I looked at her and by the time she saw the look on my face she realized that "Ioannes Paulus II" was Latin for John Paul II and we both cracked up. I told her that was going into the notes and she laughed and said "You better not write that down!" but I did :) We emerged back into the sunlight and headed for the other lineup for the cupola. We started to get a bit antsy about the time, but we persevered. If we missed the train, there would be another one and we were both on vacation. The line was worse than a line at Disneyland, just when you think you're getting to the head of the line, it goes around a corner and you see that you're barely halfway there. We finally got to the head of the line and my poor feet who weren't used to this much walking were letting me know they weren't happy. We opted to pay the six euros for the elevator rather than four for the pleasure of walking up six flights of stairs.

We misread the guidebook where it said that there were 323 steps, we thought that was from street level. We were wrong. The elevator took us up to the top of the nave, and then we walked up a few flights of stairs and were inside the top of the basilica looking down into the nave. Looking up, there was still a pretty long way up to the top of the dome. You can see in the pics on Flickr that there was an eight or ten foot fence all the way around the walkway we were on. Fortunately the chain link was just big enough that I could fit the lens of my camera through it to take some shots of the nave and across the cupola. Once we walked halfway around the cupola, there was an opening in the wall that took you outside, and then from there up more stairs... 323 of them from THAT POINT. Some tiny circular staircases that seemed to go on forever, some sloping ramps, more stairs, tiny passageways with slanted walls that seemed to get skinnier and more sloped the higher we got, a modern-ish looking switchback staircase, and then finally yet another spiral staircase that seemed to go on and on forever, so much so that it started messing with your mind, wondering if you were actually going up or it was some weird ancient stone escalator/hamster wheel that you were running around in.

Finally we got to the top and stepped out onto the lantern area at the top of the dome and whooooa baby. All of Rome was spread out underneath us.Looking out to the east was St Peter's square (HUGE panoramic at Flickr) and the Via della Concilliazione leading to the ponte Vittorio Emanuele II and the Ponte Sant' Angelo. We spent about twenty-five or thirty minutes up there, in the breeze and the sun just staring around looking at everything from this direction, that direction and trying to give our legs a few minutes to catch their breath. That was a pretty hard climb. We made our way down the stairs on the other side of the dome, pretty much a mirror image of the way up but 180 degrees around the other side. When we got back down to the cathedral roof level, we found not only a gift shop with a lot of creepy religious nick-nacks and things, but a mini snack bar where we were able to sit down and have some water and give our rubbery legs a rest. It was well past 2:00 by now and we still hadn't had lunch yet. We caught the elevator back down to street level and exited straight out through the square and down Via della Concilliazione and out of the Vatican City. We didn't go through the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel because the lines that morning were literally blocks long, winding along the walls of the old city. We made our way down to the Castel Sant' Angelo and across the Ponte Sant' Angelo and back into Rome.

We stopped in at a little grocery store/deli and picked up a proscuitto and buffalo mozzarella panini and shared that as we walked along to the Piazza Navone. We wandered through the ancient racetrack and stopped to look at Bernini's Four Rivers fountain, but there was a lot of scaffolding and restorative work going on, so we didn't see it all. Envigored by our late lunch, we looped through Navone and headed for Campo Dei Fiori on our way to the Forum. We paused at the Largo Argentina ruins and checked out the cats (?) before catching a bus that went through Piazza Venezia and past the Victor Emanual monument and got off by Trajan's column. We walked past the Mamertime Prison and down into the ancient city itself and walked through the forum. We stopped at the temple of Julius Caesar, which marks the spot where his body was burned after his assassination. The guidebook said to take a peek behind the apse and look for fresh flowers adorning the mound of dirt there. Sure enough, there were fresh flowers (flickr pic) laid in tribute to the man who's name you think of first when you think of Rome. We took a peek at the temple of Vesta and the house of the Vestal Virgins (I'm very sorry to hear that) before continuing along past the temple of Antonius Pius and Faustina to the Arch of Titus and on to the Coliseum.

It's one of the world's most well-known buildings, and I've seen it a hundred times if not more on tv and in movies and in books but nothing really prepares you to see it full-size right in front of you. It was getting towards the end of the day, I could have paid seven Euros to go in and rush around like a madman (or a gladiator?) taking pictures at breakneck speed for thirty minutes, or come back the next day when it was free, or just wander around outside and look in through the gates. We opted for the latter, so next time I go, I'll make sure and make a reservation for the Vatican museum, then go inside the coliseum and then maybe the villa Borgha. Only time will tell :) After the coliseum we walked down along Palatine hill, through the Arch of Constantine and followed the road down to the Cirus Maximus (Flickr pic). It was pretty empty and pretty grassy. I didn't know what to expect, but that wasn't it. :) We cut across the middle of it to the other side and then made our way to the Metro station and headed back to Roma Termini to catch a train back to Florence. I fell asleep on the train, and when we got back to Florence we had dinner at a little local trattoria around the corner from Tina's apartment. The menu changes on a daily basis depending on what's fresh and available that day. Is that such a hard thing to do?? Honestly. There should be more places like that everywhere. Once again I crashed hard as soon as my butt hit the couch and in the morning we emptied out the roma bag and loaded up the Venice bag, but that's another post or two :)

Here's the Gmap-Pedometer route for today's journey.