Kerrin and Liza were also staying at the hostel and they said they would like to go to dinner with us, so the 4 of us went out to dinner about 8PM, to get pasta at one of the places Daniel had recommended. It was a very pleasant evening after a very interesting day.
I forgot to mention 2 things we did in the morning before the tour. First we went to check out a B&B about a 15 minute walk from the hostel (the B&B had been recommended by Anna). No one answered the bell when we rang, so we tried the building next door which listed a B&B on every floor. The top two floors were filled, but the older woman on the second floor said she had rooms for Friday and Saturday. We actually only spoke to her through another woman who owned the place but didn't speak English. It cost alot more money (40 euros each) to stay there, but the place looked very clean and nice, and neither of us likes the hostel. We told the woman we would be back at 8AM on Friday to leave our packs.
The next thing we did was call a Spanish language school in Barcelona, Spain to see if they had openings for the intensive Spanish classes for the weeks of October 13th and 20th, and they did. We then went back to the hostel before the tour started, so we could sign up for the Spanish classes over the internet. It should really be fun taking the classes. It will be 4 hours of class per day Monday through Friday for 2 weeks, plus 5 cultural classes per week. We also signed up to stay in a student flat which will have a double room for us, plus a kitchen where we can cook our meals. I am really looking forward to staying in one place for two weeks and to have a break from traveling. It will be fun to do something different for sightseeing and hiking - learning Spanish. We can get there on the 12th, and our 3-month Eurail pass runs out on the 16th. We have to validate out next Eurail pass (the 2-month one) by the 25th, which will be just when the second week of classes ends. It will be great not to have to start using our next Eurail pass until the 25th, because then it won't run out until December 25th, so we can use it for day trips while we are staying in Paris.
9/26: We went to the B&B, only to be told it was full, so we went to the other hostel, the M&J Place, we had looked at before we went to the Freedom Traveler Hostel where we spent the previous 2 nights. They had rooms,so we checked in and left our packs in the storage area and went to the post office to mail our notes and film home.
Then we went back to the Freedom Traveler Hostel for the breakfast and to find out whether Dimitri was going to do the Vatican tour. He told us the night before that he would do it if he got more than 3 people, and if he wasn't too hung over from the Pubs Crawl tour he led last night. Well, luckily for us 2 other women showed up for the tour, and Dimitri felt fine so we left for the tour about 9:45 (45 minutes late). We left late because Liz and Nicole (the young women on the tour with us) had been out in the pubs with Dimitri and his group last night, and they were late getting started this morning. Liz is from Braintree, Massachusetts, Nicole is from Singapore, and they both are in their junior years at college in Floirida, and they are going to study in London for their junior years. They have been traveling in Italy for a month before starting school.
Dimitri is Bulgarian, is 27 years old and has been living in Rome for 5 years, but he has been guiding the Vatican tour for only 6 months. He looks very much like Antonio Banderas and he is a very handsome young man. He has a great personality and is extremely knowledgable about the history of the Roman Catholic church, the Popes, and the Vatican.
We took a bus to the Vatican and he started the tour on a bridge leading to Castle Saint Angelo, and then we walked to Saint Peter's Square. It is amazing to step across a line surrounding the square and realize that you are in a separate country - Vatican City - over which the Pope has full sovereignity. It has its own postal service, newspapers, radio and train stations and an army of Swiss guards.
We stayed in the square for about 45 minutes while Dimitri talked about the history of St.Peter's Basillica and Square. It was a beuatiful day and it was lovely to sit and listen to him and watch the people in the square and admire the beauty of the buildings, statues, fountains and columns.
Next, we went in the Basillica, which is an amazing building, the largest Christian church in the world. The ceiling is covered in gold, and it is absolutely beautiful. Dimitri stopped at various areas in the Basillica to explain about the doors, the mosaics, the sculptures and the alter, over which stands Bernini's huge Baldacchino (a sculpted bronze canopy 29 meters high).
One of the highlights of the Basillica for me is seeing Michelangelo's Pieta, which he sculpted when he was only 24 years old. I had seen the Pieta 40 years ago at the World's Fair in New York and it is an absolutely exquisite piece of work.
We took a lunch break eating take-away pizza just down the road from the Vatican, and then we went back to visit the museums and the Sistine Chapel. The Basillica is free, but the museum has a 10 euro entrance fee which is well worth the price. You could spend days in the museum but we had only about 2 hours, so Dimitri picked out the highlights, stopping along the way to explain articles of note. He started the museum tour by having us sit for about a half hour in the courtyard in front of 3 big posters containing information on the Sistine Chapel. You are not supposed to talk in the Chapel, so the tour guides all give their talks out in the courtyard. When we finally did get into the Sistine Chapel, I had a much better appreciation of what I was seeing because of Dimitri's talk.
One highlight of the museum was a section that contained a mosaic tile floor from the House of Nero. The current St. Peter's Basillica was built in the 1500's, so we had been walking on 500 year old floors, but the floor from Nero's house is 2,000 years old! The museum also had a sort of bathtub (a huge red marble piece) from Nero's house. It is very precious because there is none of that kind of marble left in the world.
The museum contains an incredible collection of art and treasures collected by the Popes over the ages. It houses Greek and Roman antiquities, tapestry and map galleries, 4 rooms devoted to the works of Raphael, and then the highlight of the museum (for me), the Sistine Chapel. The Sistine Chapel was built in 1473 as a private Papal chapel for Pope Sixtus IV. It took Michelangelo 4 years to paint the ceiling, which contains frescoes of the Creation. Then, 24 years later, he painted the Last Judgement on the end wall of the chapel. The other walls of the chapel were painted by various artists, including Botticelli, Ghirlandain, Pinturricchio and Signorelli. About 20 years ago, the chapel was closed for a few years and the paintings were restored to their original state. The colors are extraordinary and it is really a wonderful place to see.
The tour ended after we visited the chapel, and Shari and I just made our way back to the hostel. We didn't get back until after 6:30, so we just put our stuff in our room and went down to the kitchen area to write notes. The hostel had given us a coupon for dinner at a restaurant, so we went there about 8:45. For 10 euros, we got 3 courses - salad, pasta and meat, and wine. The service was terrible and the wine and salad weren't very good, but the pasta and veal were quite nice. We sat next to a fellow from England and we talked to him for most of the meal and then when he left,we got talking to a man from Italy, a woman from Australia and a young Japanese fellow. Each of them were dining alone, and it was fun to have a conversation going across the 4 tables. We got back to the hostel around 11PM and just went right to bed.
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