Day 32

We got up early and caught the bus to the Vatican. The museum is closed every Sunday except the last Sunday of each month, which just happened to be today. When we arrived, there was a huge line outside St Peters Basilica. We toyed with the idea of waiting in line briefly before deciding to move on to the museum.

Here there was an even bigger line! We joined the end of it while I went and investigated how long it was. Once I lost track of it (it went around the block so I could no longer see it), we decided that perhaps that wasn’t the best idea either. So, instead of going into Vatican we walked the outside instead. We ended back in St Peters Square where we took some photos of the area from outside. The line was still pretty long so we headed back towards the bus stop.

As we were leaving, there was some sort of Bolivian celebration going on which meant that there were dancers dressed in traditional costumes parading down the street with Bolivian music playing. It was pretty unusual considering that we were right out the front of St Peters Basilica but pretty cool at the same time. It started drizzling half way through and the brave souls just soldiered on in the rain. It cleared up after about 15 minutes luckily.

We caught the bus back to the apartment, had a bite to eat and a bit of a sit down before heading back out again. We caught the bus to near Piazza Navona where we checked out the ruins of Sacred Argentina before heading into the Piazza. There were a number of artists in the square so Steve’s mum was pretty happy wandering around.

After the Piazza we followed the tourist directions towards the Pantheon. We didn’t get too lost on the way there. The square was fairly busy but there was a steady stream of people going in and out of the Pantheon so there wasn’t any waiting. The building was amazing. I felt that the marriage between the old Roman architecture and the conversion of the temple into a Roman Catholic church was a bit funny but that’s just me.

From the Pantheon we headed to the Trevi Fountain, which was also very busy. Steve made a wish and then we sat down in a nice little cafe for a cool drink before heading to the Piazza della Repubblica. We passed the main road on our way and noticed that there was a bus heading that way so we thought we’d make use of our transport passes. After 15 minutes of waiting we started getting suspicious that perhaps the bus wasn’t running today so Steve and I gave up and walked. Steve’s parent’s waited for a bit longer but they too gave up in the end and we met up again in the Piazza.

We wandered around and then headed back to the apartment. We stopped off at a restaurant for our last true Italian meal before calling it a night and getting ready to leave the next day.