Vaticaning- Peter Rabbit (april 8th)

I'm one to pride myself on an internal clock. Usually every single day I can get myself to wake up at about 7-8:30 every single day no problem. Even in europe I haven't been having any issues, it's been great.This morning was an enigma, I slept for over 12 hours, daaang.

Finally departing our room at about 2pm , we headed on over through the labyrinth of rome and finally stumbled on my 5th country, The Vatican. Along the way we ran into a really fantastic pizza joint, crowded with natives. We took this as a sign that the food must be delicious , and it was. On the way we also noticed the COMPLETE LACK OF RAIN despite the 80% chance. grrr. Oh well, at least we finished most stuff yesterday and now we didn't have to buy a chinsy umbrella. Wait, what am I even complaining about? No rain is awesome!

Due to our much needed slothfulness (deadly sin!) we missed the big cheese (da pope) himself having his Wednesday morning speech to tell his herd how to live their everyday lives. It would have been an interesting experience, but at least we weren't tired and crabby.

The central stage

Instead we quickly entered the primary theater of the catholic church, Saint Peter's Basilica. When I think of most big churches, I consider them quite lavish, this one was almost kingly (go figure, since the vatican is the only current absolute monarchy in the world).

There were lots of statues of popes, but this one was quite unique. Death peering out under the sheetlike stone with an hourglass showing the inevitability of demise? Whatever. It looks pretty neat.

Post snapping some photos of the journey, we ventured into the deep dark catacombs of the place.... OK well they were pretty nice and well lit. The tombs contained the bodies of all (or maybe just most? I didn't count them) the previous popes, including the apostle, Peter himself. No photos were allowed, but the other tourists just kept snapping away anyways. I'm surprised none of them were kicked out. Security was quite lax.

Afterwards we had another glorious line wait to get into the cupola. Once inside we climbed up over 500 stairs to the peak. At first the stairs were natural but once we were closer and closer to the top, the walkway became much more twisted and narrow. Especially since quite a few individuals were going at quite the slow pace, snapping photos all along the way and turning a finely beating heart into a series of fatty clogged arteries.

Like all things, it's always difficult to get to the top, but once you're there you are rewarded. Of course, it wasn't wads of cash, but we got a pretty nice view of the city and the country inside it. We even got to peep into the depths of the Vatican, so we could see what kind of mischief they were up to behind those closed walls.

Well.. there's a building... and a couple people walking around..



at least there's good ice cream....ish food

After the long journey down, aided by gravity, we decided to go find some eats once again. Due to our last horrifying experience the night before, we decided to beseech the scholarly words of Ted's travel europe guide. It brought us twisting and turning down a series of windy roads until we finally reached our destination "Da Lucia". We were seated and served pretty quickly, and managed to finally get ourselves our first taste of Italian wine. I'm not much of a wine guy, but it wasn't bad at all all things considered. The restaurant also had it's own violin player, giving us a lovely tune with no thought of personal gain. Just kidding, he was a random street performer who wanted to be paid without even asking anyone if they wanted it , ohh rome. The pasta was good, but once again quite small, especially compared to my usual half a box per sitting. How do these people survive here? Maybe they snack a lot.

wino!