Friday: Roman Holiday

I am officially Audrey Hepburn from Roman Holiday. Okay, so not really. For one – I don’t have Gregory Peck showing me around! But the wonder and amazement she got out of her day in Rome? – That’s how I feel about today. It is truly a day I will never forget.

It started with a delicious Italian breakfast in our hotel, then we dragged ourselves (we only had about 6 hours sleep, after 2 hours the night before) off to meet the same Canadian tour guide from the previous day, for a tour of the Vatican. Thank God for Italian espresso!

The Vatican Tour started around 10am, and went for 3 amazing hours. The tour guide from the previous day was brilliant. Her knowledge of art history is fantastic, and we were all completely enthralled in the entire time.

Highlights:

1. The Map Room – I absolutely loved this room. It was so chaotic, so crazy, and so stunningly beautiful.

2. The sculpture galleries – I have always adored sculpture – and some of the pieces in here are absolutely exquisite. I wanted to run my hands all over them (probably something that would land me in a Vatican Jail, but….)

3. The Raphael Rooms – what can I say? Raphael’s characters, and use of colour, is absolutely stunning. My eyes couldn’t appreciate enough.

4. The Sistine Chapel – for some (NO NAMES COLIN!) the Sistine Chapel is ‘just a room’, but personally I got a massive crick in my neck from trying to absorb the amazing detail in every inch of the paintings. I think it would take years of staring to truly appreciate even half the detail in Michelangelo’s work. It was simply breathtaking to see it in real life.

And other than all those specifics, it was simply the grandeur, the size, the overwhelming beauty that was everywhere. Walking into the Basilica, you felt dwarfed by the sheer magnitude of wealth, effort, and beauty that enveloped every inch of space.

One thing I declared to myself as we left the Vatican to emerge into the bright sunshine – I must come back here again. There was simply too much beauty, brilliance and history to ever appreciate in one visit.

So after our official guided tour of the Vatican, we then we set off to explore Rome by ourselves – or as it turned out, with “Caitlin’s guided tour”.

We basically spent hours wandering from amazing site to amazing site. One of the highlights was definitely the Trevi Fountain, which Elli and I had been hanging out to see the whole trip. Standing in front of that amazingly huge and beautiful structure, drinking beers, even the boys had to confess it was “quite a fountain”.

I temporarily gave up my tour guide status to Elli in the late afternoon, after I declared I wasn’t getting paid enough to babysit tour participants who were mean to me AND kept sloping off to buy beers – however as Elli set off in the complete wrong direction and then declared “This map is broken!” within 5 minutes of being elected tour guide – she was quickly demoted and I was given back the map. I remain the only person not to have gotten lost while navigating on this trip, which is hilarious given that I freely confess I have a terrible sense of direction! I’m sure I’ll make up for it by doing something ridiculously blonde in Spain! Meanwhile I am totally chief navigator – so watch out world!