Roman Holiday
The next morning our whole tour group went on a tour of the Colosseum and the Roman Forum. We were all given free time for lunch and Shereen and I had pizza in this little cafe overlooking the Colosseum followed by an obligatory gelato. After lunch it was time for our trip to the Vatican and the Sistine Chapel. I had visited the Vatican before but hadn't seen the Sistine chapel as far as I recall (the other times I had been to Rome were when I was 4 and 8), so I was very excited to see the ceiling stucco created by Michelangelo.
It was a very hot and sticky day in Rome so I was very inappropriately dressed to enter the Church of all churches, but I had brought along my sarong to wrap around my legs. About five people said to me as we were walking to the entrance "Oh my god do you have something to cover yourself? You won't be allowed in like that!", which I found incredibly annoying since Vinny had warned everyone about it about a thousand times- seriously people I'm not an idiot. |
| /a photo of a picture of a painting... What? We weren't allowed to take photos inside... |
It was incredibly crowded in the entrance hall to the Chapel. For anyone who hasn't visited it before, it takes quite a walk to get into the Chapel itself, which is actually relatively small. With the large number of people and lack of ventilation, my legs were not enjoying their sarong-cage. But the beautiful ceiling was worth it. I probably sound a complete art neophyte in saying this, but I don't understand why people aren't equally as impressed with the ceiling decoration in the halls leading to the chapel? I suppose it's because the Chapel ceiling was Michelangelo's first attempt at painting after being hailed as a great sculptor for his statue of the David, and yes don't get me wrong it is pretty spectacular. After the Chapel we entered St Peter's Basilica. Again the size is staggering and the decoration is so beautifully ornate that it really is an incredible building and definitely worthy of its fame. As a bonus, we were allowed to take photos here, unlike inside the Chapel.
After allowing people to go to the gift store, we set off back to our hotel. That night everyone on the tour chose to go for the optional dinner and so we all boarded the bus together for almost the last time.
Dinner was so much fun. We had all of my favourite people on our table: Kayla, Paul, Jess, Brian, Megan, Jake and Leisle who we awkwardly pulled onto our table after a group of people wouldn't let us take the table of 9. They asked why Leisle couldn't just sit with them because her roommate was on their table, but they had been fighting and since it was our last night we weren't about to let Leisle sit with her and have to deal with any more drama.
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| /Our table + Vinny - half of Shereen's face |
The meal was terrible but the wine was plentiful. His turned out to be a dangerous combination later on in the night as we all left our disgusting meals and then were drinking on empty stomachs, but we had a ball at the dinner taking photos and trying to enjoy what little time we had left with each other- which was occasionally interrupted by the restaurant performers who would randomly break into very mediocre opera.
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| /The whole gang |
After dinner we loaded onto the bus one last time and headed to a nightclub to celebrate our last night of the tour. Not everyone chose to go out, but it was Paul's birthday the next day so our whole table went including Leisle who had to catch a plane at 4am.
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| /Our bus buddies- Jake and Meg |
Again we had made the mistake of going too early, but when you surrender yourself to Contiki they call the shots. Vinny had told us that if we paid 20 euro each we would get unlimited drinks for 2hrs or we could pay the cover charge of 5 euros. We mostly decided to pay the 20, but we needed to go to an ATM first. As we were messing around in front of the club, Paul stepped on the back of my shoe and when I lifted my foot the strap ripped from the sole so I also had to find some way of making my shoe stay on. We walked to the ATM and Kayla and I brainstormed. In the end I put my hair elastic around my foot which worked nicely and I was able to walk back to the club a lot more easily. On our way back a guy who worked at the club was recruiting people on the street to come inside and he told us we could get unlimited drinks for 1 hr if we paid 10 euro. However when we got to the club they vehemently denied that this was possible. Vinny came over and got really annoyed, but we couldn't tell if he was annoyed at us or the staff... He had been fighting with them and told us we had been misinformed and we had to pay the 20 euros. To be honest the whole thing felt dodgy, the club was terrible, we were the only ones there and Vinny was trying to make us stay and pay the 20 each. We were all pretty sure he was getting a cut from the bar for having brought us. Anyway, we decided to have our drinks and move on after a couple of hours. We went inside and found out the music wasn't working! But we had paid our money so we got some drinks and sat down. Adrian, another Australian guy on our tour was a DJ and managed to figure out the system and get some tunes going. Then about 1 hour in the power went off to the whole club. But because of this they just decided to give us unlimited drinks for the whole time we stayed. Yay.
After a while I decided I had had enough and so I offered to split a taxi with Leisle because she needed to make her flight. Leisle's roommate decided she wanted to leave too so she hopped in the cab with us, but when we were negotiating the price with the driver she told us she had no money. She wanted to go to an ATM but Leisle and I just wanted to get out of there so we started off. I asked this girl how much money did she have and she said 5 euro and some cents. She obviously had no
sense though, because even though she was only about 2 euro off what she would owe, she said she didn't want to give it to us because then she would have absolutely no money. Instead she wanted Leisle to pay for her in full (I didn't have much more than my exact share) and then get money out at the hotel and pay Leisle back. This was so dumb- you are going to the ATM anyway just pay us NOW! Leisle doesn't have change for a 20 euro note, and oh yeah SHE HAS TO GO TO THE AIRPORT!! Sorry for my rant, but seriously who does that?
So Leisle and I just paid the whole cab fare and said our goodbyes as she headed off to the airport. It was the first of many goodbyes I would have to make over the next couple of days.
Next post coming soon! Xx
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