Rome

Sometimes you have to ask yourself the important questions, like did we fly and train all this way to stand in a queue, this is exactly the reason we didn't see Saint Paul's Basilica and why we got up before 6 to go see the Vatican. We got to the Vatican about one and a half hours before it opened and there was already a sizable queue. When we left however the queue had grown somewhat. After we had left the Vatican we were going to have a look at St Paul's Basilica and the queue there was even longer, see the picture below. So the moral of this story is if you are in Rome and it's July and you want to see the sites get up early.

When visiting Rome be prepared to be hassled by people trying to sell you guided tours, this is a way to short cut the queues. Whilst waiting to get into the Vatican we were approached at least ten times. One thing we both agreed upon was that we didn't want to go on any guided tours. We wanted to go through at our own pace and spend time looking at the things that caught our eye and skip the things that didn't. Although these tours would tell us things that we didn't know we both agreed that we would probably forget most of it and after a while of listening to the guide bang on about this and that we would have switched off anyway.

We both found Rome a little overwhelming, the first time you see an impressive gold statue on a rather high pillar or ancient building, it makes you go wow, but by the fiftyith its kind of passe, its hard to maintain a sense of awe. Take the Vatican museum for instance, its like someone has vomited great works of art, every surface is covered in great works of art, the walls, the ceiling and the floor, all painted, sculpted or tiled there just isn't anywhere to look to give your brain a rest. We did however get a good look at a Leonardo da Vinci, here again the crowds seemed to just go straight for the big name things which is good for us as we could get a good look at these works of art.

Leena suffered a little in the Roman heat, in fact we took to having a siesta. Our days consisted of getting up early, doing some sightseeing, having lunch then snoozing till about 5 and then going out for some more sightseeing and then finishing off the day with dinner and some of the local vino or beer, not such a bad way to spend a day really.

We went in search of a street named after Fibonacci but couldn't find it so we had to make do with this one.

Here are some more pictures of us in Rome.