I had a kind of slow start. I don't know what I did that stopped me. I think I just felt a little tired. I haven't really enjoyed Rome as much as I thought I would. I've found it to be too filled with tourists. There are more people here trying to take your money than anywhere else I've been and it makes me feel less enthusiastic. Also the city seems fairly grimy and the people don't seem very happy. There are lots of homeless people in Rome and it's a little bit sad. Some are genuineless homeless, others are less genuinely homeless although they're probably still not in a good way.
I had a big sleep in. Then I talked with the guy from the USA for a while. He is from Denver, Colorado. He seems a little bit sullen. He doesn't seem very satisfied with his job back home and doesn't appear very excited about things in general, but isn't necessarily disappointed either.
I eventually headed out. I wanted to see inside the basilica at the Vatican. I only really want to see this because I have heard that it was designed by quite a good architect and is a really impressive building. But it was a long time since I've read about that.
Along the way I stopped and saw some things. Some things I'd already seen, like the Pantheon.
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| This is some church somewhere. Rome has lots of these scattered around the place that you can enter for free. Next time I go to Rome I should do some more research about these places and go and visit more of them. |
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| Cool roof. |
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| Inside the pantheon again. |
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| The line to get into the Vatican. It went quite quickly though. The holdup for getting in was that everyone had to go through a metal detector. |
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| The place where the pope says his stuff. |
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| Inside the basilica thing. I was amazed that I didn't have to pay! I thought I would. |
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| I think that somewhere up near here is the famous painting of the finger almost touching god's finger. But I'm not sure. The chinese guy said that he could hardly see it because it was so high up. This is at max zoom on my camera and I can't get any closer because they've blocked off the section forward of where I'm standing for some reason. I'm pretty sure this painting is supposed to be in this building, but I'm not sure. |
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| This is why i can't get further. They're doing something in there. In general I wasn't that impressed with the basilica. Maybe I've seen too many of these types of buildings that I'm becoming desensitized. I think I should also need to learn more about it so I can better appreciate what went into it. |
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| Some silly guards. |
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| I wanted to go into the Vatican museum, but it was closing in half an hour. Damn. I'll have to go back someday. Preferably when I research the place a bit better and do some other things a little better. So I left the vatican and walked down along the Tiber to check out a little island. I wasn't really sure what else to do. There was this slight drop in the river and all this rubbish is caught in the point where the turbulence in the flowing water is keeping it stuck at this point. |
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| A nice bridge. This bridge was built in 59 b.c. I think. |
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| On this bridge are people selling things that are actually worth buying: things they've made themselves. Everyone else sells one of a small number of worthless things: junky rubber tomatoes etc built in a factory in china that when thrown to the ground appear to splat but then return to normal; hand bags that I've been told are made by slaves or child labour or something like that; etc... I think this island may have been formed by the building of mills by the romans. |
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| I left the island then walked up around some streets because I saw some buildings that looked interesting. This looks like a nice area. |
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| At the top of this hill is a park. Some italian girls asked me to take a picture for them. I thought I did a fairly good job but they weren't too impressed. It seems odd to me when strangers seem to feel that I owe them a great picture. |
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| I came back down to the circus maximus. I walked across it and imagined the crowd going wild at my imminent chariot performance or something. Strange place to be. Before getting here, I passed some kind of building with army people stationed outside holding big machine guns. That kind of thing seems fairly normal in mainland Europe but I was interested to know what they were guarding. Across the street I noticed a building with USA flags on it. It might have been the embassy. I can only speculate. |
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| I really need a toilette. I climbed this huge flight of stairs because a few days earlier I'd seen a toilet at the top. I got to the top and the gates were locked closed. Nooo! |
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| These are the things where tourists get their food while in Rome. They are everywhere! I did not buy a single item from one. They look quite bad. The bottled water is probably fine, but might be expensive. The statement 'warm pizza!' has me worried though. |
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