I had arrived at the hostel fairly early on the evening of day 3 hoping to catch the little "Bio Bar" on the ground floor open. The previous night it had been closed. I'd asked the receptionist about it and was given the helpful information, "Well, maybe tomorrow". Day 3 it was indeed open, but was a little strange. Very bright (like 7-11 bright), very small (like 9 x 10), with only a man and maybe one other person inside. In general, I find that "bio" in Europe must mean "healthy". For instance, organic items have "bio" on the packaging. This place didn't look especially healthy so I decided against it. Thinking back, maybe it wasn't a bar at all (despite the name) but a snack shack kind of place. Who knows.
Going upstairs with the hopes of writing a bit, I found my phone to be dead and the room, as usual, too dark and very quiet. Into the breakfast room I went. Finding a plug, I watched my phone charge itself instead of making eye contact with the three gals sitting around one of the tables.
After listening to them a bit and hearing something that I had an opinion on (imagine), I decided that watching my phone charge wasn't really that exciting and chimed in on the conversation. I learned that two of them were from Tasmania and one from the US. Once the Aussies left, the American and I realized we had something else to spark conversation with her being from Charlotte, a place I will be visiting soon, it being the former headquarters of Wachovia. I found Amanda to be very pleasant, although she made me look conservative with her somewhat idealistic views of the world. I bet in a few years when she has a couple of kids, she will indeed feed those kids meat, from McDonald's Happy Meal no less, and find something that she simply must go to Wal-mart to purchase. We stayed up too late and made a plan to go have some wine the last night of my hostel stay. You see, I was afraid to order pizza or gelato. Her fears were public transport and ordering alcohol. We would be a good team.
You will recall that yesterday I did not make it to the Vatican Museum. I'd been all ready to hit it first thing, on through to the Sistine Chapel, then pretending to be with a tour and sneaking "through the back door" into St Peter's Basilica, per the Rick Steves tip. But alas, I had gotten in the wrong line to find myself at the Basilica first, thereby finding a 2 hour line to the museum upon my exit from the church.
So I had decided this morning that I would have an alarm set, regardless of any sleeping going on around me. Unfortunately, I forgot to turn the ringer on. No matter as I was up at 6:45 anyway, the body apparently adjusting. Or maybe it was the heat in the hostel. I had actually brought a cheap sleeping bag liner, thinking it would serve two purposes. #1 - bed bug (or other?) barrier. Turns out this place was almost too clean. A gal came in everyday about 10:00 and cleaned like a banshee. More than one day I came back at noonish to find the aroma of bleach still extremely strong. I also found my bed made every day, with sheets white and crisp.
Sleeping bad liner reason #2 - Warmth. I'd read that this particular hostel was very hot in the summer with no air conditioning. I'd assumed that it would be equally cold in the winter but with the 400 year old walls and my placement directly next to the radiator which served the entire 800+ sq ft room, being cold was not the issue. I'm still not sure why the bed had a sheet, two blankets and a cotton bedspread on it.
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| Nice bathroom with no curtain |
I digress. Happy to find that the heat had woken me, even earlier than my phone was not going to do, it was time to try the shower. Despite the fact that Europeans don't get the point of the whole shower curtain thing and you end up freezing even in a warm bathroom, I'd had a simply wonderful bathroom experience at the 4-star hotel in Via Veneto on day 2 and had therefore skipped day 3, really not ready to experience what might be awaiting me in the shower room. At least it was pretty early and I had the place to myself. I wish I had taken a photo so you could really appreciate the difference.
It being this early hour, just about everyone was still asleep and it was still pitch black outside, meaning I had to find all the accouterments for my shower in the dark. Note to self was made to do this preparation before bed next time. My Aussie friend had confirmed that the first shower on the right had great hot water so in I crept, seemingly all of my possessions piled carefully up on a very small stool to prevent any infiltration of shower spillage. The shower was one of those that has only a 1/2 centimeter on the dial that has anything that close to warm, the other sides being screaming cold or scalding hot. There were about 10 small holes that had water coming out, the other 30 not wanting to cooperate. If you've seen the volume of the hairs on my head, you can appreciate that it took fully 20 minutes to get the shampoo out. The fact that you had to keep pushing the button to get the water started again did not help. Shower and putting on the face were finally accomplished about an hour after I had gotten up, much much longer than this low maintenance person generally needs.
I made my way to tea and toast and to the camaraderie which I had begun to develop with my fellow and now familiar hostelmates. This was something that I'd looked forward to, meeting people from all walks of life, hearing of where they'd been and where they'd be going. And indeed, that was one of the more interesting aspects of the hostel experience. Most of the girls in the breakfast room were just like Demon Kitti, college students studying in Europe and spending their Christmas holidays traveling around and seeing the sites. (The few older women here tended to stay in the lower occupancy, more private, rooms and eat breakfast elsewhere). You can imagine what the breakfast conversation was like: "Where did you go yesterday"?, "How did you get there?", "How much did it cost?", "Did you like it?"... By just the second morning in the hostel, I started feeling like I was the mother. I was not 22 and hosteling around with little money or plans but alot of time. I was the non-free-wheeling one who had done her homework (i.e. spreadsheet), had a plan, limited days and was ready to make it happen. After the first morning, the mother role was my duty at breakfast with the girls asking what I had done, how much it cost and how to get there. I felt practically an expert.
All that to say that my 6:45 wake-up time was for not. Having now spent over 2 hours trying to get clean, making Melba toast and giving advice, I was off on the 10 minute walk to the Vatican Museum, hoping to find that the line had not grown to 2 hours. Apparently most of the tourists had known ahead of time that the Sistine Chapel portion of the tour would be closing at 12:30 and had decided to do their visit on another day. With plenty of time to see all I wanted to see, I spent about 45 minutes in line with an Asian group on a private tour behind me and three young men in front of me. One was a pleasant guy from Argentina, with whom I conversed quite a bit. He was accompanied by two Brazilian guys who spoke little English. Let me clarify: I mean two guys from Brazil, not a really huge number of guys who would have made the line many hours long. 
Although there weren't that many people in our line, many groups on organized tours were able to get in ahead of us and the museum was quite crowded. A friend had told me that he just saw a bunch of Pope hats and vestments at the Museum but I fear that he just thought he was at the Vatican (or maybe it was a temporary exhibit). The place was chock full of classic sculptures and Renaissance art and who knows what all from the huge collection amassed by the Catholic Church over the years. To be honest though, I'm somewhat embarrassed to say that I'm not much of an art person. However, I found the architecture of the museum, along with the mosaic floors and Raphael friezes fascinating. I can't imagine how many hours just went into the painting of this place.
There are so many collections here. Etruscan and Egyptian wings, artifacts from Rome, Palestine, Assyria and points beyond, a picture gallery, a map gallery, a gallery containing only busts and one just of sculptures of animals. The beauty of this is that, although you could never fully appreciate it all in one day, there are areas that are more popular with the tourist set, leaving other areas almost completely vacant.I mostly went for those.
The Sistine Chapel was impressive needless to say. Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to visit, my being elbow to elbow with hundreds of people, all looking up instead of towards where they were going. No way to even go to the side of the building, have a seat and take a minute to very appreciate it. I decided that since my disability makes it hard to look up for any extending period of time without getting dizzy and the fact that I was engulfed within a steadily moving herd of people entitled me to snap a couple of very no-no photos so that I could appreciate it later. Well, those reasons coupled with the fact that many others had their own Kodak's out. I did not, however, use a flash. Lovely.
Completing the visit, Melba toast wearing off, I headed down to the museum's pizzeria. Although I'd decided before arriving in Rome that I would be cheap and eat lots of pizza, I had not yet done so as I was more than a little intimidated by the ordering process, wherein you (not speaking the language) point to the pizza with the ingredients you want and with your hands tell the attendant the size and shape you are after. The pizza is then weighed and you pay accordingly. At the museum's pizzeria, everyone was a tourist and there were only a few sets of ingredients and the slices seemed to be pre-cut, thereby alleviating most intimidation. I think the extremely large piece of cheese pizza and bottle of water (no gas please) was only about 5.5e. Yummo.
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