Birthday Blessings in the Vatican.

Saturday, January 14, 2012
Rome, Lazio, Italy
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
Happy Birthday to me,
.......blah blah blah.

Anyway, I celebrated my Birthday this day by visiting the Vatican. We woke up early as we had to collect our tickets at the appropriate time, we had chosen 9.30am so we could go on elsewhere later.
The Vatican Museums were amazing with many wonderous exhibitions, which took up most of our day. The building itself was really beautiful, packed full of artworks, and decorated with detailed paintings everywhere. The renaissance artwork, with the classical & Hellenistic legacy, is considered to be the most realistic and dramatic type of art without including photographic, and other reprographic, technology.
On the way back to St Peters Piazza we saw the world famous Swiss Guards doing their stuff (standing around protecting the empire). The Piazza was great, a huge round pillared affair with an obelisk in the middle. There turned out to be rather a lot of these in Rome, im sure there are none left in Egypt now...I can cross that of my bucket list. It looked like there was an Occupy movement going on whilst we visited with loads of police surrounding a load on temporarily entrenched protesters.
We managed to make it to Castel Sant Angelo for sunset. After a quick walk around the ramparts, a nice rooftop photo opportunity and the small display of firearms inside, we sat down for (the first of many) glass of wine, looking out over the Vatican and the south of Rome.
From here we headed across the Ponte Sant Angelo bridge to the north bank of the Tiber river .

We headed on to Trastevere district on the south bank of the river. It is a beautiful area, perfect for getting romantically lost (and drunk) in its many and confusing alleyways.
After the worlds largest shot of Grappa, which was more like a 1/2 pint, in a cute little restaurant with a lovely outdoor seating area, we decided to stagger onwards and see where the night takes us.

We ended up in a small cheesy and very urban bar/club in the centre of Rome. I cant remember where exactly, we were incoherent on the way in, let alone after. I do remember lots of cocktails, shots and dancing though and getting in at 6am when our lovely hosts were up for breakfast.

Comments

2025-02-13

Comment code: Ask author if the code is blank