Europe . Italy . Rome: Watch out for sidlers in lines!

Friday, September, 29th, 2006

We woke up early today (around 6:30am) in order to get to the Vatican early and avoid the huge line-up. The line-up wasn`t as long as it was on Wednesday but it wasn`t short by any means. We were nice and walked all the way to the end of the line instead of budding in like the many ˝sidlers˝ we noticed along the way. The key method for budding into line is to avoid eye contact and just continue making your way forward. It worked for a bunch of people. Others tried to pretend like they knew someone far ahead in the line and waved at them but no one ever returned the wave. Sneaky people!

We ended up waiting in line for about 40 minutes so it wasn`t that bad. We got a special discount going into the Vatican even though we only had 1 student card and they didn`t advertize a student discount, but we`re not going to complain (maybe the guz selling tickets liked me or Tyler, you never know). The Vatican museum was enormous, we did soooo much walking. We went to see the Sistine Chapel, of course, and were in awe of Michealangelo`s work. It was amazing to see it right in front of zou. It was really crowded and warm in the chapel and there were guards at the entrances and exits that shushed people for talking and stopped people from taking photos. Tyler and I both really enjoyed the paintings that were does in Caravaggio`s style where you can see the candlelight glowing on everything in the picture, the paintings always have great contrast and look just like real-life.

One disappointment about the Vatican was that you weren`t allowed to go into the city, it`t restricted only to residents. We ended our time at the Vatican in St. Peter`s Square and our feet were so sore after our time-consuming visit to the museum and all our walking from the previous days.

We had the most delicious lunch imaginable at a restaurant called Hosteria Pizzeria. We got the Vegetale pizza which had roasted zucchini, peppers, eggplant and mushrooms and it was so tasty. It was our favourite pizza of our entire time in Italy.

-Jenny and Tyler, pizza masters

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