Pope day

Today was Vatican City day.  We took the metro down there and is that ever a popular destination.  They have 5 million visitors go through there a year and I'm not surprised.  I had read about how long the lineups were so we ended up going with one of the random people on the street for a tour.  It's not as sketchy as it sounds and we ended up having a really nice tour through the Vatican museum and no line up into the basilica.  And we're the lineups something else.  And the museum was packed.  It was at least a 30 minute walk to the sistine chapel at the exit.

Also, the things that have the pope on them are nuts.  Bobble heads,  postcards, magnets and more.

We also found the Castel Sant Angelo,  which looked farther away on the map.  It was a bit of a special place.  It's an old fortress and was a bit of a maze to get around.  And we had no map so it was all a guessing game.  But still worth the visit.

Tomorrow we are off to brave the train to Pisa and Florence.  It should be an adventure!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Temple day

Image
Day 12 rice terraces Today was a busy touring day in the Ubud area.  We headed north for a volcano hike around the Batur caldera.  It last erupted in 1999 for 4 months so there is still a big ring of lava from the eruption.  We went for a hour and a half hike around the caldera at the base of the volcano.  Indonesia has a large amount of volcanos for such a small country.  They also have the most active volcanoes in the world right now.  This one still has activity ongoing as you could see the small smoke plume still coming out. On the way we stopped to see some of the rice terraces.  They do have a lot of them in the area.  They are interesting to see.  You are able to wander up and down both sides but we didn't have that much time.  And it was a lot of irregularly sized stairs to go up and down. What the tour company called a gentle hike turned into a fairly intense trek down the hillside.  As the bus was meeting us at the bottom of the hill to the caldera we didn'
Read more

Museum and Beach time

Image
Day 13 We have had a lot of time in Ubud with 2 full days and an evening and another morning to explore.  It feels like a lot more time than is necessary for what the area seems to have to offer.  We opted to do our own tour today and hire a driver for a day rather than take a taxi.  grounds at the Bali museum We headed back down to Denpasar as our plan was to visit the Hard Rock café for a pin for Terry and to see some of the sights along the way.  Our first stop was at the Bali Museum.  It was fairly small with 4 small buildings to tour around.  There were a lot of ceremonial knives and coins on display.  And some lovely grounds with a few couples getting wedding pictures done.  We were trapped in a courtyard for a few minutes waiting for them to finish up.  And of course the people trying to sell some of their junk to the tourists.  fabric stores all along, on both sides! The big markets in downtown Denpasar were close by so we took some time to check them out. 
Read more

Denpasar to Ubud

Image
Day 11 Today is another travel day, heading back to Bali for our second visit.  We are heading to Ubud in the middle of Bali for our final 3 nights. hotel in Labuan Bajo, view from the balcony We did try to sit on the beach this morning, but left as the giant bee seemed to think they were his chairs and we were in the way.  It was huge.  And close to the size of my thumb.  And on the way back we spotted a tiny bird that looked not much bigger than the bee.  The grounds here seemed to be really good for bird watching as there were a couple guys on the tour that were really into the birds and they spent most of the morning wandering around looking at birds. Now it's just waiting for the flight, which is now #8 for me of this trip.  I feel very well traveled this vacation.  Typically my holidays include more bus time than airplane time.  The Komodo airport is small on the departure side as well.  But it feels like there are more staff than travelers right now.  The coffee s
Read more