Day 3 - Weather Or Not, Venice Here We Come!

Day 3 of our trip started out WONDERFULLY. We got up early and went to the Vatican again to actually go inside of St. Peter's Basilica and to see the Vatican Museum (where the Sistine Chapel is). Vatican City was EMPTY. Like, nobody there. At all. It was night and day different from the morning before. We waited to go explore St. Peter's and the Vatican Museum on Monday morning because, well, we had to. It wasn't open any time before, so we had to kind of cram it in to Monday morning. 

Look how far I can stretch my arms with all of that space!!

When I walked into St. Peter's Basilica, it took my breath away. It was absolutely beautiful. I don't think I've ever seen a church that was so pretty before. And so huge. It was just incredible. There were hardly any tourists in there, but there were a lot of people who were praying, a lot of priests blessing bread (for communion, we guessed), and even a few different services happening in different wings of the church. This turned out to be a good and bad thing. Good because it was so great to see the church being used for what it was intended for. It was so neat to see people worshiping there. It was bad because there were a lot of parts blocked off that I couldn't see. Like Michelangelo's Pieta, for example. Luckily we had a zoom lens and could capture a pretty decent picture of it, but I wish I could have seen it closer up. It was the 2nd most beautiful sculpture I saw in Italy, topped only by another of Michelangelo's works - David, in Florence. More on that to come. :)

Look how empty it was!

Dave, especially, was really sad that we couldn't get closer to this statue. It was in one of the blocked off sections. This is a statue of Peter, and people will come and kiss his foot to show their devotion. We could actually see the part of his toe that is rubbed raw, and Dave was so sad we couldn't kiss it. I was thinking that my immune system was probably grateful it was closed off.

The basilica has this gold lettering all around the ceiling, and the words are every direct quote that Jesus spoke to Peter found in the New Testament. These words are probably the most famous, "You are Peter". 

Bernini designed these sunbeam rays, and we couldn't get very close to them, but they sure were pretty.

I kept being amazed that pieces of marble can move you almost to tears. This piece of art is so incredibly beautiful. Even if you aren't an art lover, you can't help but be moved by this piece. It is so amazing to me that Michelangelo could carve this close to 600 years ago and it is still standing and inspiring people today. 

That picture in the corner is of Peter being crucified upside down, and is supposedly the spot where Peter really was crucified. Again, it was closed off for service, but we tried to get as good of a picture as we could.

Michelangelo built this dome. He was inspired by the dome in Florence by Brunelleschi (which you will see later). It was absolutely amazing. 

We came to find out that every major cathedral that we visited was under construction during our trip and St. Peter's was no exception. It looked like they were touching up the canopy over the altar, maybe for their big Easter mass? We weren't sure, but there were guys up there on ropes and pulleys so guess what we couldn't see? The altar. :( I learned something cool about the bronze canopy over the altar though. It is actually built of bronze melted down from the bronze on the Pantheon. The builders of St. Peter's wanted the best and would settle for nothing less, even if it meant looting another ancient temple of its bronze.

This is the spot where Charlamagne was crowned Holy Roman Emperor. Dave is giving you his best, "I'm the king now" look.

Outside the basilica with a look at the Vatican Museum. You can see the outside of the Sistine Chapel from here, which we were about to see.

We didn't have a reservation at the Vatican Museum until 9:30, and we didn't think you could go over early. So, we kind of moseyed around St. Peter's square, we went to the Vatican post office and sent off some postcards to our families, and then casually walked over to the museum. Turns out this was big mistake, because the museum definitely opened earlier than 9:30 and we could have gone earlier. By the time we made it through the line and security and everything we only had about 35 minutes in the museum before we had to go back to our hotel, grab our bags and catch our train to Venice. I found out in about 2 seconds that the Vatican museum is ENORMOUS. Seriously. I had two major things I wanted to see here, the Sistine Chapel and Raphael's School of Athens. Of course they were like the hardest things to get to and I swear we walked through about 100 rooms before we found what we were looking for. This was probably the first thing we would change if we could re-do our trip. We needed more time here. We were hustling and rushing in and out of crowds trying to find just two things. We finally made it to the School of Athens - a little out of breath, but excited still.

This piece is very famous, and I love how many people Raphael was able to paint into the picture. If you don't know much about it, let me enlighten you. Raphael painted a crowd of the most influential thinkers/artists/scientists of his time. Those two guys in the middle are Plato (on the left, drawn looking just like Leonardo daVinci) and Aristotle (on the right). Here are a few close-ups of some of the more famous people.

See the guy with the book? That's Pythagoras. And the guy in the purple robe leaning on a block of marble? You guessed it - that's Michelangelo.

The guy with the compass is Euclid or Archimedes, they're not entirely sure.

See the guy with the black beret - looking hat? That's Raphael himself looking out at us.

After looking at the School of Athens for as long as we thought we could, we booked it through the museum again to find the Sistine Chapel. We finally found it, but by the time we did we only had about 10 minutes to look at the ceiling, and I could have spent all day there. Literally. This was the biggest disappointment of the trip for me, for sure. It is such a masterpiece, and 10 minutes just didn't do it the justice it deserved. It was incredible though, especially as Michelangelo painted it on his back. We couldn't get any pictures of it unfortunately. But, even though we were only in there for 10 minutes, I'll remember the awe I felt there for much longer.

We had to BOOK it back to our hotel to grab our bags so we could catch our train to Venice. I was so nervous that we were going to miss our train. We were literally running through the streets of Rome, and our hotel room was 4 floors up. I wasn't as fast of a runner as Dave and was kind of slowing us down. We decided that I would wait at the metro stop for him, and he would run and get both of our bags and meet up with me again. Although I was slightly nervous about being left by myself, it was the only way to do it if we were going to catch our train. He came back in no time at all (he is super duper in shape!!) and we ran to the train station. We made our train with 7 minutes to spare. Whew!

Look at my awesome hubby!

When we finally found our seats and caught our breath, we started talking with the people sitting across from us, a mother and daughter. We found out that they were both from Hong Kong, and the daughter was living in Rome teaching Chinese and the mother was just visiting her. They were SO nice, and we spent a lot of time getting to know them. We discovered that if you buy your train tickets way ahead of time they are cheaper. The cute mom and daughter bought their tickets ahead of time for almost 100 Euros less than we paid. When we told them how much we paid for our tickets, the mom said, "Woah. You rich man!" She hadn't said a single word up to that point, and we weren't even sure she spoke English. It caught us off guard and we thought it was so funny. We found out the daughter's name was Annie, and we were so surprised that when she spoke English, she had a British accent. When we stopped to think about it though, we remembered that Hong Kong was under British rule for a long time and so it made sense that her English was British. She was just so cute and we loved talking with her and her mom.

We ate lunch on the train because we were STARVING, and the train ride was pretty long. It was tasty!

Now here's where the trip started to get a little iffy. As we got about 20 minutes out of Venice, we started seeing SNOW out of our window. Yep, you heard me. SNOW. Rome's weather was absolutely perfect, and we were not prepared in the slightest for snow. We didn't pack our clothes thinking that it would snow. I was getting really nervous, but we hadn't gotten out of the train yet, so it wasn't horrible. Little did I know that it would be absolutely and totally FREEZING when we stepped off the train. It was even colder than it looked. And, if you know me, you know that I hate cold. Like I get the shivers if my house temperature is less than 70. I don't do cold. 

Finding our hotel was a nightmare. We had to figure out how to get a vaporetto pass(like a metro pass, except it's for the boats) and buy our tickets to Florence the next day, all in the FREEZING cold. Even Dave was shivering and had purple lips, and that's saying something. To top it all off, when we finally got to our hotel, our room was like a degree. Like 1 degree. It was not even refreshing at all to step into it. I wanted to cry. And, in fact, I did. Kind of a lot. Poor Dave. He was so nice and was trying to help me feel better, but I just had to get it all out first. I was SO incredibly frustrated that my dream vacation was getting ruined with SNOW, my arch-nemesis. I couldn't even enjoy the trip because I was so so so so so so cold. What made it even worse, is that I could have packed WAY warmer clothes if I knew it was going to be so cold, but we just didn't plan on snow. :(

After getting a good cry out, I finally came to my senses and realized that there wasn't anything I could do about the weather, and that I wasn't going to let it ruin my vacation (see, I can be level-headed, it just takes some time!). We found me some gloves and some leggings at a local shop and I did a little better. Not a lot better, but better. So, you'll see in the rest of our pictures that I am wearing all of my clothes (seriously, 7 layers) and trying my best to pretend that I was not freezing to death. You'll have to be the judge of how I did. We caught the Vaporetto to see some sights, and it was still fun to see these places even though it was ridiculously cold.

This was a cool stop for us. This was the church of San Zacarias, or the church of Saint Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist. The church was really cold so we didn't want to spend too much time in there, but we did spend enough time to see the Zacharias' tomb. That is really his body in there! Cool, huh? Italy is full of old dead people body parts. They love their relics.

We took the Vaporetto to St. Mark's square and looked around for a bit before we found something to eat. Actually, when I say we looked around, I mean Dave looked around. I was having total tunnel vision and I didn't even notice we were in the square. Can you believe it!? It's like a huge square with a huge cathedral, and I didn't even notice. I was just so focused on putting both my feet in front of the other and following Dave who was leading us to a warm place for dinner. When we finally got to dinner, Dave said, "Wow. That square sure was pretty, wasn't it?" and I had to ask him what he was talking about. You'll think that I was being such a baby (and I was a little bit) but even Dave said that it was one of the coldest times he can ever remember.

Here is our place for dinner, the Conchiglia. It was actually awesome because it was EMPTY. No one in their right minds was out and about, and so we had the place to ourselves. It was warm, and what's more - they had Michael Buble playing in the background. It was my tender mercy from heaven. It was exactly what I needed. I ordered some hot chocolate (which was WAY expensive and turned out to be just melted chocolate - different than what I was expecting but AWESOME - I actually bought some of it to take home) and it was just what I needed. 

Dave ordered a seafood pizza, and I wish that I would have taken a picture of him eating it. There were little squids on his pizza, and I don't know if you've ever seen Mr. Bean's Holiday, but he looked JUST like Mr. Bean eating those squids. He was just munching them with the little tentacles hanging out of his mouth. He couldn't quite get them all the way in his mouth but he sure was trying. I think I may have peed my pants just a little bit.

After dinner, we saw a few more sights around town and then headed back to our 1 degree room for the night. It was so cold, but actually really fun to see Venice at night with nobody there. I could definitely see the romantic potential it had.

This is where we would have sat for dinner if we could have had dinner outside. It was just too cold for that.

See what I mean? Beautiful!

My hood never came off the entire night. Not even at dinner when I was inside. 

Some of the streets were flooding and the city put up these little walkways so that you could walk through without getting soaked. Crazy huh??

Now I recognized we were in St. Mark's Square. :)

St. Mark's Basilica. Also under construction.

I was so disappointed that I couldn't ride in my gondola. Look at them! They were all covered up because it was so snowy and rainy and cold.

View from Rialto Bridge at night. Isn't it cool to see all of the lights sparkling on the canal?? Even through my freezing cold-ness, I could appreciate that. It was beautiful.

Rialto Bridge

This was the name of our hotel, and it was established in 1288 - that is old!!

When we got back to our room we had to ask for extra blankets to keep us warm. Here I am, cuddled up under my blankets, finally warm for the evening. 

So, Venice turned out to be a little bit of a bummer for us, but we decided in hind sight that maybe it was a good thing after all, because now we have to go back and see Venice when it's warm. I didn't get to ride in a gondola, so I HAVE to go back. We didn't get the full experience, so we'll just go back and do it again someday. At least that's what I keep telling myself. :)