After completely losing my mask of sanity on my first night in Rome, I was awoken at around 5:30 am by a thunderstorm.  I went to make sure my window was closed and that’s when I remebered my window doesn’t even go outside, it goes into the hallway and across from that is an open window.  I am not so sure my sanity will return to me today.

I get up and get ready to go out.  My hotel leaves your breakfast for you the night before.  I went from fresh breads, fruit, smoothies, yogurt, pots of coffee and home made deserts in Naples to this:

I leave a note for someone to please fix my WiFi and I head out.

Today is Vatican City day.  I do not have much of a personal interest in seeing the Vatican Museum, but I am in Rome.  I have to go, right?  So I do.

Rome does not like things like signage.   They want tourists to be lost.  It was raining so hard.  I did not get lost though.  Well I kind of did but only for one block.  That’s nothing compared to what I am capable of.  The line to enter the museum.  Jesus Christ.  Literally even.  Thank God (LITERALLY EVEN) I had made a reservation online before leaving.  I bypassed all the suckers who did not and there were zero people in line in front of me.

I am not really going to talk about the museum and give you some sort of history lesson.  If you are interested in that sort of stuff,  you know way more than I do.  If you are not interested in that stuff, then you don’t want to read it so I won’t make you.

(Please note: The above was a great cover up to the fact that I don’t know shit about Roman history, right?)

The Vatican is packed with tour groups.   Packed.   It is nearly impossible to escape them.  I actually did at one point.  I have so much open space in front of me and behind me.  I began talking out loud to myself.  “Look!  I can walk!  I can put my arms out! I can spin around!  I can windmill!” and of course, I did all of these exact things as I was talking out loud to myself about them.  It felt great.

Look at all that oxygen!!!

The Sistene Chapel.   It really annoys me that you cannot take pictures here.  It was really the only part I actually wanted to see.  I would love to look back on my pictures and daydream about the time I was there.  It was so quiet compared to the insanity I had to walk through to get here.  Oh well.

After leaving the chapel, I went out back.  It was POURING.

Despite this, there was a tiny patch of clear blue sky in the middle of all the grey.  It was so creepy.  God, is that you?  Do you really exist after all?  If so, we are going to have some very awkward conversations when I get to the pearly gates.   You may want to consider prolonging that one as long as possible.  I won’t mind.

I went down into the Padiglione Delle Carrozze to look at the chariots.  You walk in and there are all these chariots.  Staring with this glorious one:

From there, you walk down the rows and the chariots move from the 1800’s into the early 1900’s…

and then you get to this tricked out Fiat what the hell:

I started laughing uncontrollably at how ridiculous this was.   It is a TRICKED OUT FIAT.  Alongside all these beautiful chariots of centuries gone by.  I could not stop laughing,  Looks like I am not making those pearly gates after all.

I am glad I went back inside and visited the Hall of Pictures.   They had a section for Easter Island.  I am going to Easter Island!  It is in my top three wants. I plan to be there this December.  I got so excited seeing these pictures.

The next obvious choice after the museum is St. Peter’s Bascilica.  It is still POURING, I mean POURING.  I just do not feel like going there right now.  I will come back later.

A walk to the Metro set me off.  Imagine a thousand people on line for the Vatican Museum, all with umbrellas.  All with no clue how to not put my eyes in danger of being gorged out of my face.

I got back to my room and some woman is cleaning it.   She gestures to the note I left asking to please do something about the wifi and starts saying words I do not understand, that I took to mean her explaining that she did not understand what I wrote.

I ate a supermarket lunch in my room.  Afterwards I went to smoke a cigarette and now it is gorgeous outside.  Of course it is.   I go back inside and lay down for an hour before I go back out.  By this time, it has now started pouring again.  Rome hates me.  It’s kind of mutual at this point.

I hopped on a tram and just took it back and forth for a bit.  It went past the Colloseum, which was my first sighting of it.  I love how you just come upon such amazing things out of nowhere in major cities.  Oh hey, we are on some street.  Oh hey, we turned the corner and there is the Colloseum.  No big deal.

I took the tram to the end of the line.  I considered getting on a train here to Ostia Antica  but decided in the end not to.  I regret that.

This evening’s goal is to find the Trevi Fountain.  As I have mentioned before, Rome hates signs.   So this wasn’t exactly easy.  I somehow ended up at the Spanish Steps, which I wasn’t even looking for yet.

8776567456547658768 people blocking the Spanish Steps:

There are lots of dudes at the Spanish Steps handing out “free” roses, who then turn around and ask you for money.  One kept trying to get me to take the rose.  I did not want it.  Not even because of the money part that I knew would follow, but because I DO NOT WANT A ROSE.  I was trying to take pictures and he would not get out of my face no matter how clear I was about “I DO NOT WANT A ROSE”.  I ended up yelling at him that he was ruining my vacation before storming off.

From there, I managed to find the Trevi Fountain.   It just didn’t seem as impressive to me in person as it did in pictures.

I would have loved to have stuck around for a while and just sit and do my thing where I sit in front of world famous tourist attractions and completely daze out doing my “LOOK AT MEEEEEEEEEEEEE I AM INDEPENDENT” thing.  But there was just no space with all the people everywhere.