The Vatican...and More Gelato

Today I woke up a little early and Monica came down to my part of town and we did a little shopping. We wanted to take advantage of the nationwide sale before it was too late (we think that the sale is only going until Saturday or Sunday). Monica bought a really nice coat from one of the stores near my house to go along with her Euro-boots as she calls them. I didn’t find anything.

We grabbed some lunch a little later and then decided that we wanted to get a little more sight seeing in realizing that we actually had to start going to class next week. It was a beautiful day out so we agreed that it would be a great time to go and see the Vatican. We headed over that way. The Vatican is only a 15 minute walk from our campus and half of it goes right along the river. When we walked up some stairs towards the river and looked back we could see Via De Lungara almost all the way back to our campus, here is one of the photos.

The JCU campus is up this street on the left hand side.

We continued on our way along the Tiber and before we turned down Via De Conciliazione towards the Vatican, we saw this huge thing that looked like a castle. It was called Castel Angelo and we made a note to go and check it out later and continued on our way. We kept walking and turned down the road to head to the Vatican. When we turned the corner we saw it far off in the distance. I started walking and as I did Monica stopped and said, “Are you sure that’s it?” I said yes and continued walking. About 15 meters later (That’s right, I’m using the metric system now) she stops again and says, “I don’t know, I don’t think that’s it.” I just tell her to come on and as we get closer we are able to take the entire scene. It was incredible. We walked around the square a little bit just checking out all the little details on top of the columns lining the square. We didn’t actually go in the basilica this time but we know we are going to make it back again to check it out. After a while the sun started to go down and I tried to take a couple of pictures of the fountains in the square before we left.

One of the fountains in St. Peter's Square.

Me in front of the Vatican.

The same fountain as earlier, a little closer to sunset.

After leaving the Vatican we went and did a little exploring around Piazza Navona. We were a little disappointed when we first arrived in the square because the main fountain in the middle of the square, the Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi or Fountain of the Four Rivers was in the middle of being restored as well as the face of the church of Sant'Agnese in Agone. We are hoping that they will finish their restoration efforts before we leave so we can see them without the scaffolding in front of them.

We headed back home and then decided to come back later that evening for dinner. We ended up eating at one of the restaurants in the middle of the Piazza, outside on the patio. It was a really nice evening out and there was a guy playing the guitar and singing American songs half the time we were out there. After that, and after having tasted gelato for the first time ever last night, we went back to the same gelateria to indulge in the Nutella gelato for a second night in a row. It was still delicious.

We ran into a few of my roommates when we were finishing up and finished the night with a beet at Abbey Theatre, a bar near Piazza Navona.