The Vatican
I haven’t updated this in over a week, so this might be very long. Or very short. I’m not exactly sure.
Last Friday I went on my first scheduled trip with my architecture studio accompanied by another school’s studio. We went to the Tuscan countryside where we visited three small towns. We went to Pienza, Montalchino, and somewhere else that I can’t remember the name. It was a very enjoyable experience but it was a very long day.
The following morning I woke up at 4am to take the train to Rome. I visited the Colosseum, the Roman Forum, The Campidoglio, The Trevi Fountain, the Pantheon, and finally the Vatican. All of these places were incredible, and photos don’t do them justice.
You would think that people wouldn’t try to rip you off at the Vatican right? After all, it is one of the holiest places on Earth.
WRONG!
WheninRometours is at the top of my shit list. They told us they would take us on a tour of the Vatican and visit the Sistine Chapel, one of the Pope’s private gardens, the basilica, the top of the dome, and even the catacombs, all for only 25 euro with a student ID.
Then when we went to pay, all of a sudden we each had to leave a 10 euro deposit that would be refunded at the end of the tour when we gave back the headsets. Also, one of my travel companions didn’t have her student ID so it should have been only five euros more total, but we all ended up somehow paying five euros apiece. Fine, i’ll pay the extra five to start the tour.
What happened next? Well…
The tour guide took us back to the vatican after a sketchy walk to the offices of WheninRometours to purchase our tickets. After going through security and using the cleanest restroom i’ve ever seen, the tour guide tells us the Vatican won’t accept our student ID cards so we each had to pay another 5 euro. We told him how unprofessional he was and asked him to refund us our money. He started to get very nervous and edgy and explained to us that he doesn’t have our money and he can’t refund us. We told him that we would go back to his shitty little office and get our money back ourselves, and he said that the office was now closed for the day (well this seems really convenient that his shitty tour office would close at 3:30 pm for the day, even though there would be other tours after our tour). After I argued with the man at the ticket desk for five minutes about our student ID cards I realized that I was getting nowhere, and then the tour guide said that we can either pay the extra five apiece or we can lose the 30 we already gave him. Fine. I’ll pay the extra five because we are going to go to all of these cool places.
Did he take us to all of these cool places?
NO!
He stood in one of the gardens with us for forty minutes and talked about stupid nonsense. He spent more time talking about a picture of the sistine chapel than we were even in the real chapel. He ended up taking us through what used to be the Pope’s private art gallery. I have to admit that some of the things there were very cool, but I didn’t go on this tour to see some are gallery. The tour guide ended the tour after the Sistine chapel and didn’t take us into the basilica, the dome, or the catacombs. Fine. We went to do it all ourselves. We first tried to get to the dome, where we saw a sign that it cost another 7 euro to go to the top. Everyone was too pissed to pay. Then we went into the basilica itself, which was one of the most beautiful thing’s i’ve ever seen. When I went to go to the catacombs, the swiss guard was standing there blocking the entrance with spears. Needless to say I never made it into the catacombs.
What a shitty, shitty tour. I hope I have a better experience when I bring my family there next month.
After that very long saturday, I stayed home on sunday and did some schoolwork. Monday-Thursday was an uneventful span filled mostly with Architecture homework, italian homework, and watching movies on my laptop, along with doing a little wandering around Florence. It was a group project that we almost didn’t finish because of some horrible miscommunications (<- not even a real word apparently).
Yesterday morning, I had to wake up early to go to Fiesole (a small town on the surrounding hills of florence) with my Villa and Garden class to see Villa Medici. I have studied this Villa previously and I was actually excited to go. Of course it was subzero temperature where I had to wear three jackets and couldn’t feel any of my toes, and could barely take pictures because I thought my fingers would fall off if I took off my gloves. To top it all off we decided to cancel our tour of the rock quarry and now we have to reschedule, so I need to make that trip again.
After warming up I went to an art supply store to get some things for school, and later on at night my housemates, marissa, and myself met some other marywood students at a bar for some drinks. It was a lot of fun.
Today I woke up at noon and made breakfast. Then I bought a nice pair of italian made shoes, and went grocery shopping with marissa. Marissa and I went to look at potential apartments for her family to stay in when they come to Italy over break. After that, the two of us went to H+M where I bought some socks, a shirt, and a new cardigan. We came back to my apartment and made some dinner, and then she decided that she would take a nap in my bed and leave me to wash the dishes. She is still sleeping, so I found some time to write this post. Tonight we might all go out again, I’m not really sure.
That’s it.
