When In ROMA Part 3

Day 3 in Rome! I think that day was the most tiring one. 3 days into our trip and our legs were aching and we had a full day's schedule. Plus, there was just so much to see in the Vatican Museums. I would try not to flood this post with too many photos but it might probably still be a lot of them.

We walked a really long way from our apartment to the Vatican City... around 40 minutes?

Walked all the way to the famous Piazza San Pietro!

We went there only to find out that the basilica wasn't open to the public that day because they were having a special celebration for the people in the cadets. We were very disappointed that morning. 

We planned to go St. Peter's Basilica first then to the Vatican Museums but since we couldnt go into the basilica, we ended up being early for our booking for the museum so we had to walk around the town for a bit. We managed to find some really pretty flowers~

This is the entrance of The Vatican Musuems! It was surprisingly bigger than we imagined and had more stuff to see than we thought so we ended up spending A LOT of time in there. We were so so tired from all the walking. The Sistine Chapel was the only motivation that kept us going and it just had to be at the end of the whole tour in the museum! If I didnt rmb wrongly, our booking for the Vatican Museums was at 10.30am, that was the earliest we could book when we bought our tickets online. 

There were a lot of tour groups when we were there, mostly Korean, and trust me, you do not want to be trapped between tour groups in the queue (or in the museum), it's the worst! So make sure you book your tickets in advance!

There was a small exhibition hall with all the history of the Popes and it was quite interesting. They even had documentaries playing where you could sit and watch and I nearly fell asleep sitting there because I was just so tired. Dont get me wrong, it was very interesting but I just found it very hard to concentrate when my body was fatigued.

The first art gallery we went to in the museum.

The lighting in the museum wasnt that good so I won't bother uploading most of the photos of the tapestries or paintings. 

We just had to find a place to sit down even if that meant sitting under the sun. 

You can imagine how tanned I was when I came back to London.

They had a room for Egyptian history and I always find the mummies in museums fascinating.

The courtyard of the museum!

With this huge rotatable golden globe in the center!

Following that was the room of sculptures and statues! There was way toooo many of them for me to slowly go through every one in detail. We just slowly walked along the long hallway and glanced at every sculpture without knowing who were who. I wouldnt rmb any of them anyway, especially when my brain was half asleep. 

The sun was scorching hot. Yet, we still chose to sit under the cloudless sky. At least the view was beautiful.

It's amazing how the architects so many years ago could think of designing buildings this way. 

There were many of these freakishly huge baths in the museums. We kept wondering why people in ancient times needed these enormous baths. 

All the ceilings in every room were so unique and beautiful. I wonder if there was a story to every one of them. Oh, and if you can afford it, definitely get those audio guides when going to the museums, it'll be so helpful. We didnt get them and I kinda regret it now.

The ceiling of the gallery of maps!

Every map was drawn in such detail, I couldnt help but to stare and try to figure out what the hell I was looking at. I couldnt quite figure out where every map represented though LOL

Enormous painting everywhere! There was really just toooo much stuff and information to absorb in one afternoon.

I especially love all of the gold detailing in every painting. It makes everything look ever so grand.

There was a room for more contemporary art as well.

I think after the room of the contemporary art, we were near to the Sistine Chapel already. But you are not allowed to take any photos in there. If you do, the guards will start shouting at you but there were still some sneaky people taking photos. Although I was really tired by the time we got to the Sistine Chapel, I can clearly rmb how it looked like in mind. It was really worth all the walking to get to see the paintings of Michelangelo on the ceiling of the chapel. And of course, because it's the site for the process by which a new Pope is chosen.

An impressive drawing of the view of the Vatican City! I wish I could find a postcard with a view like this but I couldnt... or maybe it doesnt even exist.

Just look at those prices! O___O

I didn't buy much souvenirs on my trip because I was on a tight budget but I just had to buy a rosary for myself the Vatican Museums. I bought one for my mum as well~ These were not that expensive, they were €9 each and they are really pretty.

The famous spiral staircase after you get out of all the galleries to exit the museum~

When we FINALLY got out of the Vatican Museums, we were pretty exhausted but we decided to walk back to St. Peter's Basilica to see whether it was still closed. Well, I insisted that we go check because I really wanted to go into it and was so pissed that I didn't check beforehand to see whether it was open.
And a good long ass queue welcomed us when we got to St. Peter's square! All these people were queuing to get into the church so I guess the ceremony of the morning was over and the opened the church was open to the public again!

So we got into the queue and thankfully the queue was moving at a decent pace so we didnt need to stand under the sun for long.

all of these gigantic doors everywhere around Rome. I wonder how heavy they are... hmmm...

You pass the doors of the basilica and see this majestic view. Isnt it just amazing?

I practically just stood there for a few seconds, with everyone else squeezing pass me, to enjoy this great masterpiece in front of my eyes. 

One thing annoying was that because it was so crowded, I couldnt really enjoy myself. One, because I am short so if there was a bunch of people looking at one alter, I had to squeeze my way to the front to actually see something. Two, it was noisy. Churches are supposed to be quiet and peaceful but it's kinda impossible to be that way when there's multiple tour groups altogether in there. I dont understand why they couldnt hire some people to control the amount of the people entering the basilica. I know that will mean waiting longer in the queue but it would make the whole experience in the basilica a lot better. 

There was a few domes and every single one of them were beautiful.

There were these statues of popes all around the basilica and I think they are a little bit creepy.....

The huge monstrance.

It was so hard to get a good photo of it because EVERYONE was squeezing around to get a good shot of the alter. I'm just going to continue complaining about the crowd forever. So one tip to you if you ever go to St. Peter's Basilica, go early in the morning to avoid the crowd.

Don't they look creepy?

We then rested a bit outside the basilica before exiting the Vatican City and headed towards Castel Sant'Angelo. I really wanted to go into it and climb all the way to the top so that we could see the view of Rome from above but we were just too tired. And you needed to pay to get in. 

I've got to say the exterior of the castle looks amazing though. 

Ponte Sant'Angelo or St. Angel's Bridge. I would love to see it at night when they turn on the lights along the bridge. But Joon Tian insisted that we don't go out at night. I would have risked it though. Maybe next time. Hopefully. I would have been so nice to enjoy the night view of Rome with a nice glass of Italian wine.

A pretty street performer.I bet the harp was really heavy. Kudos to her for standing there in heels for so many hours.

The angel at the top of the castle. It's suppose to protect the Pope (that's what I heard from a random tour guide, I might have heard wrongly LOL).

The Palace of Justice. 

We then made out way to Piazza Spagna, which was very busy when we got there. There were people playing music and dancing and it was very festive. 

Piazza Spagna is also where the infamous Spanish Steps are located! Although we were tired (I'm going to keep emphasising how tired we were because just thinking back makes me tired. It was horrible, we shouldnt have squeezed everything into one day), we still made it up all those flights of stairs and got to the top. The view was a bit disappointing though. I was expecting more than this. 

And from this view, you can see how bust the whole place was. So despite being very tired, I'm glad we didnt skip this popular spot. 

While we were there, there was a wedding going on as well. Not a full on ceremony but they took photos and threw the bouquet to the bridesmaids~ I guess it's quite a romantic spot because of multiple famous films and videos filmed there, one of them being Roman Holiday with Audrey Hepburn in it~

It was not as pretty as I imagined it to be but I think in May, they display flowers pots around or in the middle section of the stairs so it'll look really beautiful if you go during that time of the year.

A photo of us! We were walking back to Trastevere to look for a place for dinner but we were just so so tired that we had to sit down and rest for about 15 minutes before we continued our long long walk back.

Before we got too tired to walk, we found a nice cozy restaurant/cafe for dinner~ I ordered a local craft beer the restaurant had and it was so nice to drink on a hot day~

 Joon Tian ordered a chicken wrap thing which was nice but a tad bit too salty.

And I ordered a pizza which was delicious but that piece of bacon was very salty. After filling up our bellies, we made our way back to the apartment and by the time we got back it was nearly 9pm already. We just charged our phones and took our showers and scrolled through our phones for an hour or so and then slept.

Oh, and rmb to bring adapters that suit the plug/sockets there when you go around Europe. I didnt have one, so I couldnt use either my phone charger or my straightener. I wanted to go buy one but Joon Tian's charger could fit the plugs so we decided to share it and thankfully my camera's charger matched their plugs as well~

I have been kinda busy so these blog posts are going up a bit slow. Plus, the internet has been shitty. But I'm motivated to blog as much as possible today! So another post would be up soon~