Rome Part I

**News Flash**

Regular readers will know how pleased we to be mistaken for locals in Amsterdam. We really are that shallow. Today our shallowness plumbs new depths: Ann was taken for a local by some Italian girls who were looking for the station. High fives all round!

Just for the other fashionistas out there, the outfit is penny loafers, skinny black jeans, a 1985 English Eccentrics scarf, and a short trench coat. Oh and having an extremely handsome man in tow must have had something to do with it...

We arrived in Rome late last night, so we didn't see anything until we ventured out this morning. As usual, Ann had done her homework so a plan was in place.

First up was the Vatican museums. I didn't know much about these, except they are big. I imagined that they might be a bit tacky, and full of old Roman Catholic regalia.

A decent queue to get in, with lots of hawkers etc, but only half an hour, compared with two and a half for the Orangerie in Paris.

The Orangerie Queue: small, but slow.

The Vatican Queue: big, but fast.

I was right about them being big, but boy was I wrong about everything else. Imagine seven or eight world class museums stuffed full of priceless art and artefacts from 5000 BC to the present day. Employ thousands of the best artists and craftsmen, for hundreds of years, to hand-paint, gild, and carve every square inch of the interior, then join them all together. The phrase "Nothing but the best" takes on a whole new meaning. There are quite a few paintings of old popes doing something clever, and everyone saying "Ooh you are fantastic your holiness!".

The Sistine Chapel was a bit smaller than we were expecting, but the frescoes are awesome. We all know the centrepiece of God and Adam's fingers touching, and there are a fair few clouds and cherubs (meh), but many of the pictures are showing very human stories and emotions.

Lunch was "Arancias" from a little takeout place Ann had found in a book. In Italian "Arancia" means an orange, so I wasn't sure what I was expecting. These are orange-sized, and they are even orange-coloured, but they are balls of rice, with assorted delicious fillings, that have been rolled in breadcrumbs and deep fried. The four different ones we tried were spinach and ricotta, ragu (like bolognese), mozzarella and ham, and seafood. The seafood one was a surprise as the rice had been flavoured with squid ink, so was totally black. We ate these sitting in a little piazza next to a fountain.

Next was St Peter's square and basilica. Even as a devout non-believer there is quite a thrill emerging onto the square, just the sheer size of it, and the feeling of being at the epicentre of a whole religion. We were planning to go inside St Peters (the only free thing in Rome) but the pope was holding a service. We were quite indignant that the bishop of Rome was holding a service in his own church, just when we wanted to gawp at the dome, but well, what can you do?

So we took a walk down to the river Tiber, and the very impressive Castel Sant'Angelo. It started life as a tomb that the roman emperor Hadrian built for himself. Later popes chose it as a bolt-hole for when things got a bit dicey, and gradually turned it into a formidable fortress. In those days the pope would maintain a considerable army of bloodthirsty mercenaries. I have visions of jet fighters in gorgeous white and gold livery, their pilots wearing little red slippers....

The Italians have fantastic dress sense, but when it comes to buying a couch, not so much.