Ice Cream and Vagrancy: June 27-30: Rome! (part 2)

Before we get going with my activities, I have a few comments on Rome. The first thing I noticed is that they are the boldest jay walkers I have ever seen. Sure, Bostonians may run across the street in the gave of an oncoming care, but Romans will simply stroll across, expecting oncoming cars to slow down. Another thing is that Rome is basically entirely comprised of fountains and churches. Seriously. Also Rome is super big and has like so much stuff in it and you can walk around all day and only cover a small part of it.

When I last left you, I was talking about my rode on the struggle bus. Continuing in that vein, my host and I had some fundamental disagreements. I stayed for two nights and he kicked me out on the second night. For the remainder of my stay in Rome, I stayed at a hostel. And made a friend!

Now some more pictures in mostly chronological order:

On my second day of Rome, I did a lot of walking around. I was going to go to the Vatican but I was too scantily cladand it turns out that I'm not very good at going to the Vatican. So I wandered around that area and by the river and stuff.

Roadside gas station! What!

Rough time

Palm trees are real!

Some old building. There's a ton of them.

I went to the house of Johan Wolfgang van Goethe. I have no idea who he is and may or may not have thought they were talking about Vincent for a while. The museum was small and strange and generally not in a language I know. I'm pretty sure the first half is a work of postmodern art.

Here we see a room containing nothing but a picture of that room. I believe the end of the hallway is actually a picture of the hallway.

A half open window and two pictures of the same window

This one painting of Goethe is basically the Mona Lisa of paintings of Goethe

In this painting, black people are giving the stink eye

Sound advice

Spent a long time looking for this church. Locations on tripadvisor are really more approximations.

Tried taking selfless with the things. How is it working?

This was a cool thing

This is that one Gothic church from earlier

They had a tiny exhibit of things that had been marked by the dead. Pretty creeps. They said it ead proof of purgatory.

Worst moat ever

I've never seem bridge locks all chained together like this before

Bridge selfie

Apparently this is a thing my phone can do. I get why, but what I don't understand is WHY

Purple mapping a flower mural thing for some religious feast holiday thing

This is at the entrance to a park. I think it filters out bikes.

This wall thing has the constitution on it I thong

Landscape selfie

Mate a friend!

I'm not even sure if these cats were related or not.

Both of those elevators were going down. I was stuck for a few minutes.

Day 3:

Breakfast!

Nice Serpinski shit right here

Lot of junk in this altar

Bees?

Did another house museum thing. This time it was an old house from a rich family that collected art and stuff. Pretty good.

People protesting in support of Ukraine

Indeed

I was determined to see the Ecstasy of St. Teresa to see if it was as sexy as Dan Brown said it was. It is kind of sexy. I think mostly only if you read the description though.

Peanut gallery?

Coliseum

I made a buddy at the hostel and we got dinner and walked around for a bit. We came across this super big, long wall by the river. Eventually we got to go around and see what was on top.

Super secret garden place on the wall! What

We managed to find a real for to the wall park

The view was sick. The wall must have been a hundred feet high. Presumably to keep out the Others.

THE CHAMBER OF SECRETS HAS BEEN OPENED

Statue! I think it was about the founding of Rome? Some kind of creepy stuff happening on the bottom there.

Day 4:

I am basically the worst at going to the Vatican. It involved a lot of line waiting to go to St. Peter's Basilica and then a lot more for the Vatican museum, which I totally screwed up. My plan was to see the Disrobe chapel first and then take my time wandering and looking at everything else. The route to the Disingenuous chapel was super crowded and then when you got there they shoved you into this big room full of people and yelled at you for silence because of it being a holy place. The paintings were totally gorgeous though. I must have left the wrong way, because I ended up just getting dumped back into St. Peter's Basilica again with no way to get back. So that was frustrating.