The Switch
If you guessed light or fan, you'd be wrong. If you guessed heater, you'd be halfway wrong.
It's a switch for the WATER HEATER.
It's really a shame I didn't know that before I took a shower last night.
It's some perverse Italian electrician's stab at the man.
There are quite a few more switches like that around here. I know some probably control wall outlets, but now I look at each with thinly-veiled suspicion with a tinge of hatred.
They simply laugh.
Day 2
The quest for (free) Wi-Fi continues.
It seems like every time I find an access point, the signal drops in the middle of publication. That and the difficulty of finding hotspots makes timely posting impossible.
We decided to do a few other things around the city after the Vatican.
We went to a huge open-air market that has recently been enclosed. They have bulk wine there and sell in bottles that look like they heald Pine-Sol not too long ago. We got some cherries (see Life Lesson #1 below) and some more Italian breads.
We also walked up all 138 of the Spanish Steps. At the top was a church, which had ELECTRIC prayer candles. Don't believe me? See the picture below. Also, it was there that I took my favorite picture of the day, and so far of the trip--the nuns in front of the statue of the Virgin Mary.
Walking back toward our apartment, we went through a posh part of Rome. My first tip was the two Porsches I saw within 20m of each other. Nearly every fashion label you can name was there. Gucci, Giorgio Armani, Cartier, Burberry, Prada...
After the Trevi Fountain, a huge tourist "attraction," I noticed the sky clouding up. Soon, thunder and lightning ensued. We hurried to get back, dodging traffic like real Italians, and it started raining right as we made it to the Scala VIII door.
Important life lessons we have learned today:
1) How much a kilogram really is... in cherries.
2) If you walk into a restaurant, and someone immediately greets you with very good English, you've found a tourist trap.
3) Don't try to walk around the outside perimeter of the Vatican just to say you walked around a country. It's not worth it. I promise.
4) Lacoste is the official polo brand of everyone in Italy.
5) We've got a bidet.
P.S. The last photo isn't the Spanish Steps. It's another big staircase I saw on our way back to the apartment.
The Vatican
The Vatican was the list of things to do today, including the Vatican Museum.
We started by finding the bus stop that goes from our apartment to Roma Termini to find out how to get to the Vatican. Hint: the departing bus stop to the Termini is not the same one where you are dropped off.
The museum was impressive. We got to see the original "The Academy" with Plato and Aristotle. I missed it until the girls pulled me back and showed it to me. The first time through, I looked at part of it (there were a lot of people in the room--a part was about the best I could do) and said to myself, "Huh. That's interesting... Looks a bit like "The Academy. Whatever." After they pulled me back, I realized why everyone was there.
Chelsea suggested that we walk "the other way" around the Vatican because we had been the other way a few times. Turns out, the place is massive, and the sidewalk doesn't run the whole way. Around the back, some random Italian guy in his SmartCar honked at us. I didn't get the memo, but honking is another word for "hello" here.
By the time we made it out of the museum and went to lunch, the line to go to St. Peter's Basilica was very, very long. We decided to finish up elsewhere and be back early in the morning when it opens (7a) to see the Basilica.
