Rome : Day 12 : Part 2

There was a post office near the exit of the museum, and we bought the smallest stamp value of E0.01 (RM0.05) as souvenir. There were many visitors posting their post card here, likely because it was glamorous to announce to family members or close frens that they sent the card from the world's smallest country, the Vatican City.

We spent only 1.5 hrs in the museum complex, though we had earlier queued up for more than 2 hrs. We only gave it a 3/10, maybe because we did not have prior knowledge of the things to see. Then, we headed for lunch at a nearby family-type restaurant. Being a Malaysian, we obviously went for rice and in this case it was risotto, and also the original Roman Spaghetti Bolognese.


> Risotto Marinara

Our 2nd half of the day continued with a visit to Piazza San Pietro (San Peter's Square), and we were shocked to see there was another long queue. This time the people were queuing to enter San Peter's Basilica. We decided to give it a miss, since we had enough of standing and moving at 0.3 mph. So, we just sat down at the Piazza watching the crowd. We spotted the center point of the Piazza, and posed for photos at the marker. Then, a small crowd of 10 person gathered around us and waited for their turn to take pictures, not knowing for sure if that very spot was really the center spot.


> Piazza San Pietro


> Center marker (Don't know my guess was true or not, but did conned few other people to stand on the same spot)

Moving on from there, we decided to walk around the city. Luckily this time we had the map, unlike the bad experience of walking blurly in Venice. We dropped by briefly at the Castel San Angelo, Piazza Navona, and Largo Argentina.



Then, we reached the highlight of the day; Fontana di Trevi. You will be surprised to see a fountain suddenly appearing behind some buildings, hidden from the main road, and a big crowd of around 200 people squeezing for the best spot to take pictures. Legend said that if you throw a coin with your back facing the fountain, you will go back there again some other time. I can confidently declare that this was very true and tested. We threw a 20 sen coin by following the exact technique, and we ended up going there 3 times in 3 days.




> Count the number of locks at the church opposite of Fontana di Trevi

From Fontana di Trevi, the Spanish Steps was just 30 minutes away. On the way there, we walked past the glamorous shopping street in Rome, Via Condotti. Of course this was at a much smaller scale compared to Paris' Champs Elysees. We saw a Malaysian brand there. Guess what? Refer to the below picture.



Just a note to the lazy walkers. If you are in Rome, don't expect to see metro stations at every of their tourist attractions, much like our KL. You will be disappointed because only a few such as Vatican City, Spanish Steps and Colosseum have a metro station nearby them.