Souls lost and souls found

day 3 - vatican and sistene chapel Day 3 started out very well. After a good nights sleep we all woke up and were ready to go at 7:30. Ok, well, we were ready to have breakfast, which we scarfed down quickly and were out the door at 7:45. The trip to St. Peter's and the Vatican museum included a bit more excitement than we expected. The train was again packed (a warning sign) and as we were getting on Tim caught a woman's wrist on Greg's backpack. The next thing we heard was him yelling "No no no!" as he pulled her hand away from his bag. And wouldn't you know, she got off the metro before it even left the station. We exited the metro and dashed into the museum entrance right at our 8:30 tour start time. Had we known our guide would spend the first 30 minutes of our tour at a large computer screen talking about the features of the Sistene chapel we would have slowed down a bit. As it was, we were trying to catch our breath through most of her descripton. But at least we did not miss our tour! The tour was good and Tim and Michelle enjoyed visiting the museaum and hearing all of the stories. Through the tour we were surprised at the number of people there. Thousands of people, at 9:00am! We have never seen it this crowded. There were just people everywhere. At first we thought it was just the morning tour groups but once we were done with our tour it got worse going into St. Peter's basilica. It was pretty overwhelming. At the end of the tour our tour guide left us just before the Sistine chapel saying "you can do this next part on your own". Which in theory was true. We could find the Sistine chapel on our own, but once inside the chapel you wanted to stay close to your group or you could get easily separated. We we all able to find a seat to listen to our audio guides explaining the room and the art. Greg finished first and told us he would meet us outside. Brenda, Tim and Michelle were not too far behind. The only problem was there are two exits for the Sistene chapel, one for individuals and one for groups. And these two exits end up in two very different places. The group exit drops you right at the front steps of St. Peter's basillica. The individual exit drops you back at the entrance, and you would have to walk around the city walls and go through security to get into St. Peters basillica. Brenda, Tim and Michelle went out the group entrance, but Greg had gone out the individual entrance. And thus ensued about 2 hours of attempting to find Greg. Begging the security guards in Italian to let us back in the museaum (both backwards (Michelle) and forwards (Tim)), wondering if he did go outside and was standing out on the street waiting for us, worried that he was worried about not seeing us. It was a bit stressful. but in the end we found Greg and each other. After a quick tour around the basillica we were off to the hotel to collect our bags for out train ride to Florence. We were able to catch the next train out (uneventful ride) and get into town in the early afternoon. Florence is a great city because we have been there twice already and feel like we have a good feel for the town. We had reserved an apartment for 3 nights, so the trick was just finding it. When you rent apartments there is no one at the "front desk". It is a door with buttons on it and you are supposed to push the button next to the name of the person you want to see. They then buzz you in. So, once we got to the address we expected to see the name of the apartment on the sign. But the apartment name was not there and there was no one there to greet us. So we talked to a few locals who lived in the building who offered to call for us on their phones. It turned out that our room had been changed and we had been emailed about the change about an hour prior to our arival. Sometimes these companies have multiple apartments they rent, so locations can change, but it is always scarey when your apartment is changed because you make the reservation based on the location in the description and have no idea where the new apartment is in the city. When it was all settled we went from a 2 bedroom apartment to one with 3 bedrooms a little closer to city center for the same price. It is a nice place and will be our home for 3 nights. The only bummer is the cable is broken and for some reason we cannot connect to the internet. The latter is more of a loss than the former. But apparently Florence has free wifi at all of the main tourist attractions, so as long as you are ok logging on while citing on the church steps then you are fine. :) Hence why it has taken us a few days to send out these posts. Once we were unpacked we picked up dinner at a local Osteria that we walked past. It looked crowded and most of the people in the restaurant were speaking Italian, both of which are good signs. We decided to go all out and have appetisers, first courses and second courses. Michelle's eyes were too big for her stomach and she ended up having to take some home. We know, we know, doggie bags just are not done in Europe but the food was too good to waste. Her second course was a beef steak with gorgonzola cheese sauce. See, now you know why the leftovers had to come home with us. It was another late night, but another good day. Tomorrow is a day for Florence only, we will see how much of our list we are able to do!