An American in Provence

(No pictures from this day because for some reason they don't want to transfer from the camera to the computer)

We had quite a late start on Sunday, our last day. We planned to spend the entire day at the Vatican Museum, which I read in the guidebook was free on the last day of the month. What I didn’t take into account was that every other tourist in Rome had the same guidebook. We got to the Vatican about 10 minutes before noon, at which time the pope appears for his weekly blessing of the masses. We thought we would be clever and go to the museum line while the hordes were piling into St. Peter’s square. As we made our way up the street to the Vatican Museum entrance, it was definetely like swimming against the stream.
We stopped to eat (again from another street vendor- not good). I read a little further in my book and came across the “last entrance is at 12:20 pm on Sundays” awww dangit. There was no we would make it through the line in 15 minutes. Sigh. I guess we will have to save that for our next trip to Rome, which will probably be in 15-20 years. We decided to go up to the Janiculum area, a large park/residential area.
We spent a quiet afternoon wandering around the park and calmer side streets. We stopped and had a cappucino in a small bar. When Alain went to pay, the woman said “Four Euros” he assumed, after our previous experiences, that she meant four euros each, but no, it was four euros total. Just goes to show you what the difference in location can do to food and drink prices. We then went to a small museum with many old pictures of Rome, as well as some beautiful watercolors of Rome from the late 1800’s.
Finally, we went to another pizzeria, very small and crowded with one poor waiter and way too many tables of hungry customers. The pizza was good, limoncello is totally not what I expected (I was thinking it was a lemon fizzy drink, not a strong alcohol apperitif), and the cheese platter that I had as an appetizer was very good as well. No wine for us as we had an early wake-up call.