SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3, 2012 - CIVITAVECCHIA, ITALY (PORT FOR ROME, ITALY) - Our ship arrived at this port as scheduled and shortly after 7:30 a.m. passengers began disembarking from the ship.  I had arranged a transfer for our group of 8 couples and we met at an appointed location on the ship and proceeded off with each person handling his/her own luggage.  The transfer was arranged in two mini-vans, each one traveling the 1 1/2 hours from the port to various hotels in Rome.  The drivers had arranged the course of travel with stops at each of the four hotels.  When we first began planning this trip Sylvia and I had decided that we wanted to stay at a hotel near the Vatican since we had booked an early afternoon tour of the Vatican that included the Vatican museum and the Sistine Chapel.  When we had visited the Vatican on a previous occasion (on a Sunday) both the museum and the Sistine Chapel were closed and we were only able to get into St. Peter's Basilica.  So, this time we wanted to make certain we visited these historic places.  We arrived at our hotel, Hotel Alimandi Vaticano, shortly before 11 a.m. and once checked in, had to wait in the lobby for about a half hour before our room was available.  In the room we quickly got settled and then walked a few blocks away from the hotel for a nice lunch at a sidewalk cafe.

 

Our Vatican tour began about 1 p.m. and we arrived there (just across the street from the hotel) in plenty of time.  Our entry gate is shown below with a close-up of the decorations over the top of the gate.

Our tour group from Angels Tour Company was small:  three couples and 3 children.  The Vatican museum was very crowded with visitors and it was very difficult to move about from one location to another.  Unfortunately, the items I photographed I can no longer identify so most of the pictures will be to just enjoy unless you have toured the area and know about them.  When we entered the Sistine Chapel I turned off my camera as instructed and did not take any pictures in that location.  However, the chapel was much too full of people and a large portion of the people were very unruly, snapping pictures in every direction and making lots of noise.  Every few minutes an official looking person would try and get the noise down to a murmur, but that would last only perhaps 3-5 minutes and then it was again at a shouting level to talk with the person next to you.

 

The crowds grew larger and as we entered other areas of the Vatican at times we were standing as long as 5 minutes waiting for the crowd to move so that we could continue.

At one point we could looked through a window and could see this inner parking lot.

And, another window showed us a beautiful garden.

 

Our group moved into St. Peter's Basilica.  At some point in the movement through the basilica we got separated from our group and could not locate them.  We could continue to hear our guide talking through our headsets but could not locate them.  Time passed and we could still not locate them.  After approximately 30 minutes we decided that we weren't going to find them and proceeded through the exit of the church to the area where we could return our headsets.

 

By this time it was late afternoon, probably about 5 p.m. and we then proceeded toward the area marked "exit".  Outside (it was almost dark) we found we were not certain of the direction to follow to return to our hotel, but we started walking toward what we hoped was it.  We were wrong.  We continued to walk for over 2 hours getting completely lost.  We located no taxi cabs even though we did find a few small stores open for business.  Inside the stores we found no one who spoke English.  Finally, we were able to get directions to an area where we could locate a taxi and once there, gave the driver the address of our hotel.  The return trip cost 25 Euros but we felt it was well worth the cost.

 

Back at the hotel we realized that we had missed our scheduled tour for 7 p.m. at the Pantheon.