Italy - Rome, Florence, Bologna, San Marino and Venice

[hangchoi]

It seems that the village had its own forum and public square for their own.

[hangchoi]

Arco di Constantino is just next to the Colosseo, an arch for the Constantine who named Christianity as the national religion.

[hangchoi]

Colosseo is a must see place in Rome. You may see that there is a queue at the lower left corner of the picture. This line is for the ticket to the Colosseo. The line is about one fifth of the circumference of the Colosseo. With a ticket on hand, I can pass this queue and went to the security check before entering.

[hangchoi]

A closer look at the Colosseo. The first one is the staircase in the old days. The second one is the structure built under the arena, there are different rooms, elevator shaft (yes, they had already had elevator at that time).

[hangchoi]

The arena from two sides. They put a platform on one end to let the visitors know the original setting.

[hangchoi]

After visiting the Colosseo area, we went to Spagna, a hot spot for the people to chill out. It was a long staircase overseeing the district selling luxury goods.

You will always see a lot of people in these tourists' spots.

[hangchoi]

Second day. Vatican Museum or Musei Vaticani. No trick you can play here about ticket. MAKE SURE you reserve the ticket in advance, unless you join a tour group.

I took the second picture to show you the queue for entering. The first picture is the exit of the museum, on its left is the entrance. You may see a crowd there lining up for ticket and the line goes around the castle wall of Vatican city. I think the line is longer than 150m. This is the longest line I can see AT THE MOMENT (which means a even longer line is coming in later posts)

Oh, btw before we went to the Museum, we had a good breakfast at this shops, which is close to the Vatican.

[hangchoi]

Vatican Museum has a very good collection of paintings and sculptures. Only sculptures areas are allowed to photo. After you enter the museum, you will go to an open area overseeing Basilica de San Pietro and the garden.

The other pictures show some sculptures, the first one talks about the story of Troy, where these 3 father and sons died in the war of Troy.  The next one is Athena, the goddess of war and daughter of Zeus, this brings my curiosity that how come the Christian city emphasizing a single god would keep some sculptures of other gods?

[hangchoi]

A luxury decorated corridor ceiling and a quiet and decent carpark. By visiting the museum, you are actually walking around the Vatican city.

The third picture is one of the exhibition room.

The main theme of this museum is the Sistine Chapel, but no photo is allowed. You will hear the guard keep saying "no picture please". The painting in Sistine Chapel is astonishingly beautiful, but it makes your neck tired. Worth to see once at least in your life time, great work.

[hangchoi]

We spent the whole morning in Museum Vatican, then we bought some sandwiches and had our lunch at San Peter's Square.