Girls' weekend in Rome

So, it finally arrived... the weekend where Lee Ling, Lisa and Friend A Sook came to Rome. It was very eventful to say the least!

They almost did not make it!! They texted me in the afternoon to say that their 2pm flight was cancelled because of heavy fog in London, and they were queueing to try and get another flight. After 4 hours, they finally got tickets with Alitalia (8pm flight). Even so, it wasn't sure if it would go at all. The plane finally took off at 10 pm, and they did get to the apartments at 2:30 am in the morning!

Angels in St. Peter's Basilica (2 of them by Bernini)

We had booked to join a tour of the Vatican which starts at 8am so we had to get out of bed at 6:30am. The Vatican is such an amazing place. The guide we had was very good. We started from the Museum (we had to queue for 45 mins to get in, and it was a bit of a chilly morning that day) and worked our way through it until we got to the Sistine Chapel.. that was the best part of the visit. We weren't allowed to take pictures (some Japanese company paid for the cleaning and so has copyright for a few years) but I sneaked some shots in there with my nifty camera.

Then we finished at St. Peters. After that we went for lunch near Piazza Navona, went to the Pantheon, and did some shopping near the Spanish Steps. Then we headed towards dinner. In the Metro which was very crowded, Lee Ling got pickpocketed. This woman very expertly opened her bag and took her purse (and her bag was big and had a lot of things, and she found the purse!). So we had to go to the police station to report this (for insurance claim) and spent 1 hour there. Some maniac came in and was shouting at the police for some attention while we were waiting our turn to be seen. Luckily it was only cash and credit cards which was lost and not passport or other important documents.

Finally we had dinner and went back, to rest for the next day when we went to the Colosseo (Coliseum). It was very interesting and I can imagine the gladiators in the arena!! We then had some lunch and went back to the apartment before they left for the airport. Of course the weekend had to end with an event... the flight home was delayed by 1.5 hours because of the smoke caused by the explosion in London!!

Phew!! Check out Hewie's blog for more details (when she gets round to writing about it!!)