What do selfie-stick sellers sell when it's raining? ~ 25th March

Our second day in Rome dawned wet. And, despite our wishes, ended wet. Oh, and it was fantastically wet between those times! Altogether, precipitation was the theme of the day.
I, Nick, just to show off, got up early and ran into the city, round the outside of the Colluseum, and back again (all in pouring rain). It should have been a five miler, but, because of my amazingly poor sense of direction this morning, it became eight as I headed confidently out of the city in the wrong direction!

The answer to the question posed in the title above is 'umbrellas and ponchos'. All the sellers, all male and all non-European, usually sell from a limited stock of selfie-sticks and squeeky-ball-animal-thingies. But, as soon as the weather turned, they all morphed into wet-weather gear salesmen. Then later, in a brief window of not-so-terrible-weather, a selfie-stick or two emerged like shy spring flowers! Kind of sweet.

When we were all ready this morning, and because of the deleterious weather forecast, we all jumped on the 628 bus and headed to the Vatican. Surely, it being only March, the climate unfriendly, and a Wednesday afternoon, we would virtually have the place to ourselves?! In our ignorance and naivety, we were met by queues of hundreds, if not thousands, of hardy tourists. In another queue later on we fell into conversation with a young American couple who said, "We made a mistake. We thought, what with this terrible weather, and it being only March, let's go to visit the Vatican. We'll have it to ourselves!"

So, shying away from the long, wet queues waiting to go into St Peter's Basillica, we headed round the corner, already somewhat damp, to join the line for the Vatican Museum. And it was a long one! Determined, and not seduced by the touts promising quick entry, in return for relieving one of one's hard earned Euros, we waited. And waited. And.......but at least we had the intermittent driving rain (did I mention the weather?) for entertainment.

The boys, in fact, were fabulous. We got in after an hour or so and explored the treasures within. Some seem to have been permanently borrowed from Egypt. Most, the ancient Roman bits and pieces especially, were stunning. You couldn't turn your head without drinking in a couple of millennia of history and art. Raphael, Michelangelo....in fact all the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtals were represented, me thinks.
Our visit, to our delight, coincided with that of Japan, so it seemed, and about half of the available Spanish school children, who brought with them a delightful air of sullen boredom.

And then, near the very end of our visit, we burst out into the Cistine Chapel - beautiful! All the artistic entertainment necessary for a long and boring sermon. But how gorgeous! We couldn't move for visitors, and the awed atmosphere was occasionally disrupted by one of the staff yelling intermittently, over the general subdued chatter, for SILENCE and REPECT! Rather shattered the spell.

At the end of our visit to the museum we were disgorged once again, now warm and nearly dry, back onto the rainy Rome streets. It was after 5pm, and Diane pulled us over to St Peter's Basillica to see if the crowds and queues had now abated. Through driving rain we found a minimal line of people, and made our way via security checks into the very heart of the Vatican. Wow! Despite there being enough collected water on the floor of the church to swim to the high altar, it was overwhelmingly beautiful. The crowds had mostly gone home, and we (relatively speaking) had the place to ourselves. Michelangelo' s Pieta did it for me. Aged only 23 when he completed it, the sculpture was truly gorgeous.

Back out into the rain again (it has really got the hang of it by now) we headed off to find our bus stop. All of us, very wet to our under-layers, then laughed and joked as we then waited 45 long cold minutes until a friendly local came to our rescue and put us on an alternative route. A slightly hairy journey then followed as, because water had got into my phone earlier on, the satnav played up, and the misty windows and darkened skies stopped us seeing where we were going.

The relief at arriving back at the flat and changing into warm dry clothes was enormous. Jude had gone quite crinkly over the course of the day. A large plate of spaghetti each, and a couple of glasses of wine for the parents, and order and calm were once more returned to the universe.