Roma!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Apart from sleeping in until 5.25am (our shuttle to the airport left at 5.45am) our last morning in Istanbul was good, we got our flight to London no problems however we hadn't realised that in London we had to transfer to a different airport for our connecting flight to Rome. We landed in Heathrow and had to collect our bags and get a bus to Gatwick, you need to allow 3 hours minimum to do this and we had 3 hours exactly from when one flight landed and the second took off so we were a little apprehensive. luckily it all went smoothly and was pretty easy to negotiate which bus to get on and how to buy a ticket. it was a nice break to be in an english speaking country for the first time in two months. even if it was only for 3 hours!
our flight to Rome was delayed by about an hour and a half, we were already sitting in the plane when we found this out so our plane stayed in London sitting on the tarmac waiting to be able to leave. it was all due to strikes by air traffic controllers in France.
We finally arrived in Rome about 7pm and luckily found a girl holding a sign with our hostels name on it, luckily she had no idea who we were and was actually waiting for someone else who was late and in the end never showed up. so whoever this person was thankyou! you saved me and ewen $80 which we would have had to pay for a taxi if we couldnt get the shuttle to our hotel.
we ended up having mcdonalds for dinner (i know, its awful our first night in Italy and we ate maccas) because we didn't check into our room until 9pm (there was a bit of confusion when we arrived at the hostel but it all got sorted out) so we were too tired to go to a proper restaurant or to cook a meal. the mcdonalds tasted pretty much exactly the same as Australia and the menu was even in english which ewen was a bit disappointed about because he wanted to know what a big mac was called in italian.
this morning we woke up early and got the shuttle to Vatican City and spent several hours exploring Vatican museum and the Sistern Chapel.
The artwork on the celings of the museum and chapel was ridonkulous!!! you spent the entire time walking around staring at the ceiling rather then the displays (well i did anyway).

we also saw some tapestrys or carpets not really sure what they were exactly but they were basically bigger than my entire house! i tried to get a photo but couldn't get far enough back to get the whole thing in.

i was lucky enough to touch the popes car when no one was looking!

we had our very first taste of Italian pizza... it was ok would have been much nicer if it was hot, they served them stone cold! weird!

we saw some pope dollars, a pope pigeon, the popes guards, who according to Ewen were out of sync with their marching.


We saw some of the old carriages the Popes used to ride around in and all the gear the horses had to wear.

for some reason their was a giant statue of a pine cone with peacocks either side of it, not really sure what that was meant to symblise.



We finally (after a lot of searching) found the Pieta statue well we thought it was anyway, i have just done some research and apparently the pieta statue is in St Peter's Basilica which we are going to on Sunday so i will get to see it then. the one we found today must have been a replica.

Russell Brand in a past life
the coolest arm band i have ever seen!
me getting up nice and personal with a sheep
after leaving the Vatican we decided to try to find some shops because we needed a new memory card for the camera. however after walking around random streets for ages we still hadn't really found any shops, we ended up stopping for a rest and our very first Italian Gelatos! Sooo good, i had lemon and ewen got strawberry.
after consulting our map we decided to walk back to the Vatican and go to St Peter's square on the way we stopped in some shops and i ended up buying a bag to use for our day trips (i really regret sending the other one home, now its not so hot it would be perfect) and got to test out some Italian (Gratze was about as far as i got hehe)
I started getting blisters from my thongs so we decided to head back to the hostel and continue our sightseeing tomorrow.
We got the shuttle back to the hostel and went to an electronics store opposite it and finally got a memory card so now we are free to take as many photos as we want again!
We celebrated by going to the supermarket and getting strawberries, pastries, wine (i found moscato! and asti!) and FONZIES!
At the moment we're just chilling in our room waiting for the washing to be done, for the first time in 2 months we are having to do our own washing! shocking i know! i took photos in case no one believed us.
the internet here is incredibly slow so i will add photos from Siena hopefully. I've got some really good ones so keep checking back to see them!!!