This train is basically s**t At last I managed to see the Vatican museums and Sistine chapel, at the fourth attempt (The failed attempts during my previous visits to Rome are long story involving impossible queues and unexpected closures due to obscure religious days)
For those who have not been, the system now is simple but a surprisingly large number of people fail the test. According to one travel guidebook, people have two levels of IQ-those who queue to get in, and those who avoid queuing! One can book online, on the day (I did this, this morning), the reservation document is emailed, with a QR code on it. You then bypass the hoards of touts who accost you as you come near the place and try to sell you tickets for tours which “jump the line”,you bypass the massively long round-the block queue for the ticket office that looks as if it’s a couple of hours long,and literally walk straight in through the door (even bypassing the queue of pre-booked tour groups) and the QR code on your phone/tablet is scanned, and ticket issued.
For those who have not been, the system now is simple but a surprisingly large number of people fail the test. According to one travel guidebook, people have two levels of IQ-those who queue to get in, and those who avoid queuing! One can book online, on the day (I did this, this morning), the reservation document is emailed, with a QR code on it. You then bypass the hoards of touts who accost you as you come near the place and try to sell you tickets for tours which “jump the line”,you bypass the massively long round-the block queue for the ticket office that looks as if it’s a couple of hours long,and literally walk straight in through the door (even bypassing the queue of pre-booked tour groups) and the QR code on your phone/tablet is scanned, and ticket issued.
Selfie? Just after buying my ticket online, I had a mild panic as I heard that there was an air traffic control strike today in Italy, "part of a widespread general strike”, and I feared Rome public transport would be affected. Fortunately not, so I was able to board the same grubby suburban train as I did yesterday .Even better, the day’s travel card I bought yesterday was actually valid for 24 hours so lasted half of today too. In view of the presence of an increasing number of Welsh rugby fans here for the Italy-Wales Six Nations match tomorrow I wore my England rugby shirt, which brought only silence from the many Welsh I saw, but some extremely positive comments from some English.
One of Raphael's many frescos I suspect that a lot of people going into the Vatican museums seem to think they are just going to “The Sistine Chapel” and are impatient to push through to reach it ,but there is so much more treasure there to see. It is a large place, with many rooms.There is quite a scrum and at times one must just move at the pace of the crowd, but there are some rewarding detours from the main route that many seem to avoid. There is a huge mass of Eqyptian , Greek and Roman statuary; interestingly though, the nude ones have been affected by a sculptural version of Bowdlerisation, and have all had figleaves attached at some point in their history. Then there are the series of rooms frescoed throughout by Raphael in 1514-17, and then the Borgia apartments , frescoed by Pinturicchio,in 1492-94 . There is a considerable amount of historic religious art as one might expect but also more modern stuff by Chagall, Klee, Van Gogh to name a few. Most of the crowd moved through this without much of a glance
 a Pinturicchio fresco in the Borgia apartments |  The Hall of Maps. I thought this bore a similarity to the Hall of Battles in the Escorial |
I did begin to wonder if the Sistine chapel itself, which is near the end of the tour, might be a mild disappointment after so much else of amazement. But it was absolutely stunning. In fact my personal view was that the famous ceiling by Michaelangelo takes second place to the wall frescos by such as Botticelli and Perugino. What I particularly like about the frescos of this period is how all the people in the scenes are dressed in the fashions, and doing the day to day things that were done contemporary with the paintings, and thus they don’t seem of a particularly religious nature, but rather a graphically clear and beautiful depiction of (generally)wealthy Italian life in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. No photos and no talking allowed here, though!(it being a chapel) Amusingly,as I have found before in very touristy religious sites in Italy, the crowds are shushed by a curator over the loud speaker at intervals;this dampens the hubbub for thirty seconds or so ,before the whispering becomes a crescendo of talking once more, to be shushed again. The noise levels are also not helped by repeated loudspeaker admonishments of people snatching forbidden photos.
Bernini's "Fontana dei Quatro Fiumi" ,Piazza Navona I wandered through many of the sights in Central Rome, wearing my shoes down a bit in the process. Piazza Navona, the Pantheon, Trajan’s column were all great sights. I did drag myself to the Trevi fountain to throw a few more coins in, but the task had to be done metaphorically only, as it was drained dry and undergoing heavy restoration
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