Right, after 2 days of stuffing around/dealing with hangovers I thought it time to do some serious sightseeing. Ryan and another girl from his dorm, Lijiang, were keen on the Vatican as well so we went together. Outside the Vatican (and Colosseum, etc) there are all sorts of americans/ canadians/ english/ aussies/ etc flogging english-language tours of the applicable tourist attraction. We had heard the Vatican line-up is pretty hardcore (2 hours to get in etc) and so got sucked into the 40 euro tour of the place as an opportunity to skip the lines. The tour guide was a painful but knowledgeable New Yorker who should stick to art history and not comedy, but it was a good brush up on that year of art history I did in college. (Roman sculpture v Greek sculpture...er....ummmm....)

OK, the Vatican. Far out. Stunning collection...though part of me can't help but think "you could strip the gold from St Peters Basilica and, you know, use the cash give out free condoms to fight AIDS in Africa".*

*I'm obviously not suggesting that we rip down St Peters Basillica but...there is a lotta gold in that place and it doesn't sit well with me.

After overdosing on 3689 pictures of Madonna con Bambino we had our 15 minutes in the Sistine Chapel. You are not allowed to talk in the chapel, being a sacred place, and your are also not allowed to take photos. But the photography restriction has nothing to do with it being a sacred place (after all, people can knock themselves out with the flash in St Peters Basilica). It is actually because a Japanese television company volunteered to front the $100million to restore the chapel on the condition that they had exclusive rights to all pictures of the chapel after it was done.

Having said that, there are a ton of people openly chatting as well as taking photos, combined with the security guards intermittently clapping (loudly) and shouting "Silence! No Photo!" - the reverence is a bit disturbed at the best of times.

So I didn't feel bad when I snuck a photo in. I did, however, feel bad when the flash that I thought I had turned off ended up being on.

By the end of night 3 I was starting to hit my stride when it came to this backpacking/socialising thing. Already the people that were there the first night were long gone and a whole new crop came in. I decided, having been the new kid at school 2 days previously, that I would start taking in strays and invite any lost-looking soul to join in a drink & conversation. It's how I ended up chatting with, among others, Billy the 40 yo annoying Glaswegian on the Saturday night. But I'm trying to practice travel karma in the hope that it works in my favour in the end.