#ontherails

[john-is-on-the-rails]

Afternoon away from the crowds sorted! #birramoretti #peace #botanicalgardens #writingstuff #introvert #rome #italy #travel #ontherails @interrailplanner (at Orto Botanico di villa Corsini)

[john-is-on-the-rails]

Glad to hear that my sarcasm guru, Richard Ayoade, is back for another series of Travel Man. Have a little peek at the above video for a flavour of the hilarity. And, as luck would have it, he is doing 48 hours in Brussels for the first episode of the new series on Monday night. Helpful considering in exactly three weeks from Monday I will be spending...48 hours in Brussels! 

Trying to answer Travel Man’s immortal question: “We’re here, but should we have come?”  

[arthurgoldheart]

Source: arthurgoldheart

[tessies]

💚🍂🌲🍁 . . . #ontherails #fashionboutique #indieretail #shopsmall #winterfashion #copperandgreen (at Tessies) https://www.instagram.com/p/BqhmnkEH9It/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=kapl5ibydnnk

[tessies]

⚫️🔴⚪️ . . . #ontherails #fashionboutique #aw18 #redwhiteandblack (at Tessies) https://www.instagram.com/p/BotVTbeFGfF/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1iah7rmy04hqq

[tessies]

Cream, pink and almond 🎀🍂🥜🍦🌸 #ontherails #fashionboutique #highsummer (at Tessies)

[john-is-on-the-rails]

Vatican’t

I’m sat in Orto Botanico di Roma. One of the botanical gardens in Rome. Surrounded by many different species of palm. Birds are singing in the trees, exotic ones that sound like parakeets. It’s humid but not too hot, with a bit of cloud cover and a cooling breeze. Perfection. I couldn’t wait to get here, take my shoes off, throw my pack down and crack open one of the cool Birra Morettis I bought from a shop around the corner. Its been a warm couple of days. I hadn’t intended to have a beer, but it seemed too perfect a prospect to pass up on my penultimate day. I’m saving the second one for the Circus Maximus, my next stop. Inexplicably, the UK national anthem is playing somewhere in the background. Maybe blighty needs me to return, Brittania is calling me from afar. Or, more realistically, there is some kind of gimmicky sideshow being put on for tourists, with a bloke called Lorenzo dressed as a Buckingham palace guard or something. I had to work to get into the gardens. I stupidly went where google told me to go, on the opposite side of the park. There was a notice that said ‘HA! You idiot, you thought you could enter through this clearly signposted gate didn’t you? No, no, no, you must walk half of the entire circumference of the park, passing four locked decoy gates on the way, to enter through the only true gate, you fool!’...or something like that at least. I had to laugh, it’s been one of those days.

Palms are noisy trees. They rustle and creak constantly. Easy to forget that plants are living, growing things. Best not to dwell on that too long, I’d feel surrounded. Reminds me of that awful M Night Shyamalan movie, ‘The Happening’, that had people running through a wheat field to get away from the wind and the deadly pollen carried on it. All the signs and my sixth sense were telling me it was a bit rubbish.   

Speaking of feeling surrounded. I have just completed a visit to St. Peter’s Basilica, the Vatican gardens & the Vatican Museums. The basilica can only be described as, well, massive. The guards still bravely try and enforce the no photos rules, good luck with that lads. Rather you than me try and take a selfie stick off an angry elderly Chinese lady. Call the Swiss guard! I wasn’t sure I had time to walk up to the dome and cupola of the basilica, I arrived late for several, annoying reasons I won’t go into here. I had about an hour and a half at St Peter’s but I went up to the dome anyway and was not disappointed. I enjoyed the walk up, really cool to think where you are, the walls curve more and more as you get higher and the dome curves in to meet itself. That made me feel queasy at first.

I scared a French lady by dropping my bag to get my water bottle out, her husband was howling laughing, I was very British and apologised forty-seven times just to be sure there were no hard feelings. She was very gracious but I still felt guilty. I can only scare people by accident, not sure I could do it on purpose, not that I’d want to. Next up was a tour of the Vatican gardens on an eco-bus.

Very glad I booked a skip the line ticket because there is no chance I would have joined the queue for tickets on the day. It was at least 500m long from the entrance. And honestly, not worth the wait. I enjoyed the tour of the gardens, except the procedure of showing the security guy outside my ticket, then showing it to a decoy ticket guy who told me to go to the next floor to the one true ticket office. I was then given another ticket there, told to wait for 30 mins, then told to go up one floor, exchange that ticket for another ticket, to be shown to the driver of the bus to allow me to board. I enjoyed the tour of the gardens, how pimping that the pope has his own helipad and train station.

The lobby of the Vatican museums is like an airport terminal. Your destination is the Sistine Chapel and you have a long, arduous journey ahead of you to get there (and once you do you can’t even take a blimmin photo). The museum consists of a series of chambers/rooms. I can’t give you any of their names, or describe in detail what they contained because I was pushed through them in the throng and had no time to stop and read about them without the risk of limb loss. By room five I was longing for an exit, realising I had made a mistake. To see the Sistine Chapel you have to go through the rest of the exhibits, no shortcuts. There wasn’t even elbow room as I got swept along by the crowd. Dodging selfie sticks like Tom Cruise trying not to trip lasers in the Mission: Impossible film. I was eyeing the priceless stained glass windows, weighing up how long it might take me to pay the Vatican authorities back if I just launched myself headlong through one of them to sweet freedom. I’m not sure that you are supposed to come away from the Sistine Chapel with a feeling of mild to severe annoyance and slight despair. I’m sure it is meant to be an awe-inspiring experience. Honestly, I glanced at the ceiling and carried on marching. I felt trapped and really annoyed that I had been put in this situation with no obvious chance of escape. “Despite all my rage I’m still just a rat in a cage” - Finally found a use for that Smashing Pumpkins quote.

I strode through the rest of the rooms, you still can’t leave after the Sistine, there is more to come. I saw an outside area, made a break for it. I found a couple weeping on some stairs, begged them, ‘please is this the exit?’, they had given up hope ‘no, they said, just more museum, save yourself, we have lost all hope.’ I left them, I had no choice. The skeletal remains of those who had lingered, trying to subsist on over-priced calzone and cappuccinos littered the benches and grounds all around. A truly desperate scene as captured here:

I mustered all the strength I had left, pulled my cap down, put my headphones on (Metallica), shades went on, and I half ran towards the signs for ‘Uscita’, the exit, emancipation, freedom, open air. St. Anger was my guide and he saw me through. So, all in all, the final was not a great experience. Summed up by one half of a cockney couple I heard when I left “Just so you know, we are never, ever going there again”. I’m sure that’s what Michaelangelo was going for in a response. I’ve learned, well reinforced what I already knew really, I am at my happiest with space and fresh air around me!

[john-is-on-the-rails]

My new favourite place. @castelsantangelo #visitrome #italy #rome #emperorhadrian #vatican #interrail #eurail #interrailplanner #ontherails (at Castel Sant'Angelo)