Up early this morning to get a taxi to take us to the Covid Testing Centre here in Rome. Now Rome has several “quick” testing tents all around the city but for us going to Canada those do not work for our entry needs. We need the more involved, Molecular test, which means an appointment (we made 5 days ago) to a place about a 20 minute taxi ride away. Jumped into the cab just after 8am, pulled up at 20 after, walked around to the entry spot, checked in at 8:25, tested at 8:30 and out by 8:35. Clean, friendly, very well organized. The person doing the test is in full protective gear, the over length q-tip, goes first in your mouth then each nostril and fortunately not up into you brain as they did back home. She gives you the paperwork to log in 7 hours later for your results all for 60 Euro. In Vancouver, 72 hour testing results was and probably still is $159, 24 hours is $199 and 12 hour results is $599. A bit of a racket in Vancouver I think. We paid for the 24 hour in Vancouver and had our results within 10. I digress. The testing was so quick we decided to cab back to the hotel for breakfast before heading to our 10:30 tour.
We got over to the Vatican Museum just in time for our 10:30 am tour, yes we pushed it a bit but did not hold anyone up as we were getting miked up at 10:27. Bonus was the guide walked past us to begin the tour, so actually we were first, lol.
The Vatican museums are amazing and fantastic to explore, they are one of the largest museums in the world and a guided tour is a great way to get your feet wet, as it were, and then spend the rest of your day there. I would even suggest, due to information overload, to come back again and take your time enjoying each section. Artifacts here date back to 10,000 bc, absolutely fantastic. Yes, our visit did include the incomparable Sistine chapel but unfortunately no photos allowed there. All in we spent a good 3 and a half hours, two with the guide and then the rest on our own. Think we got some good pics today. Back to the hotel for a late lunch, leftovers from our dinner purchases last night, just had to pick some wine to go with. It was then check in time with our flights tomorrow, I would love to say that this was smooth but no it was not, the app took many tries before if accepted our vaccination certificates even though they should have already had these from our flight over. This was a bit frustrating but the wine helped, hmm, maybe that’s why I kept timing out… ah, no. 5 o’clock and we log into to get our results and hurray it looks like we can come home with both of us testing negative. That said, I looked at my home cameras today, is that snow on the ground, hmmm maybe we should rethink our return, lol.
Dinner tonight was a repeat place down the street, nice and simple, I had the chalk board special, 16 euro for a beefsteak, potatoes, salad and dessert, Jan had her favourite, lasagna. The dessert was of course another tiramisu, all yum. Time to pack, good thing we have expandable luggage, hope it all fits, lol. A good selection of pics of our last day in Rome, hope you enjoy…
No comments:
Post a Comment