Not art but awesome anyway

Highlight of week one? It's just not fair to force myself to choose, especially considering the ridiculous amount of simply amazing things we saw. You just can't pit the Vaticam museums against St Peters (below) AND the Capitoline museums.

Silliness. So, if I really have to pick a highlight, I'm going to go out on a limb and make it something entirely off topic and unrelated to all things Renaissance and Baroque art. You see, whilst up atop the Castel San Angelo -- that's right, the big looming fortress down the road from St Peters, overlooking the heart breakingly beautiful Ponte San Angelo -- once we tore ourself away from the view back to St Peters...

...and went to look over the other side, what did we discover but an open air ice rink. And of course, it would take wild horses to stop me from passing up on the chance to ice skate in the sun, next to the Tiber, in full view of St Peters. How often does a chance like that come along? Once in a lifetime, as it turns out, because our plan to drag the other Romeites back there failed spectacularly due to the madly jampacked shcedule, the increasing study stress, and the ridiculous number of competing things to see and do in the eternal city. Not to mention the fact that the weather rarely got that good again. It really was a case of all signs pointing me to the rink.