Journey to Europe: Day four The Vatican

Itinerary

•      9:45 Vatican Museum Tour
•      3:00 Lunch
•    8:30 Dinner

Started the day off by taking the Metro for the first time from a little square up the street from our hotel to the outer wall of the Vatican for our tour group. The Metro in Rome is fairly easy to navigate with ticket machines that you could select your preferred language and two train lines the A and B lines. We took the B line to get to where we needed to be. On our tour, again we were given one-way radios to listen to our guide while going through the crowds at the Museum. 25,000 people during the high seasons, the Summer months. 

The Vatican has beautiful statues, frescos, mosaics, paintings, and more; by famous artist and not so recognizable artist. Every room you have to look up at the ceiling to see the ornate crownings and frescos that are painted on the ceiling. We got to see the "Stanza della Segnatura" by Raphael (done in 1508-1511) and of course Michelangelo's Frescos of the Last Judgement and the beginning of man in the Sistine Chapel for the pope's private masses. There was no pictures or talking allowed in the Chapel, otherwise you had a security guard breathing down your neck and barking at you. There was so many warnings and signs before entering the chapel that you could not take pictures and yet there was still very rude people with cameras taking pictures. Surprisingly the Sistine Chapel is smaller than I thought it would be, then again chapels in general are on the small side.

Beautiful Ceilings

There was a long hallway just dedicated to tapestries, which were nice, but not as fun, so Alec and I narrated what was going on in the tapestries, which some had some quite funny facial expressions.
All the Art in the Vatican Museum are gifts from the artists or something requested by the Vatican from the artist, none of the paintings were actually bought.

The tour ended in St. Peter's Basilica, which we went

Ceiling paintings

Funny facial expression tapestry

Pretty tessera mosaic with Peacocks.   

to the day before on a different tour, but it was nice to take pictures of things we had missed or things that weren't there the day before. There was chairs set up all around, for a mass that wasn't there and it was closed off, so glad that I got pictures of the alter the day before. 

"Stanza della Segnatura" by Raphael (done in 1508-1511)

St. Peter's Dome

After the tour, it was already one in the afternoon, but my Dad and I set off to do a once-in-a-lifetime thing, and climb to the top of the St. Peter's Dome, while Alec and Mom stayed back and went shopping for post cards at the souvenir shop. Dad and I decided that we would pay the extra euro to get the elevator to the top, instead of climbing the stairs. Thing was...the elevator only went to the basin of the dome, from there up you had to climb extremely narrow and odd angle stairs. Man, talk about a work out! It was worth it in the end to see all of Rome and the Vatican at the top of St. Peter's because St. Peter's by law is the tallest building in all of Rome; Also for bragging rights and to take pictures for those of us that would not have been able to make the venture. 

The Vatican from the top of St. Peter's

Crazy stair case of doom

By the time Dad and I made it to the bottom it was nearly three and we were all grouchy for lunch. (especially Mom) went just outside of the Vatican to a little restaurant and had a margarita pizza.
After lunch we took the metro back to our hotel and got some gelato walking from the metro station to the hotel and put up our feet for awhile until dinner.

Edit: When walking to the metro after lunch, we found a GameStop store and found a charger for Alec's 3-D DS portable gaming system. Alec was thrilled that it charged his 3D DS and got his souvenir from Europe.

Before dinner and after we rested we set out to find the Spanish Steps, this time we were serious and knew where the go. It was about a mile or two away from where our hotel was, but it was terribly crowded with all the other tourist sitting on the steps and wasn't as pretty to look at with the crowds of people all over them. So we set out to find a restaurant over there, where we sat next to a very cute young couple from Holland (not Holland, Michigan, but the actual country of Holland) They were on vacation with a few friends that were not present and have a young son who was at home and a baby on the way. They have done a lot of traveling, but were sad to say that after this baby there would not be much more traveling.

That evening, on our way back from dinner the moon was almost full and lit up the night sky and mom and I sang "That's Amore" by Dean Martin.

Obelisk of Virgin Mary with the moon