Day 11 - The Vatican and St. Paul's Cathedral

Our last day in Rome, and we were scheduled to meet a tour guide about 9:30 in the morning for our tour of the Vatican City. Something happened, and we did not get a tour guide at all, which was probably for the best as nobody felt like going on a 3+ hour tour. We went through the main museum areas, most of which were marble statues and busts, tapestries, paintings and gold scepters (I don't know what they are really called. Most of the info plates were in Italian. I'll be looking that stuff up later). One of my favorite halls had maps of areas of the European world painted on the walls. There was even a map of the world that had an interesting depiction of the "new world", which included Florida, which ended right around Orlando. Quite funny looking, actually, but I'm sure it was ground-breaking at the time. The entire new world area looked very strange.

After we had gone through most of the museum, we entered the Sistine Chapel. It was really dark in there, but very cool (literally.) It was packed with people, but I'm thinking more because it was a good to get out of the heat. There were guards in there telling everyone to keep moving, not to take pictures, and to be quiet, out of reverence. The painting everywhere was very impressive, although I would think it would be easier to paint the ceiling lying on your back versus the way Michelangelo painted the domes and ceilings in other parts of the Vatican; standing up, looking up, with arms held high.

In and out of the Vatican museum in under two hours, which was about 1 hour too long for the kids. We went from there straight over to St. Peter's Basilica where we were greeted by the Colonnade. Everything was so huge. Seemed like you could fit a few football fields in the whole area. It looked a little smaller than it was, but when you started walking from one side to the other, it took about 5 minutes.

Took the train back to Montevarchi, which we moved from our 1st-class seats at 100 degrees to the 2nd-class car that had working AC. Ah, the Trenitalia.