Jane and Kristi Travel Europe 2012: Day 4: The Vatican

We are sitting here on our balcony at Hotel Rimini eating a light dinner on our last night in Rome. We just spent the day at the Vatican.

We heard that the Vatican is incredibly crowded, so we left very early right after breakfast and took the subway to the Ottoviano metro stop and walked up to Saint Peter’s Basilica. No line – yeay – for the Basilica nor the Cupola (the dome of the Basilica where you can climb to the top). Michelangelo wasn’t kidding around when he designed this place. It’s gorgeous and awe striking. It felt nice in its sacredness without feeling overbearingly religious. Multiple masses were going on in different languages tucked in each of the Basilica wings (I guess you’d call it?). It was really nice. Bernini’s altar, Michelangelo’s pieta - these were background to the different masses going on. This place was amazing.

It was starting to get hot already – very humid today – so at 9:30 we ran over to the Cupola to try to climb to the top, take pictures and get to the museum in time for our 10:30 guided tour. Speed walking/climbing up endless spiral stairways sometimes only as wide as our shoulders - luckily we didn’t panic with claustrophobia with lots of people doing the same thing. Sweating our butts off. The view was worth it though and after grabbing a few pictures, we high-tailed it around the Vatican wall to get to the Museum entrance.

On this 2 hour museum tour--we both realized within the first five minutes—we are not tour group people. And we’re not ‘hordes of people’ people. (By that time of day, thousands of people had shown up). One thing we did learn on the tour is that 20,000 people come into the Vatican per day…we may have seen them all today). But we DID see some really cool stuff. The big highlights were Rafaels’ School of Athens (where Jane finally got to see the original of the picture she uses all the time in her class) and the Sistine Chapel. We broke away from the tour by the Sistine Chapel so we could spend some time there. Amazing visit – highly recommended especially St. Peter’s by 8 a.m. to get the morning light!

We metro’d back to Spanish Steps for a lovely late afternoon lunch - 1.5 liters of Sangria, ravioli and pizza. By then, we were zonked (the Sangria may have contributed to that!) so, hellooo siesta. This evening Claudia called; Charles and Kristi met Claudia and her friend Valentina on a safari in Tanzania last year. We are going to meet up with Claudia and Val tomorrow and head to Pompeii; then climb Mt. Vesuvius Saturday. Looking forward to seeing the girls and hanging out! Claudia told us there might be a strike tomorrow and to double check that the train is still running – which we did - and we were told it was running…so (hopefully) we’ll be seeing them tomorrow…!

P.S. if you ever come to Europe – bring Jane! Jane has put so much planning and research into this trip – she’s figured out our hotels, the train tickets, the activities, and speaking Italian really well -practicing with patient waiters, the hotel front desk guys, museum entrance people, gelato servers, etc. It's awesome - thank you Jane!!!