Location: Rome (Part II), Vatican City

I forgot to mention: we were in Rome 15-19 September. Our second full day was spent almost entirely in the Vatican City, the world's smallest and wealthiest nation. Tickets for the weekly papal audiences are free, and you just have to make sure to get there early so you can find a seat or standing position near a Popemobile aisle. Basically...

WE SAW THE POPE WE SAW THE POPE!! He was on his Popemobile wheeling around the crowd. He looked so happy and friendly!

He just wheeled on by!

And he kissed a bunch of babies!! Most of them found their way back to their parents.

After this overwhelmingly awesome experience, we had a group walking tour of the Vatican. Group tours in Rome are the way to go, because you get to skip the 500-person ticket lines.

Scale model of Vatican City. Fun fact: it's a mostly walled city!

The Vatican Museums comprise two long, long hallways filled with museum-worthy items, and some connecting passageways and courtyards in between. They also keep beautiful gardens. We got to walk through some of the museums while our guide explained the highlights and gave us some fun facts! I don't think we could have made it through the museums without our guide. Somewhere around 50,000 people visit the Vatican per day, and I'm pretty sure every single one of them was in the same hallway as us the whole time.

"Sphere Within Sphere", a rotating sculpture representing the Vatican. It's the same size as the sphere at the top of St Peter's dome.

Belvedere Courtyard connecting the Vatican Palace with a villa. Here you can see the world's largest bronze pine cone, from the 1st century AD!

Long museum hallway filled with ancient statues and sculptures.

Hallway of tapestries, some of which used to hang in the Sistine Chapel to keep it warm in the winter.

My favorite, the gallery of ancient maps! They were commissioned in the 1500s and used the most expensive, and most intense, blue paint available.

Unfortunately we don't have pictures of the Sistine Chapel because the company who restored it holds a copyright. Michelangelo painted the ceiling as well as the wall fresco "The Last Judgement" (later in life). He was a sculptor by trade, but the pope at the time, Pope Julius II, insisted that he paint the Sistine Chapel. Since he was young and needed money, Michelangelo did it...but he left a few secrets behind! On the ceiling, he painted God creating the sun and the moon, but the moon is a bare behind! He also painted a prophet where wall meets ceiling with the Pope's face, which the Pope loved--but Michelangelo also included some little cherubs giving the prophet/Pope the equivalent of the finger. I think this quote by von Goethe sums it up: "Without having seen the Sistine Chapel one can form no appreciable idea of what one man is capable of achieving."

St Peter's Basilica is the largest Catholic church in the world (!!), and its dome was designed by Michelangelo based off his studies of the Pantheon. It's hard to depict the scale of it in pictures, but the church is absolutely massive. About 100 graves exist under the chapel and are available to visit. In the crypts you can actually see the foundations and walls of the original basilica, before it was rebuilt during the Renaissance.

View out to St Peter's Square from the Basilica.

Not a great picture, but inside the Basilica from the entrance. There are small chapels on each side of the main nave.

Michelangelo's "Pieta", a marble sculpture of Jesus on Mary's lap after crucifixion. It's behind bulletproof glass because of a madman in the 1970s who shot off Mary's nose and fingers.

View of the high altar and the giant bronze canopy sculpted by Bernini. Directly underneath the altar lie the remains of St Peter, which we saw from the crypts. 

The Swiss guards, halberds and all!

After all this we were pretty tuckered out. We found a bakery that had fresh bread and ricotta, and ate it with our Cinque Terre olives for dinner. Spectacular end to a spectacular day!

Yum.