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We had a rude awakening at 6:50 - the phone rang. It was the front desk informing us that our ride for the tour was here. What??? I told the front desk that the tour was tomorrow, hung up and rolled over. I laid there thinking about it and got up and got the voucher out. Dang. The tour was for Thursday, yet I had Friday fixed in my mind... I called the number on the voucher and rescheduled for tomorrow.
Since we were both now fully awake, we went down for breakfast and got ready for the day.
We got the front desk to call us a taxi for the ride to Vatican City, where we spent most of the rest of the day. St. Peter's Square is HUGE. From the entrance, it appears just ordinary with an ordinary sized church at the other end, but you walk for quite a ways just to get to the security check point, along the outer ring, about halfway across the square. They can fit hundreds of thousands of people into that square....
The photo on the left above is an overview of St. Peter's Square and Cathedral showing some of the crowds waiting to enter the cathedral. And the photo on the right is a closer view of the front of St. Peter's Cathedral. When I took the photo in the center above, I thought I had found a nun in prayerful contemplation in St. Peter's Square. She was dialing her cell phone. Which reminds me of a safety tip we discovered in Rome. The safest way to cross a busy Roman street is to wait for a nun and cross at the same time she does...
The photo on the left above is a view of St. Peter's Cathedral with one of the fountains of St. Peter's Square in the foreground. The photo in the center above shows a member of the Swiss Guard (the Pope's personal guards) on duty in St. Peter's Square. The photo on the right above has St. Peter's reflected in Carl's sunglasses with some of St. Peter's Square in the background.
We finally through the security mess and picked up an audio guide for the cathedral. It was well worth the wait and hassle. There are many beautiful works of art inside. And it's HUGE. The photos above are the only ones I took inside the cathedral. It's a monument to Pope Alexander VII. There's a door in the middle of this monument and the sculptures look like a skeleton is lifting a curtain to invite you in...
After an hour and a half in the cathedral, we joined the line to climb up to the dome. After about ten minutes not moving while waiting in a very hot corridor, someone nearby asked an attendant how long the wait was. 1-2 hours from this point... We pushed our way back out... Maybe another trip.
We went back to the streets outside Vatican City, where we found a place for a quick snack and ordered two salads - tomato/mozzarella/olive salad and a fruit salad - and shared those for lunch. Then we went back to walk around the walls of Vatican City to the Vatican Museum.
While no photography is allowed inside the Vatican Museum, people are allowed to take photos of the grounds and out of the windows. The photo on the left above was taken in one of the courtyards of the Vatican Museum. The bronze pine cone, the Cortile della Pigna, was originally part of an ancient Roman fountain. The center photo above is a fountain at the base of the pine cone. The photo on the right above was taken through one of the windows of the Vatican Museum, looking out at rooftops and the Vatican Gardens.
Like most people there that day, we were primarily interested in the Sistine Chapel, which is part of the museum. To get there means going through about half the museum first. It was interesting, but hot. We finally arrived to the Sistine Chapel and saw Michelangelo's fantastic ceiling. Well worth the wait, except for the loud tourists and crying babies and hissing museum guards attempting to shush the crowd...
We had a small snack after the museum (ice cream As the three photos above show, I have a weakness for fountains with water coming out of mouths. There are several photos like this in my collection. The one on the left is a detail of the Fontana di Nettuno (Fountain of Neptune) in the Piazza Navone. The other two are from an unnamed fountain in the Piazza della Rotunda, in front of the Pantheon. The one in the center seems to be annoyed by the pigeon on his head...
Then we went back to the Pantheon area. The Pantheon was open this time, so we spent some time inside. The Pantheon was originally (supposedly) build by the imperial Romans as a temple to multiple gods. Later, the Christians took it over and consecrated it, making it a church. Not a bad walk, but we were tired by the time we got back to the hotel. We had dinner in the Pantheon area again after cleaning up. The photo on the left below shows the Pantheon with a horse carriage in front of it.
We found a toy shop near the Pantheon that was fascinating. All the toys were wooden, with several large Pinnocchios, including an almost life sized one that was sitting on a bench for tourist pictures. The center photo above shows Carl sitting with Pinnocchio, with the toymaker working in the background. The most fascinating thing in the shop was an almost life sized wooden motorcycle - that's it in the right photo above!!!
The day ended with a bang, however. The tub/shower in the our room at the Regno had sides that tapered to a narrow bottom, which was very slippery. Well, I managed to slip stepping into it and landed hard on my left hip. I wound up with a bruise that looked like the shape of Africa that was about 10 inches long and 6 or 7 wide... (Note: writing this on 6/2, the purpling is now long gone, but there's still a deep tissue bruise left.) I just sat there for a while, then wound up taking a bath.... For the rest of the trip, we put hand towels down as bath mats inside the tubs. That helped us both!!!
