Roma and the Vatican

May Twenty First, 2012 – 

Today was another very early start.  We met up at 8:00 this morning downstairs in the hotel lobby.  We then left for the Vatican, which unfortunately on the way it was pouring down rain.  We hopped on the metro here and rode it to the Vatican, but we had a little bit further to walk to get there.  We stood in the middle of the Vatican grounds where the Pope comes out and the hands circle it, welcoming you into the house of God.  This was a pretty cool idea that they had so long ago especially with it working so well.  We stopped after this and finally I tried the gelato, Nutella, and it was awesome.  

At 11:30 we had our tour and luckily we were able to pass through the line with a sort of quick pass.  We finally entered the Vatican and were given a 30-minute explanation of a few things we would be seeing, mainly in the Sistine Chapel.  After this we started walking through all of the many different pieces they had in the corridors.  They say that if you were to spend one minute on every piece in the museum that it would take you 13 years to see the entire collection.  We only got a brief view of some of the pieces that they had and this was still quite overwhelming.  

Of course my favorite part was actually getting to see the Sistine Chapel, this was quite amazing at what Michelangelo was able to paint considering he was not even a painter, but a sculpture.  

After we went to St. Peter’s Basilica to view the largest basilica in the world.  This was by far the largest single thing I have seen like this.  It’s hard to truly describe the size of St. Peter’s, but it is just truly MASSIVE.  The coolest part of St. Peter’s was the sculpture by Michelangelo of Mary Magdalene and Jesus.  It was quite a sight to see, especially since that was the only thing actually signed by Michelangelo that is involved with the Vatican or St. Peter’s.