High and mighty...

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A slow start to the day....8am....sees us on our way to tackle the Rome underground rail system. Not so taxing if you have the correct notes and ignore the ability of the machine to take the good'ol credit card. After a short trip back to our hotel to collect some folding money...we are on our way.

Two steps out of the train station see us chatting to a tour guide. Great plan on their part, catch the poor lost tourists as the come out of the dark train tunnels, and sell them on the ability to skip all the queues. Music to our ears....we go along and have enough time to grab another Cappuccino. More music to our ears. Covering just 0.44sq km, a tiny nation, ruled Rome and much of central Italy for more than 1000 years until it was forcibly incorporated into the Italian state during unification in 1861. Consisting of St Peters Basilica (Basilica di San Pietro), the biggest and richest church, the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Square and Vatican museums.

St Peters Basilica, built on top of St Peter's burial site, has gone through two constructions, one by Constantine in the 4th century and again in 1503 by Bramante. The later design / construction including the current day dome built by Michelangelo in 1547 and spans 120m and is the tallest building in Rome. St Peter's is also the largest basilica in the world and will be for all time as no larger Basilica bigger is allowed to be built.

The Sistine Chapel, wowzer, originally built in 1484, and decorated by Micelangelo in 1508 who painted 'Genesis' (Creation, not Phil Collins). Twenty two years later he returned at 70+ years of age and nearly blind, to paint the Giudizio universale ( last judgement). His original painting depicted all of the people nude.. So he was asked to add clothes for modesty as it was a holy site. This was happening at the same time as statues everywhere were having fig leaves added to cover private parts.

After two days of walking and another planned for tomorrow ( Napels & Pompeii) we call it a day and rest day for the afternoon and organize some much needed washing.

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