Friday - September 19 - Rome & Vatican


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September 19th 2014
Published: September 19th 2014
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Friday – September 19, 2014 – Rome, Italy

Vatican Day

We started early today and headed over to the National Museum of Rome. A great place of old Roman history and many statues, paintings and old coinage. Beautiful building and displays, I am not sure if we could fully appreciate the art and all of the work at the building. We enjoyed the walk and again Dan did a great job of getting us to the museum. We got a chance to see another beautiful church, the Santa Marie Maggiore.

We had to be at Vatican City at 12:45 for our tour of the Vatican Museum, St. Peter’s Basilica, Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter’s square. Wow, unbelievable cab ride, our first in Rome! No fear, I have never seen anything like it. Of course we arrived early and were able to enjoy our first gelato for the day.

The tour started out at 1:00 pm with ten other people. There are thousands per day who take the same tour and I think we did most of the tour with many of them. We saw so many paintings, statues, frescos, and tapestries throughout the museum. So beautiful and so intricate. Vatican City is its own country and actually a walled city. We started the museum tour and worked our way to the Sistine Chapel. The build-up included information about Michelangelo and his painting of the chapel ceiling and rear wall. The entrance into the Sistine Chapel was quite stunning, hundreds of people all looking up the ceiling and in complete silence. We found ourselves a bit clausticphobic.

Upon leaving the Sistine Chapel, we entered St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest and grandest church in the world. It is hard to explain, we have attached a number of pictures and they really do not capture the massive and beautiful church. The Basilica sits directly on top of the grave of St. Peter. We also learned that when a pope dies, they are mummified.

We completed the tour and exited through St. Peters Square four hours later. What a view!

Finally we headed back to our hotel, got cleaned up and ended our day with a wonderful supper at the Hostaria Antica Roma. A 2,000 year old building and old mausoleum with cut outs in the wall for urns. The owner Paolo, treated to us a wonderful evening! We each ordered one his specialties and they were wonderful. We shared two fantastic deserts and took another exciting cab ride back to the hotel.

We made one final walk back down to the Colosseum to take some night pictures and finish our last night in Rome…off to Sorrento in the morning.



Doug & Sherry and Dan & Jane


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20th September 2014

Your Friday in Rome
Fascinating stuff. Looks like you are enjoying it all. Seems like weather is cooperating.

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