Today we decided to try something new. We decided to go through the Vatican with a tour group. These werethem. numbers.
This was our tour guide.
The group of people on the left was the long line along the wall, all waiting to enter the Vatican museum! We got to pass them all! :)
We made it to the front! :)
Our guide was making sure we were all still with her.
Waiting for our turn to go in.
Our tickets
The Sistine Chapel is back there somewhere!
On the roof of the Museum.
All our tour guide told us about this was that it used to be a fountain, as she quickly walked us through everything.
It was unbelievably crowded with all of the other tour groups! It was not pleasant.
She walked us through everything so quickly and it was SO crowded.
We quickly snapped a picture as we walked through a little courtyard.
One of the ceilings.
A tomb
Another ceiling painting.
A room with tapestries ... after this our tour guide brought us into the Sistine Chapel, this was the end of the tour. So Nathan and I decided to ditch the group and go back through everything because we really didn't learn anything from our tour guide. We basically ran through everything and had to fight the tour crowds. It really was not very good at all, in fact we are still a little bitter about it. What made it nice though was the fact that we left them and went back in on our own! Everything was empty when we went back through and we had enough time to read signs and actually get some information about the things we were seeing! :)
That is St. Peters basilica behind me.
We were amazed to see how crowded it was just an hour before and how empty it was when we came back! CRAZY!
This is what the world used to look like! Or what they thought it looked like. We have SO much information available to us today that we sometimes forget what the world used to look like and the limited information available to those in times past.
Still amazed that not long before this we were in this hallway face to face with complete strangers because it was so crowded. This hallway is lined with statue's and sculpture's that have either been gifted to a Pope or that a Pope had gone out and collected himself. It was really neat to see so many different sculpting styles from different periods of time all in the same hallway.
Here is one of the courtyards we ran through! It symbolized unity around the world.
Not sure what this is but it was at the top of the stairs of the first hallway.
We found a window that looked out onto the city.
There were a lot of different rooms that had tons of statues in them. Again these were either gifted to, or collected by, a Pope throughout the centuries.
Here is that courtyard again, it had statues and baths all around the center.
We found our way to a map room! This was our favorite room. Again, it was neat to see what they thought the land looked like centuries ago. A lot of the cartography is pretty accurate, especially of Italy.
We found the map of Italy.
The Sistine Chapel, it was Amazing! To see the paintings of the creation by Michelangelo and to see his understanding of the gospel and man's relationship with God was really neat.
The hallway leaving the Chapel.
The hallways were breathtaking!
The view as we headed to St. Peter's Basilica
Inside the Basilica
St. Peter holding the keys of the priesthood.
Can you see the size of the sculptures on the walls? They were huge!
A list of all the Pope's since Peter.
Some of the guards outside of the Basilica's grounds
That was it. This was our last look at the Basilica as we left. The Basilica was huge, but not large enough to have the status of Cathedral; not sure how that works.
We got some gelato in honor of Nathan's brother, Tyler! It was his birthday that day!!
It had a HUGE chocolate chip in it! Yum! One half is chocolate chip, the other half is melone (cantelope). Nathan loved the melone, it was his favorite.
As we went home the train was crazy packed!!! No personal space!
This is only some of the people that got off, just as many if not more got back on! Crazy!
It was so crowded
We decided it was about dinner time so we went to get food!
We loved this restaurant! They had good food and good service! :)
Nathan got his fettuccine again! He really liked it a lot!
And I got a Salami Pizza! We shared! :)
We really liked this pie from the other night so we got it again! :)
This was the front of the restaurant
After all of this we went back to our hotel and fell fast asleep! :)
Im so sorry you guys didn't get a good tour person! Ours was pretty good, he pointed out things that we wouldn't have known otherwise, especially in the Sistine Chapel! It's one thing to look at those paintings, but to have them explained, and given a history.., that was priceless. We have to meet and we can tell you some of the most fascinating things we learned there. By the way, good job sneaking that picture!
ReplyDeleteAbout St. Peter's Basilica..,you are right, it is huge. It is the largest church in the world. The reason it isn't a Cathedral is because the dioses doesn't reside there. The status of a "cathedral" can be taken away. basilica is built a top St. Peter's (the same one that walked with Jesus) tomb. I'm guessing that's the reason it is a basilica, once a church receives "basilica status" it isn't take away, that's because something very special has to happened in order to be given the status of a "basilica."
Good job on ditching your tour guide, even though ours was good, we wish we would have gone back and explored more on our own like you did!
A cool fact, St. Peter is missing his feet, they were chopped off by the Christians who took his body from the cross where he was crucified. His feet were nailed and they were in a rush to take his body to safety before someone else would try to steal it. So they choped off his feet. Sad.