Monday July 25th

Monday July 25th - Part I

A very poor night of no sleep for me but lots for everyone else based on the amount of snoring coming from both bedrooms. :)
Krista's alarm went off again at 715 and after everyone showered we were out the door headed north to the Vatican.
We grabbed a few croissants on the way and foolishly didn't pack any other food. We didn't bring a backpack as it wasn't allowed in the Vatican on our tour tickets (but yet we saw many people with one)
We walked 20 minutes north and arrived at St. Peter's Square - the courtyard in front of the Vatican. There was already hundreds of people lined up to get in and we luckily breezed past them all to join our tour group across the street from the Vatican. We met our guide Francesca and crossed the street and had to get through security. This was a complete gong show as Monday is the worst day to go as it is closed on Sundays.
After we made it through security, we toured a few courtyards and saw some statues and got a lengthy art lesson before actually touring around. There wasn't a cloud in the sky and it was over 30 degrees not including the crazy humidity.
We patiently weaved in and out of hundreds of  people looking at rooms filled with ancient statues, tapestries and paintings.
With no AC, we weren't moving too quickly but thankfully there were fountains of potable water everywhere.
We finally made it into the Sistene Chapel - the years of artwork done in the fresco method (application of wet plaster and painting it while wet - was incredible! Examining each scene was a struggle with thousands of people coming and going through the room but for 20 minutes we were in complete awe of the complexity and beauty of the Michelangelo work. We learned about the artists of the 15th and 16th century including Rafael whose work was very colorful.
After many more hallways and ceilings of work, we entered St. Peter's basilica - the largest Romance Catholic Church in the world!  The sheer magnitude of this building and the priceless works of art was overwhelming. The 2nd largest dome in the world ( the first being the Pantheon we saw yesterday ) was magnificent.

We walked around for over an hour and our tour concluded 15 minutes late which was disappointing as we missed the seating for the mass in one area of the basilica.

Though we were able to watch and somewhat participate, we were not allowed to receive communion which was unfortunate.
We left the basilica briefly and re-entered theough b the Holy Door. This door was blessed by Pope Francis such that anyone who walks through it during a Jubilation Year (every 25 years on the quarter century) would have their sins instantly forgiven. Surprisingly, we forgot that Pope Francis had declared Nov 2015 to Nov 2016 a bonus year of Jubilation - and blessed we were!
We took some more photographs and decided not to pay the extra 50 Euros for the 560 step hike up to the top of the dome and instead toured the basement crypts of the entombed Popes of previous centuries. There's a lot of dead Popes!
The biggest disappointment was the complete inability to find anything to eat and we were starving to death by 1pm. We decided to cut the touring short as we could no longer stand it and departed the Vatican to invest 20 Euros in a few hotdogs and pop before we killed each other.
After inhaling those, we shopped for an hour and picked up some religious artifacts to go with some we had purchased in the Vatican as well.

We walked several blocks east and ended up in front of the Castle Museum. We may come back to tour it later but in the dead heat of the day and still weary from yesterday's 10 hour hike, we decided to walk along the river and return back to the condo for a 3 hour rest until it cooled off.