Rome - Day 3

The third day in Rome we spent at the Vatican. And it was my birthday! We had gotten tickets for a tour of the Vatican Museums but decided to start at St. Peters. We arrived at St. Peter's Square and got in line at about 7:58 am. When we turned around at 8am, about 5 tour groups had arrived and the line was 10 times longer than when we got in it. 

We decided to head up to the dome first because the line was seeming to grow already. 

We had two options for tickets - take the elevator halfway and then do the stairs, or do the stairs the whole way. We were going to pay more for the elevator, but then the guy told us that there was no line at all for the stairs and the elevator line was very long already. So we hit the stairs!

Honestly, with the elevator you only skip about 200 of the 550ish stairs, so it was fine. And much less crowded!

If you look closely in the picture below, you can see people in the small ring around the dome at top. That's where the second half of our climb took us!

And the view was beautiful!

We saw Peter's tomb.

And we marveled at St. Peter's Basilica.

We saw Michaelangelo's Pieta.

And heard services that were happening while we were visiting.

And I mailed some postcards from the Vatican!

We saw the Vatican Guards.

Then it was off to the Vatican Museums and the Sistine Chapel. This was the double helix staircase for exiting the buildings.

Here is a picture of one of the vestibule arches that is made to look warped.

We saw the Laocoon and His Sons sculpture.

Gorgeous paintings on every ceiling and dome.

Hercules and Nero's basin.

This painting on the ceiling as two dimensional (not 3 as it appears).

We saw amazing tapestries.

And more gorgeous ceilings as we prepared to head into the Sistine Chapel.

We headed into the Raphael Rooms

We saw the School of Athens...

And then headed into the Sistine Chapel (where no photography is allowed). Then there was more! So much art, so many statues, tapestries, paintings, busts, reliefs, furniture, etc. It was hard to fathom how much opulence was centered in one place.

After we went home to shower, we headed to Trastevere and explored. We walked down near the Tiber.

We ate more gelato...

And then we headed to Piazza Santo Maria for dinner.

We ate at Caffe di Marzio and then later were joined by some priests.

On our long walk home, we rented a Lime scooter near the Circus Maximus - I've never been on one before!