Rome with Noah, Troy and Momma: Vatican City, St. Peter's Basilica and the Sistine Chapel

St. Peter's Square

Friday, December 30, 2016 - We toured Vatican City the next day. Vatican City is not very far at all from our hotel and the Colosseum area. It is just across the River Tiber. We took a taxi there from the Hotel Opera Roma and met our Grayline Tour outside the Vatican (Under the watchful eye of the Pope, I'm sure).

Our tour was the Skip-The-Line Vatican Museums, Sistine Chapel & St. Peter's Basilica Tour. The Vatican is a huge place so the tour can take three hours or more. Pace yourself. There is a lot to see. Try not to rush through the whole place. Take your time to enjoy as many of the priceless works of art and architecture as you can. We did get rushed through a bit of our tour. Mid-way through the Tapestries Gallery, a Japanese tour flooded the hall and it was shoulder-to-shoulder with zero respect for personal space. We had not realized that it was just that one tour group that was causing all of the shoving and noise. If we had, we would have just stepped to the side of the gallery hall and waited. Once they eventually did outpace us, we were fine and it was much more enjoyable.

Here are a lot of photos that I tried to group by sections of the Vatican.

Our staging area before the Vatican Museum tours

Staging Area

Troy and Momma
Tapestries Gallery

Troy and Momma

Troy, Momma and Me

I Love the gold ceiling.

Momma and Troy

We were happiest when it was not so crowded.

Ceiling moldings

It got crowded.

Ornate Ceiling

Noah, Troy, Momma

Troy and Momma
Green earpieces are for the self-pace guided tour audio.

With all of the rooms, galleries, museums, chapels, tapestries, paintings, sculptures, you really need an entire class on the Vatican before you even take this tour in order to really appreciate it. I'll definitely be reading up on the Vatican before I do this again - but I do want to do it again soon.

"The Thinker" by Auguste Rodin
Collection of Modern Religious Art

The following pictures were taken, I believe, in St. Peter's Basilica.

Ceiling

Me, Momma, Troy

Exiting St. Peter's Basilica, we ended our tour in St. Peter's Square which is truly an immense piazza.

Exiting St. Peter's Basilica onto St. Peter's Square

Before leaving St. Peter's Square, Momma and I mailed postcards back to the States. As we exited St. Peter's Basilica, we went to our right and then into a gift shop which also has the Vatican's Post Office. You buy your postcards; you buy your stamps; and you mail your postcards in the large yellow post boxes just on the outside of the gift shop/post office. I think we mailed cards to April, Monica, ourselves (got to have memorabilia) and not sure who else. If you didn't get one, let me know and I'll send you one on my next trip.

Noah mailing postcards from the Vatican.

Momma watching me mail postcards from the Vatican.

Momma mailing postcards from the Vatican.

Momma took this picture of me and Troy with St. Peter's Basilica behind us.

We toured many parts of Vatican City of which I do not have photos like the Sistine Chapel and Cortile della Pigna (Courtyard of the Pigna). Again, do your research about the Vatican before you go on your tour. Read about it. Watch YouTube videos. Take your time going through the tour. You'll appreciate it all the more.

We took a taxi back across the Tiber River and walked around more of Rome's many, many squares. We filled the afternoon and evening with places like Trevi Fountain and our chocolate milk shop.