ROMA DAY 3

Buona sera (good evening). Hope everyone is doing well. Today was the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and the Pantheon. Lots of great stuff so lets get started.
We met Antinella (our guide) at the gates and started our tour. The Vatican Museum is huge. Antinella was telling us that there were over 1000 rooms so it wouldn’t be hard to get lost… stay with the group but if you do get lost ask for the Sistine Chapel and we will meet you there. Well we all stayed pretty close and so there was no worries. We walked out onto a big patio area and the first thing that you see it the huge dome of Saint Peters Basilica. Great opportunity for photos.
As you leave the patio you enter the pine cone courtyard which is nicknamed for the "pine cone" at one end.Antinella gave us some quick guidelines to the museum and the Sistine Chapel and then we were off to the hall of tapestries. The ceilings and floors were really cool but it all lead up to the Sistine Chapel. It’s against the rules to take pictures in the chapel… but no one enforces the rules so …

(Update: So I erased all my pictures of the chapel ceiling and yeah.... im trying to find some for you to see... sorry everyone)

They don’t do the actual ceiling justice but this is just a taste to tease you into going to see it yourself in person.

St Peters is the largest Catholic Church in the world. It has a cool little diagram inlaid into the floor that if you look down the way at the eagle in stained glass and then down at your feet and read the name of each little church that shows you how big each church is compared to St Peters. None of them come even close. This place is huge. Its build to look small but it’s all an optical illusion because the lettering around the base of the dome is six feet tall alone. The canopy above the alter is 100 feet… and the list just goes on. HUGE!!!!


After we were done with St Peters (you can never really be done with it because there is so much to see), a group of us climbed the dome. There are 500+ stairs to the very top but we took an elevator halfway up so we climbed about 300 or so. Lots and lots of stairs and there will be lots more I’m sure.
After we were all done with the Vatican and the dome… we had free time and since we didn’t get to go to the pantheon on our first day like we were supposed to our group headed that way. I helped navigate us from the Vatican to the metro but after that we got really confused and we were tired, hot, hungry, grumpy, and well… lost. I was so fed up that I was ready to turn around and go back to the hotel but the girls convinced me to keep going and I'm glad they did because the pantheon was a site to see.


It was so big inside that I could take a full picture of the dome. For more information on the Pantheon you can go to our class our class blog and read my post on it at usuinteriordesignabroad09.blogspot.com

We got back to out hotel about 5pm and we were all tired, hot, and sweaty so it was pool time. The water was nice and cool and relaxing. The perfect ending to a long and semi stressful day. The girls have gone out for dinner but I have decided to stay and get some homework done. Tomorrow is our last full day in Rome and then it’s off to Florence.