Rome - Day 2

Today was Vatican City day. We got up early to head to the queue. I think we got there about 8:15am. The Vatican museums, according to lonely planet, were supposed to open at 8:45am, however we had the inside word from Anna that that was a bit of a lie and it opened at 10am. Anyway, we got in line and I was chatting to a lovely English family on their annual holiday. I think we were all quite pleased with our place in the queue and more so when the line started to move at 9am a full hour before we all expected. So getting into the Vatican wasn't too bad.

Once inside we made our way round the various museums with the first stop being the Egyptian Museum with a real mummy partially unwrapped in it, kind of fascinating but also kind of gross! Another interesting thing in the Egyptian museum was a mummified cat, not unwrapped but you could tell where the cat remains ended up in the bronze casing for the cat.

After that there was a sculpture museum with a whole lot of sculptures and also this very cool fresco which I think 'grabbed' me the most from our whole trip. From here to the rooms painted by Raphael was the hall of maps which is a very very long room with regional maps of Italy along both walls. A very cool room indeed. The Raphael rooms were just amazing, in these rooms we also learnt how fresco's are painted. They are painted onto fresh plaster, hence fresco meaning fresh in Italian.

To finish off our Vatican museum tour was the Sistine Chapel, which was a LOT bigger then I had thought it was. For some reason I had never really thought about how big it was but always thought it was smaller. Anyhow, it was very cool indeed. Generally, in case you hadn't guessed I thought the Vatican museums were well worth the trip!

Next stop was St Peter's, what can I say it's big and very cool indeed. If you want an appreciation of how big it really is this photo illustrates it well I think.

We then headed back to the hostel for our afternoon nap. That night we went out for dinner and I had Parma Ham and Melon, this time with the lovely addition of Walnuts and whole peppercorns! Strange but very very yummy. I am also getting into the red wine, yum yum!