When in Rome. . .

So now we have made it to Rome. As we expected, the train to Rome was delayed; every day we have traveled we have encountered some sort of delay. Although this time it was only fifteen minutes, but still. We got here and found the hostel. Before we even walked in the door, I knew this was going to be a party hostel. The sounds of music and people laughing escaped out onto the street. We got checked in and found our rooms and crashed; we were both exhausted after 12 hours on the train.

Our first full day in Rome, we decided to head down to Vatican City, the smallest sovereign state in the world. It was really cool to be in a place that I had seen on television so many times during the funeral of Pope John Paul II. The place was immense.

After much work we finally found the Vatican Museums which lead to the Sistine Chapel. We stood in line for about 90 minutes waiting to get inside. There is so much to see inside that it is overkill on the senses. Just walking around looking at it was exhausting for me. There were probably about 12 museums dedicated to everything from relics to maps to miniature mosaics and religious art.

We saw the Sistine Chapel. The room is kind of small and completely crowded with people. And when they all start talking it can get pretty loud. So there is this one guard whose only job is to "shhh" people. It made me fell like I was in the 5th grade again. That would be a horrible job to have. The chapel was much smaller than I had expected. It was entirely covered with amazingly beautiful paintings. I felt like I had been there before, because I had seen it all before in books and in art classes I had taken, but it was amazing to see it in person. Then we walked through this immensely long hallway to get out and about every five feet there was some sort of souvenir shop, all selling the same thing, in case you missed it the first 12 times.

Then we decided that we wanted to see some Catacombs. We have seen the original Ghetto in Venice and I wanted to see the Catacombs. I said then we needed to try and see places like Rivendell and Blackwatch. That will only make sense if you went to Covenant. Sorry non-Covenant friends.

We never did get to the Catacombs after all. They were too far. So we decided to skip it for now and see them later in Paris. We went back to Vatican City and visited St. Peter's Basilica. It was beautiful. Its kind of funny how they spent all this money to build a building whose *soul* purpose is to house dead people, kind of a waste, if you ask me.