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Wednesday night created one fantastic lightning storm with a bit of rain, result of this the hotel had no computer systems for a few hours and our problem was that we needed to print off our tickets to enable us to tour the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, eventually we were on our way and of course once we came up from the underground it was raining, not heavy but annoying, we headed straight for the Vatican Square only to realize we were in the wrong area, (again) turn around and worked our way to the museum, the line we came across was incredibly long, thankfully we had skip the line tickets and entered the museum in record time, after going through a security check we then proceeded to wander the halls and corridors, never knowing which way to go, what to look at as the collection is so numerous and varied in origin and country, apart from that barely a room that the walls or ceilings were so decorated with paintings, each room you entered just blew you away, finally finding our way to the Sistine Chapel, upon entering you are ushered into the centre of the room and requested to be silent, and not to use your cameras, no photo's at all, history lesson to start, Michaelangelo started painting the frescoes in 1508 and completed the entire room in 1512, the room is 40 metres long and 13 metres wide and there is in total 5000 sq feet of paintings which consists of 300 painted figures on the ceiling and no, Michaelangelo did not paint the ceiling lying on his back, (only Charlton Heston did that in the movie) apparently he was clever enough to set up scaffolding, anyway enough of that the room is awesome.
Finally leaving the museum we headed for the Vatican Square and by this time the crowds had thinned out so we joined the line to see St Peters Basilica, with the idea that if it took over an hour and we were still no where close we would come back another day, surprising the line moved quickly and another security check and we were in to one of the most incredible churches I have ever seen, it is so big, the churches we saw in London were beautiful but this is simple, once again the murals on the walls are in mosiac, but there are a lot of actual canvas paintings on the walls.
I did wonder upon leaving the museum and the church if any of the popes ever got to see all that there is to see.
A few more photo's taken we headed back to our hotel for a rest before heading out to a local restaurant for dinner, we both had a pasta dish and once again as only the Italians can do it, perfect.
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Laurel Sounds amazing Bev xx