Monday : sunny

We got up and got ready and went down to the little cafe across the road from the hotel for a cheap breaky.

We then took the metro to Vatican, we walked to Saint Peters square. It was nice, with all the surrounding buildings. but was slightly ruined by the amount of tour buses parked there. So it kind of made it very small and like a car park.

There was a bit of a line to get into Saint Peter's Basilica, it's Italy's largest church, but once we were in the line it moved quickly. The closer we got to the front of the church the more grand it became, and once inside Wow! It blew our minds. It was bloody massive! Very hard to describe. The main done was designed by Michelangelo and is 120m high, the whole place was painted, and filled with sculptures.

We eventually made our way through the church and stopped off at an information centre outside. There we found out that for €5 we can climb to the top of the large dome. The line back inside was completely gone so in no time were back infront of the Basilica.

We took the lift up to the fifth floor, and from there we took 380 odd ver skinny steps to the top. The walls were slanting in when we were climbing up in the dome, and eventually worked into spiral staircases.

Once at the top we had perfect Roma views, for the third time. It was good to see the other side of Rome, and the view back over the square was awesome. The sun was out we were loving it.

We made our way back down out onto a roof top for some ice cream and a rest. Then the elevator took us down into the basilica again, great lucky us we got to see inside Saint Peter's twice.

It was still early afternoon and had four hours before the Vatican Museum closed, so we thought we would go checkout the line. Line? There was no line, we walked straight in and paid our money and then followed the signs to the Sistine Chapel.

The signs lead us down long corridors, filled with paintings and artifacts. We saw pope clothes, the pope staff and pope rings. The paintings and lighting in the corridors were fantastic.

It took over an hour to walk through the corridors to the Chapel, and once inside gwizz, the whole room was painted, the ceiling and every wall filled with paint, it's absolutely incredible, it was like a story. It's so detailed, the people looked real.

We sat down on a bench inside the chapel, and looked up until our necks started to get sore. Then made our way out through the long art filled corridors again.

We got outside into a courtyard and had a break for awhile, then moved out side to another courtyard and walked around a bit longer.

Once we were out of the museum, we walked down the road and found a nice Italian restaurant for our last dinner In Italy, the restaurant had some good grub. After dinner we walked back towards Saint Peter's square and picked up some gelato along the way.

The square was much nicer without any buses, the basilica and surrounding building were all lit up too. We finished our gelato and then left the square and headed for the train station to get home.

Once home Kim went up to the room while Grant and I had a couple beers downstairs in the cafe before getting ready for bed.