Rome- Vatican

We caught a early flight to Rome on Tuesday morning, leaving the three little girls with Zonia and Tony in Madrid. As cute as they are, we were definitely able to see more of Italy in our brief 2.5 days with no kids!

We arrived in Rome at 9 am and caught a bus to to the Vatican. We were trying to cram a lot in that day, so we walked through the museum and Sistine chapel pretty quickly. There is SO MUCH STUFF in there! It was a little mind boggling thinking about how every sculpture, painting, and artifact could probably have pages and pages of interesting stuff written about it. You could spend easily a half day in there, gradually becoming more and more desensitized to amazing ancient art. 

This picture very effectively captures our feelings about Rome's public transit system. Aaron had downloaded some offline maps on his phone, but we had no data. It was pretty easy to find bus stops, but when you were on the bus, they didn't announce what stop they were at. It made it super stressful trying to figure out when to get off. 

Outside the Vatican Museum

Cool ceilings everywhere

It is hard to take selfies with ceilings. We eventually embraced the double chins. 

Statue collage. Bottom right dude had dolphins in his beard and grapes in his hair. 

This statue looks uncannily like my brother Blake

School of Athens- one of the few paintings I had learned about in school. My art history knowledge is lacking. 

Beautiful. Everywhere. 

Wonderfully reminiscent of my beloved 2013 concrete canoe, the Pearl Dragon. 

The Sistine Chapel is at the end of the Vatican Museum. There are no pictures allowed, and you are supposed to be quiet in there. Naturally, this means that someone gets on a speaker to loudly proclaim "Silenzio!" every few minutes. It was also pretty much a mosh pit in there. The entire floor was jammed with people staring up at the ceiling. I wish I had researched more about the artwork in advance. There was a ton of symbolism going on in that room. I had printed off a cheat sheet, but we had to check backpacks and I forgot to take the paper out.

Stock photo of an empty Sistine Chapel

Michelangelo's Creation of Adam. I love this one. 

We were hoping to go to St. Peter's Basilica after the Sistine Chapel, but we had to book it across town to make it to our Colosseum tour. We went back the next morning, but the Pope was doing his weekly address and the whole Vatican was shut down.

Posing by the lovely barricade in front of St. Peter's Square

You can see the Vatican Obelisk through these lovely rows of grand columns. Fun fact- Rome has more standing ancient Egyptian obelisks than anywhere else in the world- including Egypt!