Visiting the Vatican

Today(Saturday, wifi not good in our room so posting was delayed) we went to Vatican City. We visited the museum, the Sistine Chapel and St. Mark's  cathedral. It was almost overwhelming. It was hard to get good pictures because of the lighting and in the Sistine Chapel, you are not allowed to take pictures, although we saw people doing it. There were guards who all they said was Shhhhhh when it got too noisy and shouting “No photos” on a constant basis. People can be so disrespectful.

There were floor to ceiling paintings and mosaic floors. Statues everywhere throughout. We went through four big rooms where the walls were painted by Raphael and where ceilings were painted by various artist.

St. Mark's is the largest church in the world. There are paintings, mosaics, statues and the architecture was amazing. It was almost 90 degrees and very few of the rooms were air conditioned so it was a long 3 hour tour, up and down escalas (staircases). We could of stayed and visited more of the galleries but we were exhausted.

To end our day we ate at a sidewalk cafe and had pasta. It was right down from our hotel and has a great view of a piazza that we plan to explore tomorrow.