The Adventures of Team H

The morning of our final day in Rome, we hopped on the bus to cross the Tiber river over to Vatican City.

We held reservations for 8:15 am, so we felt confident as we got off and began our approach to the imposing Vatican. Only one thing troubled us: Where do we go stand in line? We know we have to meet the guide at the Museum entrance. That must be here, at the Church, right?
Oops...
With some fumbling and direction-asking, we determined we were around 1 km away from the Museum entrance! Time to hustle... We speed-walked down the street, obeying some rough directions. We came upon an intersection, and a mysterious American woman, sensing our befuddlement, instructed us to turn left and pass everbody standing in line, and to carefully use the street to get around them if need be. Running out of time now, we did exactly this, passing hundreds of visitors in a line 10 people thick - evidently the ones lacking reservations. Then we kept passing more hundreds of people. Dodging motorcycles and little cars every now and then. Finally we made it to what appeared to be the Museum entrance... Now, where's our guide? The frantic search for him began. There seemed to be a half dozen tour groups swirling around. Then by accident we found a few of our own tour group members. Then, our smiling guide showed up, and we were finally back in business.

The next few hours were total immersion in art. Our guide took us through rows of sculpture, paintings, frescos, tapestries, explaining everything he could and answering any and all questions, offering a lot of historical context. After some anticipation, we finally entered the Sistine Chapel (where no photography is allowed), followed up by Saint Peter's Basilica. It's tough to do justice trying to describe these sights, while writing from a timed terminal at an internet cafe. But again, imagine total art immersion! Sistine = Paintings, Everywhere! St. Peters = Sculpture and tombs and marble decor, everywhere! My hope is that some choice photo uploads will help where the prose falls short.

After all this we were pretty hungry and tired, ready for a quick pizza lunch down the street. This was achieved with ease. Now refueled, we walked out toward a fortress-like castle just to the east, then followed the river south, sort of aimlessly, half trying to make it to another church. But we had already had a full day and a full Rome experience, and remembered the adage, that you can' see everything on one trip. Satisfied, we took a bus back to the hotel and began plotting our next move up through Italy.