Day 26

What a morning! We got up and got breakfast with hopes of getting to the Vatican Museum before 9 so as to beat most of the crowd, but still ended up stuck in line for almost an hour. It was very humid--borderline foggy--but not TOO hot. However, once we were finally inside, we pretty much battled heat the entire time we were there.

I don't want to sound too negative about this whole experience, because really, we saw some amazing pieces of artwork, fragments of early Christian tombs, other ancient artifacts, magnificent tapestries, the Sistine Chapel, etc. BUT I do have a lot of complaints.

1. Several of the exhibits were closed. And one appeared to have all the ancient Roman statues and things, so I was upset about this!

2. So. Many. Tour groups!! And all the people in these tour groups, I guess out of a desperate feeling of needing to stay super close to their guide, were not afraid to elbow you, knock you down, yell in your face, etc.

3. Strollers. Katie got attacked by one in particular. I'm just saying, who even brings their baby to a huge museum?

4. THE HEAT. Oh, the heat! Little to no AC found in the expansive museum, which I swear was just a million degrees, and so many people, and so stuffy, and I can't even express how uncomfortable I was for so much of my time there. UGH!

But anyways, now that I've sufficiently vented, I'll share the pictures of all the wonderful things I saw.

Three Raphaels

Maybe hard to read on here, but it says that that particular tapestry was restored thanks to the Texas patrons of the arts. Yay Texas!

Leonardo da Vinci

Caravaggio

By an artist named Jean Huber!

Spotted: St. Vincent and St. Louise!!

You can actually see what Bernini did to make his statues!

Gumby and Hercules

A real mummy!!!!!!!!!!!

Henri Matisse

Really, I'm very happy we went, because it's obviously something everyone who visits Rome needs to do. But man, you couldn't pay me to go back there anytime soon.

Our original plan was to climb the dome of St. Peter's after doing the museum, but we overheard someone say that the church was closed to the public for the day. We were actually quite relieved upon hearing this, as we were both very tired and sweaty and hungry by the end of our museum excursion.

We planned on having lunch at L'Archetto, one of the places that told us they only take meal tickets at lunch. However, they weren't open for lunch. (Italians). We ended up going to Good again (because it's just that good).

After another afternoon of homework and such, we decided to go to L'Isola della Pizza, a place that took our meal tickets when we had dinner there a little while back, for dinner. The food was great, and I had another yummy bellini just like last time, but they decided that they don't take tickets anymore, or at least they didn't tonight. It didn't matter so much to me, as I had used up all my tickets from this week two days ago, but Katie wanted to use hers. I really don't think there's any rhyme or reason to the meal ticket thing to be quite frank.

We have no plans as of yet for tomorrow, other than homework and mass in the evening, but hopefully we'll do at least one fun thing. I'm open to suggestions!