24 September 2013 Tuesday – Vatican

I'm exhausted, so I won't be writing much. I do, however, have a lot of photos. I took 452 photos today. Kathy took 585. Karen took 269. That's 1306 photos for just one day!

Today we spent almost the whole day visiting the Vatican. We took a taxi to the Vatican museum. Kathy had purchased tickets for an early tour. After exchanging vouchers for tickets, and waiting in the appropriate lines, we met our tour guide and she took us on our tour. It was spectacular, and we took tons of photos. It was room after room of fabulous artwork.

After the museum, the tour took us through the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately, nobody is allowed to take photos of the Sistine Chapel.

After the Sistine Chapel, the tour dropped us off at St. Peter's Basilica, the most famous church in the world.

Unlike our trip in 1989, we were too tired to climb to the top of the dome and all that.

After the Vatican, we walked to another church, which was also fabulous. At one point, we saw a statue of St. Francis of Assisi. Skip's real name is Frank, but Frank is short for Francis, so he was named after the saint. So we took a photo of Skip imitating the statue.

At dinner, we saw an item on the menu, “Rocket Salad” and we asked about it. As it turns out, Rocket is a leafy vegetable like spinach, but it has a stronger, slightly more bitter taste. I liked it. Kathy didn't.

We've gotten into the habit of eating a small bowl of ice cream after dinner.

This day was just overwhelming: too much artwork, too many photos. At this point, I guess I'll go to bed and let the photos speak for themselves.