One Short Day in the Vatican City

St. Peter's Square, as seen in Angels and Demons

Today we visited the Vatican. The amount and variety of Roman sculptures they "found" is simply amazing. And they commissioned some pretty nice artwork too. And in case you thought everyone was lying to you when they told you that the size of St. Peter's is inconceivable, I can tell you that we were there, I I'm still not quite sure what to compare it to.

That's the main dome, and the foreground object is the huge canopy looking thing they have for the Pope to make sure you know he's more important than you.

After the tour of the Vatican Museum we stopped at a nice pizzeria where Matt Recker made a new friend and got a convincing knockoff pair of Armani sunglasses.

Recker checking out one of his prospective sunglasses.

Afterwords a number of us braved the line to get into St. Peter's Basilica, my group managed to cut our wait in a line a bit.

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That German kid is probably wondering how we got ahead of him, and wishing he had paid attention during English class.

For those of you converting times in your head, it is a late night for us here. Today was super busy. After sightseeing all day we had a short concert at the Pantheon, you might have heard of it, and a longer one at the Roman Baptist Church, which you probably haven't. Like an unintelligent person I forgot my camera on the bus after our Supermanesque change on the bus from the Vatican to the Pantheon. So sadly the following are just a few pictures from the first half of the day.

A pine cone that used to be in front of the Colosseum, it symbolizes rebirth, like a pheonix.

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A picture of the Sistine Chapel I wasn't allowed to take.

A hallway full of incredibly detailed maps from the 15th Century.

PS Uploading these pictures is a super pain since our hotel has feeble WiFi.