The Vatican

 We got up early as we had booked a tour for 8:15 of the Vatican musuems and the Sistine Chapel. The queues can be stupidly long and the museum is huge. The main benefit though of a tour is at the end you pop out in front of St Peter's Basilica and don't have to wait in line at all. Anyway, the tour started late, I think it was 9am before we actually started going in. Needless to say no one was happy about that. I assume our guide was on Italian time. It was already starting to get hot, even that early:

We were really disappointed with how we were rushed through the museum, and how much time was wasted talking about stuff we didn't care about. There are a number of really well known pieces of art inside we either didn't see or merely got a glimpse of. On the other hand, we looked and talked about a model of the Vatican City for like 10 minutes. We'll never book one of these big group tours again. This was our first one as in the past we've always either done our own thing or in the case of Ephesus we paid for a private guide (which was 10X better).

Anyway, the stuff we did see was interesting. The place is massive. Entire hallways of art and sculptures that belong to the papacy.

We ended up as the Sistine Chapel, which I got the impression was supposed to be the big highlight of the tour as we rushed to it and then spent about 15 minutes inside. I really wanted to see the Creation of Adam / Genesis on the ceiling. Tina wasn't impressed and didn't even realize we were inside of it at first because the room is so small. No one is allowed to take photos inside the chapel but I took a few sneaky ones that didn't really turn out.

We then shuffled through a corridor that again, NO PHOTO. This corridor stretched on forever.

After saying arrivederci to the tour guide we took the "magic door" entrance to St Peter's square and St Peter's Basilica (largest church in the world apparently.).

I was happy to see the main reason I came here, Michaelangelo's Pieta. Tina and the kids weren't impressed. It was behind glass for some reason.

The interior was big and sprawling. Pieter and I went into the area underground where many of the popes and others have tombs. There were also tombs in the main sanctuary.