The Papal Audience / Vatican Museum Day

Today we started the day by lining up to get into the Papal Audience at 9:00 AM. We were able to get really good seats near the white barricades. This allowed us to see the Pope up close as he drove by in the Pope-Mobile. It really was pretty cool.

Afterwards, we went and checked in to our VRBO apartment. We were pretty happy upon check-in. I was relieved, especially since it is always a bit disconcerting to rent a place over the internet and wonder if it even exists before getting there. We had only a little time to enjoy the apartment before heading off to get lunch before our 2:30 PM tour of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel.

And speaking of lunch, that was quite an ordeal. After walking past several places and finally choosing one, Alex ordered a sandwich. The guy came over and pointed toward a table so we told him we had 4 people and sat down. After sitting and waiting for at least 10 minutes without even being given a menu so the rest of us could order, we decided to leave in order to not be late to the Vatican Museum tour. While we were looking at the gelato right next to the sandwich shop, the sandwich owner came running out telling us (well, really yelling at us) something in Italian. Apparantly the sandwich guy had already made us 4 sandwiches. He must have thought we ordered 4 sandwiches when I said we had 4 people. He was pretty mad. And I was too, a bit. After all, if the Italians want to continue to enjoy American money they should at least learn a bit of English. And it was too bad, because the sandwiches would have been a lot better then the awful pizza we ended up eating at the grocery right across from the Vatican Museum entrance.

(Here's an aside - I really don't understand why the most impressive museum in the world also has the ugliest entrance in the world. This is it: )
The Vatican Museum tour started out promising, until the head sets that we all had starting getting radio interference from another tour guide. During our whole 2 hour tour, the head sets went in and out. Alex finally gave up and just looked around. The museum was very crowded - probably 3 or 4 times when we were there in November 2007. I cannot imagine being in Italy during July - the busiest month. The amount of stairs we had to go up and down was crazy too. But when the tour culminated in the Sistine Chapel, it was all worth it. Words cannot describe the feeling of being in the presence of the greatest work of Renaissance art and maybe all time.

After the tour we headed to dinner and then to bed.