A couple of weeks ago we were only able to get tickets to the Vatican Museum by booking a guided tour at 8 am this morning. So we set our alarm for 6:30, had breakfast when the breakfast room opened at 7 and caught a taxi to the Vatican Museum soon after that.
My two favorite things at the Vatican Museum are the Sistine Chapel and the map room. Our guide gave us an excellent introduction and description of the paintings in the Chapel. You can’t take pictures in the Sistine Chapel.
The Vatican grounds are a green oasis. As you can see today was overcast and cloudy. It was nice not to have the sun beating down on us but it was still quite hot and muggy.
The map gallery was painted in the 1580s. I like thinking of Popes walking through here and using these maps to understand their territory.
When we were done at the Vatican Museum we went to St Peter’s square. We had to wait in line about an hour to get into St Peter’s Basilica. The line seemed to move fast and it was well worth it. The church is incomprehensible huge and beautiful.
From the Vatican we took a cab back to our hotel retrieved our bags and then walked to the train station where we bought tickets and then took the high speed train to Naples. The train goes 300 km per hour (186 mph).
After checking in to our Hotel in Naples ( the Una hotel) we had a great time playing cards in the roof top bar.
*** Duke proofreads all my blog posts. Those of you who know Duke will not be surprised that he felt it is important for me to note that he won all three games of 500 that we played
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