On the last day in Rome, we took a trip to the northwest part of Rome and went into Vatican City to see St. Peter's Basillica and the Vatican Museum. We hopped on a free tour of St Peter's and learned a bunch of cool stuff. On the top of St. Peter's all of the men on top of the Basillica are holding the weapons of their death, Jesus has a cross but one had a saw because he was sawed in half hot dog style, not a fun way to go I would imagine. It was pretty amazing to see inside the Basillica and walk around. The Popes buried inside St. Peter's were laid in there right after they died so the hands that you see decaying are their actual hands. The dimensions are hard to get a bearing on because everything is scaled larger the higher it is. We were told that no baseball could hit a ball from one end to the other end on the fly and I am pretty sure I could not hit a golf ball from one end to the end on the fly either. It's huge.
After going through St. Peter's, we took a tour of the Vatican Museum. That place is also huge and you need a guide or you will wonder around and have no idea at what you are looking at. We went on the tour with the guide that did the St. Peter's tour. If you want to go on tours in Rome or the Vatican, go with Roman Odyssey tours, by far the best tours we went on and they are Americans so you can understand what they are saying too. Anyway, the big draw at the Vatican is the Sistine Chapel and it doesn't disappoint. The Chapel is smaller than I had imagined but the ceiling was incredible and it is so much more than the ET moment that Adam is having. It really isn't Adam getting life either, he looks very much alive at the time, that scene is more like Adam receiving knowledge and it just one scene of a bunch on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. It was worth the price of admission. We also got to go down in the Vatican grotto and where Pope John Paul II is. We didn't get to see where Peter is, they obviously do not let tourists down underneath that far.
After the Vatican tours, I did my own little version of Angels and Demons and moved around the Vatican and found a bunch of the places in the book. Rome didn't let Ron Howard shoot in any of the churches for the film which just got down shooting this summer I believe so I am interesting in seeing how they handle that in the movie.
So that was Rome and the Vatican. The next stop was on to Florence.
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