Vatican, Sistine Chapel, St.Peter’s Dome, Vittoriano, Rome Temple, Pompeii, Positano, Colosseum, Castel Sant’ Angelo, Italy Days 8,9,10,11

The next morning, day 8, we got up early and headed over to spend the day at Vatican City.  We first wanted to see the museums and the Sistine Chapel. We already had a ticket so we got in the line for security so we could get in as soon as it opened.  

I had read and one of Aaron’s friends told him that you should skip all the museums and make the really long walk through evyerthing to get to the Sistine Chapel first.  That way you can have the whole place to yourself for a bit before the rest of the tourists show up.  Then afterward you go back to the beginning of the museum and THEN look at everything.  So that is what we did.  It felt wrong walking by everything, but I knew we would get a chance to see it eventually.  The walk to the Sistine Chapel is a good 15 minutes and that is walking at a brisk pace.  Here’s the almost empty long museum rooms as we quickly walked through them:

It was amazing because we were the only people inside the Sistine Chapel besides the security people for a good 20 minutes. It was amazing!!  The Sistine Chapel was painted between 1508 and 1512 by the artist Michelangelo. They don’t allow photography inside the Sistine Chapel, but it was beautiful!  After our entire visit I did buy this postcard of the Sistine Chapel ceiling:

Here’s the most recognizable part of the artwork on the ceiling painted by Michelangelo entitled The Creation of Adam:

I mailed the postcard to our house so I could get it stamped with the Vatican postmark.  It took over 2 and a half weeks to finally make it to our house--haha!  Here’s the postmark on the stamp when it got delivered to our house:

After spending a very quiet 30 minutes at the Sistine Chapel we left and came back around to the very beginning of the museum.  We did walk by this sculpture called The Sphere within the Sphere:

This courtyard was known as the Pinecone Courtyard and from this sculpture you can probably see why:

When we got back to the beginning there were people EVERYWHERE!!  I am glad we have a few quiet moments in the Sistine Chapel before we were mobbed with tons of people!!

The museum was very interesting.  They even had a few Egyptian Mummies on display:

They had a Rodin ’The Thinker’ sculpture.  This was cool to see since Aaron and I got to see the full scale one when we went to Paris a few years ago.

At the exit of the museum the ceiling was pretty cool:

As was the staircase to get outside the building:

After we left the museum we stopped by for some Suppli.  It is an Italian street food made with rice, marinara sauce which is then formed into a ball.  You then put a chunk of mozzarella cheese in the middle of it and then coat it with an egg wash and bread crumbs then fry it.  It was really good.

We then walked over to see St. Peter’s Basilica.  

This is where St. Peter one of the twelve apostles of Jesus is supposedly buried.  It is also one of the largest churches in the world.  It is also where the Pope presides.  Construction started in 1506 and finished in 1626.

It can accommodate 20,000 people inside.  It is HUGE.  It is also ornate.

This large wooden canopy, St. Petere’s Baldachin, sits right in the middle of the basilica over the top of St. Peter’s tomb.  

The baldachin sits right under the dome:

This was St. Peter’s Chair:

After walking around and admiring the basilica we took the opportunity to walk through another set of Holy Doors since they are only opened every 25 years for Jubilee for Catholic pilgrims to pass through.  It supposedly symbolizes the spiritual journey from sin to grace.  Crossing these doors offers an opportunity through faith for renewal and forgiveness.

We got to cross through with a TON of other people.  

On the other side was the famous La Pieta sculpture done by Michelangelo. It is of Mary holding Jesus’ body after he was crucified:

The pictures don’t do the basilica justice.  It really was quite large!!  The ceilings were even ornate:

At this point we had walked so much so far in the day.  Our feet were so sore, but there were no places to sit unless you were participating in some type of service.  However, we came by a little niche that held the altar of St. Jerome.  There were a few benches out in front of his altar.  We wanted to sit for a minute so we decided to pay our respects to St. Jerome....It was nice to sit for a few minutes to give our sore feet a break before we continued on checking everything out.  Thanks St. Jerome--haha!

We then went to check out the Treasury.  It had some interesting artifacts to see, but was small and super crowded.  We didn’t spend too much time there.  Lucky enough we were able to get some tickets a few days prior to hike to the top of the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica.  We started climbing up the 551 stairs.  Let me just say there are stairs EVERYWHERE in Europe!!  It actually wasn’t too bad of a climb.  

There was a nice break in the middle where you could get outside to see some of the view and sit down to catch your breath:

We then continued on and got to the inner part of the dome.  It was amazing to see all the mosaic artwork up close:

Here’s a view of the mosaic tiles from the floor of the cathedral.  You can see how high up the inner dome is:

It was awesome to walk around the inner dome:

Here’s the view looking down into the basilica from the inner dome. The black dots on the ground to the right of the picture are people. The dome is pretty high up!

After walking around the inner dome we headed the rest of the way up to get to the upper outside part of the dome.  This is where things started getting super narrow and tilted.  Aaron got a bit claustrophobic.  I am standing straight taking the picture of Aaron, but you can see how curved and narrow the passageway is:

The last part of the climb is up this super narrow spiral staircase.  It is so steep and curved they have a rope to hold to help steady yourself as you climb.

Here goes nothing:

The outside view at the top was amazing.  Here’s St. Peter’s Square you can see from the top of the dome.

We are trying to catch our breath.  We actually climbed all the stairs pretty quickly.

The 360 degree views were amazing!

We were happened to be at the right time when someone got off one of the only benches at the top so we could sit down.

After admiring the view it was time to make our way back down.  Luckily the way down is separate from the way up, but it is still pretty darn narrow.  Here’s the metal spiral staircase to start your descent:

It was a TIGHT fit!!

Coming down there were quite a few spiral staircases.  Here’s how it was climbing down them:

Made it to the bottom.  Here’s where we were just a few minutes before on the inner part of the dome:

Walking through St. Peter’s Square:

We did stop by to grab a quick bite of Suppli.  While we waited for it to be cooked we had a very friendly bird try to join us. Aaron was not amused.  He HATES birds and the fact that it got so close to his knee was making him very uncomfortable--haha!

Suppli is yummy!!

We then decided to walk over to the Vittoriano to check it out.  There were so MANY STAIRS to get to the top.  Our legs were dying!

The views from the top were cool!  You could see Castel Sant' Angelo and the Colosseum.

Next we went to check out the cathedral next door--The Basilica of Santa Maria in Aracoeli. There were so many stairs to get up to there as well.  Ugh!! This was the church that our guide told us about on our nighttime golf cart tour so we had to check it out.  Although the outside was quite plain, the inside was pretty.

After that we walked over to the Piazza Campidoglio.  The main part of the plaza was under construction, though. DOH!!

Walking around the area we found this cool overlook of Capitoline Hill.

That was quite a packed day!!

The next morning we had the awesome opportunity to go out to see the Rome Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.  We took an Uber ride to get out there since it is about 30 minutes outside the city.  The grounds around the temple were beautiful!!

Here’s the temple:

Aaron didn’t have room to pack his church clothes for this trip, but no one even batted an eye when we walked in with jeans and sneakers on.  Here’s the Visitor Center:

We were able to go inside and do an Endowment Session.  We took advantage of the headphones so we could listen to the session in English. It was pretty cool!

It was interesting because half of the temple workers could speak English.  The other half were Italian.  It was an interesting experience to do a session in a different language.

After that we went to check out the inside of the Visitor’s Center.  The mural above the Christus statue was beautiful!

It was awesome to see it all:

They had a mini model of the inside of the temple you could check out:

There was a stained glass wall that had stories of Jesus’ life all throughout it.  

The Visitor Center sister missionaries got to take us on a tour.  They told us about the temple and the grounds.  One interesting thing is they have some olive trees on the grounds.  They use the olives from these trees to make olive oil for the Initiatory ceremony inside the temple which was pretty cool.

We got to visit with the Sister missionaries for a bit.  I took their pictures and texted them to their moms just to let the moms know they were doing okay.  Then it was time to leave.  We took the Uber back to our hotel so we could change and get some warmer clothes on.  It was starting to rain.

After we got dressed we headed out to grab some food.  Here’s some Carbonara and Amatriciana:

We then walked over to check out Castel Sant' Angelo.  It was raining pretty hard at this point.  

This place was originally built as the tomb for Hadrian around 123-139 AD, but has been added to throughout history as a fortress, castle, and prison but it is now a museum.  We got in and started up the stairs to check it out.  It was raining pretty hard, but the views were awesome.

It was cool to see the catapult and different household items to show how people lived back then:

The walls were THICK since it was used as a fortress.

There was even a trap door inside the entrance to stop anyone who was unwanted from getting inside very far.

It was fun to see everything.  There was a lot to see there, but I didn’t take very many pictures for some reason. 

The next morning we got up bright and early.  We had signed up to do a day tour of Pompeii and the Amalfi Coast. Since those things are far away we had to get started EARLY!!  We met our tour group at the Popolo Plaza at 6:30 am.

We started the 3 hour drive out to Pompeii.  As we started getting closer to Pompeii we got to see Mount Vesuvius:

Pompeii was a lot bigger than I thought!!  We had a separate tour guide while we were at Pompeii.  We started at the entrance and worked our way around.  However, our guide was an interesting guy....He took us over to the Red Light District remains of Pompeii.  He then spent over an hour of our two hour tour going in to a lot of detail about the Red Light District of Pompeii.  Hmm...I didn’t need to know that much about that, but we couldn’t leave since we were a big group and I was afraid we would get lost so we just had to listen and see so many things about the Red Light District. We kept thinking he would move on to something else, but he seemed to really like talking about that....Kinda weird, but whatever. Thank goodness he did give about 20 minutes to explore the area on our own before we had to head back to the bus.  Here’s some things we saw that were NOT the Red Light District--haha!

These were the actual original streets/stones  that were used for the roads in Pompeii.  They even had old wagon marks carved into them you could still see.

Here’s another view of Mount Vesuvius.  Had we been here in the summer we could have gone out to see the mountain itself, but it closes for the winter so we just had to settle for far away pictures of it.

On our way out we did walk by the plaster casts of the voids made by the decomposed bodies of those that perished when Mount Vesuvius erupted:

Next we got on the bus and left Pompeii and headed out to see the Amalfi Coast.  We were going to stop in the City of Positano.  As we got closer the big tour bus couldn’t fit on the road and make the tight turns.  Before we got to the city we had to get off the bus and get on to some vans to get closer into the city.  The vans dropped us off at the top of the city and told us we had 90 minutes to explore the area.  Positano is a a city built into the mountain side.  I loved seeing all the brightly colored homes.  As soon as we were dropped of I wanted to head down to the beach.

It was such a beautiful view!!

Here’s a picture just to show how tight the turns are in the road of this town:

After going down a million stairs we got to the beach.  This area is really known for their lemons.  We decided to try out a local delicacy. It is lemon sorbet inside a lemon.  It was really frozen so it had to defrost a bit before we could eat it.  When we did finally get to eat it, it was delicious!

I loved waking around the beach.

Watching the waves Aaron said I should go and put my hand in the water just to say I have touched the Mediterranean ocean.  I readily agreed and walked out to touch the water. 

That was when I misjudged the waves and ended up getting caught in a rogue wave that drenched me from the knees down.  DOH!!  So can I now say I have been swimming in the Mediterranean ocean--haha!?!

It was a beautiful day and was such a beautiful place!  I wish we could have spent some more time here.

After not very long we needed to head back to the pick up point which was all the way back up to the top of the city.  We started up the stairs.  However, we ended up going up the wrong set of stairs.  The stairs we went up brought us up to the other side of the city.  At this point we had to back track to try and make our way over to the pick up point.  We were running out of time and were afraid we might get left behind.  That is one of Aaron’s worst fears is to get left behind so this was getting pretty stressful for him.  It was hard because we had to really run up the stairs and they were SO STEEP!!  Thankfully, after much panic and jelly legs from going up so many stairs quickly we did make it back to the pick up point as they started picking people up.  We were so out of breath and sweaty, but we made it. Phew!!  Positano was a beautiful place, but if there is a next time, I think we might not go to the beach again--haha!  Here we are right before we got on the van to transport us back to the bus.  We are so out of breath and sweaty from all the stairs, but we made it!!

The bus ride back too us four hours so we didn’t get back to our hotel until 9 pm that evening.  It was a very long 14 hour day to go from Rome to Pompeii and Positano and back to Rome, but it was a good trip.

The next morning we got up bright and early and walked down to the Colosseum.  On the way we passed by the Spanish Steps:  

And the Trevi Fountain:

We first had a tour of Capitoline and Palatine Hill.  This was the political and religious center of Ancient Rome.  It was the location for many important temples dedicated to the Roman gods. Our guide took us all around and pointed out a lot of really interesting things. Here’s the Roman Forum:

There were orange trees planted all throughout. The oranges are bitter so the trees were only planted because the flowers are so fragrant and smell so good.

It was great to listen all about Palatine and Capitoline Hill.

After touring Capitoline Hill we got to start the second part of our tour which was what I was most excited about.  We were able to get some tickets to tour the Underground part of the Colosseum. We walked over and had to show our passports and pass through security and a metal detector.  Then we got in our line.  It is so hard to get Underground tickets and the fact we got them was amazing!!!  I was excited.

Our guide took us down to the underground level and started the tour.  She told us all about what gladiator life was like.  Here’s some of the armor they wore:

They gladiators not only fought each other, sometimes they fought wild animals, too.  Here’s some ancient graffiti showing a fight with some kind of animal.  

Here’s some of the tunnels/walkways under the Colosseum.  This area was where the slaves would work and it was hot and had terrible working conditions. Sometimes they even flooded the floor so they could have ship battles too.  It was a cool tour!

The tunnels used to extend further, but have since disappeared with time.

Here’s some more pictures of the underworking of the Colosseum:

We slowly worked our way to the next level.  It was a very interesting tour.

A lot of the stuff is original which is amazing and shows how ingenuitive the Romans were.

We made it up to the ground level towards the end of our tour.  It was an amazing tour because it was a very small group that we were with so we weren’t crowded.

Here’s a very short video of what everything looked like:

These bleachers were where the fancy and important people sat.  They used to all be marble, but the marble was eventually repurposed for the churches around Rome

As the tour finished the guide led us to the gate exit. She then got into a in-depth conversation with some of the people from our group.  She was distracted so we decided to join the general visitors and go see the Colosseum from the very top instead of leave. That was pretty cool, too, but there were so MANY people it was hard to get around.

I really liked visiting the Colosseum.

After Palatine Hill and the Colosseum we then walked over to visit San Clemente church. This church looked very interesting to me.  It is also known as the lasagna church.  The site was once a Roman mansion back in the 1st AD. In the 3rd century a temple was dedicated to Mithras over the top of the mansion.  In 313 AD after Christianity became the primary religion a church was built on top of the Mithras temple.  In the 4th century the church was fully transformed into a basilica.  In 1084 the church was damaged in an attack on Rome.  In the 12 century a new church was built on the site and dedicated to Pope Clemente.  It is really cool because you can see all the different levels and go through each time period as you descend down the stairs.

After seeing all that we started to head back up through Rome to get to our hotel.  Earlier in our trip we had to have a restroom break, so we stopped into McDonalds and saw they had some ancient mosaics that were pretty cool.   We stopped by to really look at them for a few minutes.

We then walked by the Trevi Fountain because it was on the way back to our hotel and it is a cool place.

We walked up the Spanish Steps again.  So many stairs......

We grabbed some gelato by our hotel.  

After so much walking and so many stairs getting up out of our seats was a hard thing to do.  

We got to visit with Daniel for a bit since it was his P-day.

We then headed out to grab some dinner.  We wanted to have a really good last dinner before we left.  I had carbonara:

We also shared a dessert. 

We then headed to our hotel for the night so we could start packing to come back home early the next morning.  We took an Uber to the train station early the next morning.  Then we rode the train out to the airport.  Here’s my Italy stamp in my passport from the beginning of our trip.

Next we settled in for our 10 hour flight to JFK.  We had such an amazing trip it was hard to leave.

We had a 4 hour layover at JFK before we boarded our next 5 hour flight to Salt Lake.  We did gamble with this leg of our trip, though. I picked a window seat and Aaron picked an aisle seat.  We were hoping the plane wouldn’t be full and that someone would not want a middle seat.  Luckily we won.  No one sat between us so we got to have red neck first class--wahoo.  We were still in economy, but had a whole row to ourselves.  Wahoo!

That was a really long travel day.  We didn’t make it to our house until 11:30 pm. Poor Aaron had to go to work early the next morning.  I didn’t have work until later that day, but it was hard to try and get back into the swing of things.  It was an amazing trip and I am so glad we got the chance to go.  Here’s to 25 years of marriage--almost.  Our real anniversary isn’t until June, but don’t tell anybody--haha!