Vaticano!

Brekky and then on the bus.

Look, the colisseum! (again)

Arrived at the Vatican.  There were 10s of thousands of people.  100s of hawkers and 10s of stores selling items of worship.  This is BIG business.

One of the hawkers approached us with a unique offer.  We could buy a special ticket that would allow us to 'skip the queue'.  The queue was estimated as a three hour wait!!

We immediately thought it was a scam but we weren't that committed to wait 3 hours.  We soon discovered our unique opportunity was not that unique.  We reduced the wait to about 45 minutes, picked up a guide and some Americans for our skip the queue group.

We entered via the Vatican Museum (could also be considered the Vatican treasures that they are prepared to show...  billions of dollars worth of art and artifacts.  Amazing!).  The people crush was phenomenal.  It was worse than any people crush I had experienced.  Scary Christian zealots fighting (almost literally) their way to the Sistine Chapel!  It is ironic that people should be rude and aggressive because they want to visit a 'holy place'.

We eventually surged our way to the Sistine Chapel.  Wow! Michelangelo was a fantastic artist on a large scale!  The story told by the art would have been more moving if not for people pushing, shoving and trying to sneak photograhs (yes, it is a 'no photographs' location and the attendants are frequently saying 'no photo').  One enterprising lass had her friends form a circle around her while she dropped to her knees and snapped a few pics with her iPhone. The attendants had no chance of seeing her or stopping her. 

After we escaped the crush we moved towards St Peter's Basilica.  Of course, there were places to buy holy objects/relics and gifts (mostly made by Confuscianists in China!).  These places were strategically located to create further traffic chaos. At least there was more room in Pete's Church.  In fact there was an incredible amount of room.  It was huge!  Apparently this is Church Numero Uno and it had all the gold, art, symbology, space... whatever!  St Pete is buried 140m below (according to Dan Brown).  After wandering around the grand space, we decided it was time to go back out with the ordinary folks.  The queue outside was still there (and this was some 3 hours after we first arrived).  The folks in the queue would probably make the front door about 5 minutes before closing.  Got to love that sort of faith!

Apparently, about 5,000,000 folks visit the Vatican annually.  'They' would cram in more if they could!  This is a multi-million dollar business. And yet, no help from the Vatican for the people of Nepal!  Just saying, you know...!!

We grabbed a bite to eat and decided to walk back to the hotel.  Great idea for the first 10 minutes and then it teemed down (I was always thought it was going to be thunderbolts and lightning if I went into a church... maybe I am not such a bad person!).  It rained for the entire walk back to the hotel.  There was an upside (see Karen's not the only optimist)... we got to see the Trevi Fountain working (sort of!).

Our last night in Rome.  A simple meal and a rest before the journey home and a return to normality.
Photos to follow - we have checked out and are sitting in the hotel's dining room. Just got some time to check out a couple more landmarks before we catch the train to the airport.