Meeting St Peter

We just returned from visiting the Vatican. We went on a bus ride (route 23) there and back. In general, driving in Rome is insane. Wherever you want is a lane. Scooters make up at least 1/4 of the traffic and they zip through the cars and busses to get to the front of the traffic waiting for a light to change. Then they try to zoom off before the cars though often can't. To cross a street as a pedestrian, you walk into the intersection with purpose and hope the cars will stop or go around you. If you don't, they'll just keep driving and you'll never get across. No hesitation allowed.

St. Peter’s Basilica, huge, enormous huge. Inside the central dome you can place the Statue of Liberty with it's base. That's really big. In fact, they want you to know just how big because they have bronze markers on the floor showing the relative sizes of other churches. That's a serious ego booster.

Before I left on this vacation, a friend asked for a snow globe from the Vatican. I'm reasonably sure that he was asking just to send me on a wild goose chase through the Vatican looking for a gift shop that has a snow globe. Won't he be surprised to see that I was able to find one! Ha!

I met my namesake, St. Peter. Well I didn't actually meet him, just saw his statue as well as his tomb. His tomb is seriously ornate. I'd prefer mine to be a bit simpler.

The Vatican museum is home of generations on generations of captured loot, statues, paintings and other fantastic works of art. Along with lots of amazing works of art that were commissioned by the church. It's a seriously impressive collection of art works.

In an inner courtyard, there a huge rotating globe. I'm not sure what it's for but it did remind me a bit of Sauron's eye from The Lord of the Rings.

The Sistine Chapel, home of Michelangelo's ceiling was crowded when we got there. This is the off season and I cannot imagine how crowded it would be at the height of tourist season. I sat for a while looking at the paintings, at the ceiling. Every time I would look at another area, I'd see more. This is a place where you can get completely lost while sitting still. Pretty amazing.

There's a double spiral staircase at the exit of Vatican Museum. It's a beautiful, amazing, double helix staircase. The ramps are around 5' wide with a cast bronze side and railings. At the top, the ramps are around 25' apart and with a decreasing radius, they're around 15' apart at the bottom. It's simply stunning.