Rome to Cinque Terre

Here is another retro post, since I am finally able to get my laptop online again and at this point I am way behind with the updates. So here goes. When we last saw our heros, they were headed to bed after their first day in Rome.

The next morning, we woke up and headed over to Vatican City. Our first destination there was the Vatican Museum which is a HUGE place absolutely packed with all kinds of art. I mean seriously, the vatican has a lot of art. The line to get in was almost as long as the museum is large (see part of it in the picture to the right,) but thankfully it moved along pretty quickly. The wait also allowed me to get my first (but not nearly last) taste of the Italian ice-cream-like frozen treat, gellato.

Inside the museum we saw works of sculpture and painting from all over the world, including some pretty famous stuff. Below you can see part of Michelangelo's work on the ceiling of the Sistene Chapel (yes, the entire chapel is inside the Vatican Museum.) It was interesting because that one part that you always see is actually a relatively small section of the ceiling as a whole. I really don't know why that one small panel is the only part people ever see.


After checking out the vatican museum, we hiked halfway around Vatican City in the wrong direction (the whole thing is surrounded by a big wall so you can't see in) and then back around to St. Peter's Square. That is where you see us in the picture at the right. The large cathedral you see behind us there is St. Peter's Basilica, the largest such structure in the world. Supposedly there are lines on the floor inside there to show where each of the next few largest cathedrals would fit if you put them inside it. We didn't see any lines.

After the Vatican it was time to move on to our next destination, so we headed back to the train station and picked up our bags to leave. As Kevin was in a shop buying a gift for a friend, I noticed the clerk looked kinda like Mo Rocca. I snapped a quick, blurry pic of him in bad lighting so you could try to judge for yourself.

From there we hopped on a train to our next stop, Cinque Terra. By the time we got there it was pretty late and we were beat. We checked out one of the towns (for those who didn't click the link above, Cinque Terra means "five towns") and then grabbed a local train to our hostel campground to hit the sack in our own private tent. I was apparently too tired to take any pictures at that point, so pretend the shots below were taken at night.