Pope's Home

This view of the famous Sistine Chapel came at the end of our trip through the Vatican Museum. Somethings you may not know about the Chapel are:

- Michelangelo created this fresco reluctantly, his prefered medium was sculpting
- The ceiling is one smooth surface the marbel and beams you see are not real, they were painted into the fresco to give the illusion of dimension.
- Later when Michelangelo was 60 years old, he also created the fresco on the end wall (can be seen on Flickr) depicting the final judgement.

We only waited about an hour to enter the Vatican Museum and 30 minutes to enter the Basilica, both short waits considering the throngs of people in Rome for Pasqua (Easter). The closed the Basilica early, not long after we entered which allowed us to watch them set up
for Eater services without a crowd pushing us along. We noticed a boy in jeans and a hoodie, standing, STANDING on the ALTER of the Most important church in Catholicism! He seemed to be "helping", but all we saw was texting.

We finished our day earlier than planned and to avoid the crowd ended up back at our apartment eating left overs with plans to play peanut and people watch at the coloseo later.

The Grand Italian Plan

I'm moving next weekend, so it's hard to focus on travel, but I know the next trip will be here before I know it. Mom's been good about handling the research so far so there isn't a whole lot left.

The plan is to leave on Thursday, April 2 through JFK, arriving around 11am on Friday in Venice, Italy. We already have reservations in Venice at Hotel Caprera which Mom is really excited about. We'll be in Venice for Palm Sunday which could be cool.

We'll stay in Venice for 4 nights and check out on the 7th at which point we will go back to the airport and....nope, not a flight, we'll pick up a car.

We plan to drive South toward Bologna and spend one night in that region, then we'll continue South to Florence where we'll spend another night. On the final day we'll work our way South to Rome, maybe stopping in Montepulciano and/or Orvieto. Then we'll drop the car at the airport in Rome.

But, still no flight, we'll take the train into town. We'll stay at Boschetto B&B for 5 nights. It's right near the Cavour stop on the blue line of the Metro. This puts us in Rome for Good Friday and Easter - we're thinking that Easter near Vatican city could prove to be cool.

Then it's homeward bound, finally.

Check back for updates to see how this whole thing goes :) I'm particuarly eager to see how the whole driving in Italy part works out....

PS - Check out the map here.

Il Pietá

Michelangelo's sculpture. He did this when he was about 25 years old. It's spectacular. It is just inside the main entrance to St. Peter's Basillica.

Sistine Chapel

I hijacked this with my phone. There are no photos allowed which is dumb since as long as no flash is used it won't harm the art.

Every time I see this I get goose bumps it is just SO beautiful.