Roma! part 2

On Saturday, January 3, we had booked a tour of the Vatican. Again, we were led by a Roman archaeologist, though a different one from the day before. We were very glad that we had booked the tour, because we were able to skip the ticket line, which went down the street and around the block, at least halfway around the outer wall of Vatican City. We toured the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, and St. Peter's Basilica. Pictures are allowed everywhere except the Sistine Chapel, though there were plenty of people disregarding that rule. Just about everything in the Vatican was beautiful, fascinating, and priceless.

Jeff and me inside the Vatican museum. You can barely see the dome of St. Peter's Basilica behind us.

One of the many ornate ceilings inside the Vatican museums.

One of the many ornate floors inside the Vatican museums.

The exterior of St. Peter's Basilica.

Inside St. Peter's Basilica.

Michelangelo's Pieta inside St. Peter's Basilica. Absolutely gorgeous!

The Sistine Chapel was amazing, too, but almost overwhelming. There is so much detail and so many things to look at, that it is hard to take it all in. We bought a book in the gift shop so that we could look at it at our leisure later, and also to have some pictures since we couldn't take any.

After the Vatican tour we made our way over to the Villa Borghese. We had reserved tickets to tour the Galleria Borghese that afternoon. For the Galleria Borghese, advance reservations are required. You get a 2 hour time slot to tour the galleries, and only 360 tickets are sold for each time slot, so it is never terribly crowded. If you like art, especially sculpture and paintings, I highly recommend this tour. The collection is amazing, and the gallery itself is almost as beautiful as the art it houses. No pictures allowed, though. You cannot even take a purse inside, all bags, purses, cell phones, and cameras have to be checked before entering. I could have wandered for the full 2 hours, but Jeff's neck was getting stiff from looking up, so we left after just over an hour.

The entrance to the Villa Borghese, where the Galleria Borghese is located. It is a huge, wooded estate in the middle of Rome with several museums and a zoo inside.

Exterior of the Galleria Borghese.

From here we wandered over to the Spanish steps and enjoyed a spectacular view of the sunset. The sunset itself was not spectacular, due to the cloudy weather, but the view of Rome was awesome.

View of the domes of Rome from the top of the Spanish steps.

View back up the Spanish steps. This was the most crowded area we encountered on our trip. There didn't seem to be anything special going on, there were just masses of people here.

After walking all day, we were completely exhausted, so we went back to the hotel for a little while, got a recommendation for a restaurant, had dinner and went back to crash. Our train left for home the next morning. It was an awesome trip. We saw a lot, but there is still plenty more to see on future trips, even in the places we went this time. I think we got a good overview for our first trip, and we can go back in the future and look at some things in more detail, as well as taking in some of the sights we skipped.