Friday was our last day of class.  A bittersweet day.  I am going to miss the view of the Vatican from my class window, the Pontificia was a truly beautiful place to study.  Today was mainly a free day because at 6:00 we had to meet up with our tour guide at the Vatican Museum and we couldn’t plan anything before that.  However, a bunch of us went back to St. Peters Basilica because our first trip there was a jog and we all wanted to experience it again and see more things.  Again, St. Peters Basilica is one of the most beautiful places I have ever been in.  The majesty of everything dwarfs you and it makes you feel so insignificant amongst all the grandeur.  It was also exciting to see the tombs of previous Popes under the Basilica, I discovered it my surprise and it was fascinating seeing a whole new area that I didn’t know about.  Some of the Popes buried there were from six hundred years ago.

At 6pm we all walked to the Vatican Museum where we ran into a few problems with paperwork and meeting times but it all worked out well.  The Vatican Museum was a piece of art.  It was not only filled with art but every wall, ceiling, floor, everything was beautiful artwork.  My favorite room was to room of Maps because every single thing on the wall was painted, there were no frames or anything and I didn’t even notice.  It was so incredibly detailed and beautiful that I didn’t even notice the paintings were on the walls themselves with no frames.  The painters were so talented that they made everything seem three dimensional.

However, that was almost nothing compared to seeing the Sistine Chapel.  The Sistine Chapel is something that almost everyone knows about and almost everyone has seen the painting of the Birth of Adam by Michelangelo in a textbook, but now I can say that I was there in person.  It was very humbling to be surrounded by the work of Michelangelo and see his personality and skill with three dimensional painting.  When I looked up at the ceiling, it didn’t seem to be a ceiling.  Everything was three dimensional like I was looking out a patio window.