June 26th was our last day of class, so we had plenty of free time before our trip to the Vatican Museum later that night. We decided that we would like to go back to St. Peter’s Basilica to look at some of the embalmed bodies that were on display, and also to look at art. Bronwen and I took the stairs down to a lower floor and were surprised to see an ancient tomb where all the popes of the past were kept. We had no idea this existed, and we were pleased to see that some of the pillars that were kept on that floor were about 2,000 years old.

After seeing St. Peter’s Basilica a second time and thoroughly enjoying the trip, I decided to buy some t-shirts for people back home. I absolutely fell in love with the shirt I got for my sister, which happens to be Hello Kitty in front of the Colosseum with the caption “Roma”. I also enjoyed the other shirts.

At about 6:00, we met Jill outside the Vatican Museum, who introduced us to Maggie, a tour guide who worked for the Museum. This was one of the most beautiful places we’ve seen yet. And the biggest by the amount of rooms. It’s actually the 5th most visited art museum in the world, after the Louvre, the British Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Gallery. We saw so many different works of art, even Egyptian ones (remember, whatever the Roman Empire lacked, they stole from another civilization.) One of the most amusing galleries inside the museum was the Gallery of Candelabra, which was an array of nude statues with the male organs knocked off. In the mid-1800’s, one of the Popes didn’t like the statues, so he ordered the most offending parts knocked off. Some of them are still trying to be… *ahem* restored. We also saw the Sistine Chapel, and it was so three-dimensional. The reason that many of the figures depicted in the paintings didn’t have clothes was actually because Michelangelo wasn’t paid for his work on the Chapel and he wanted to tick off the Pope. Spoiler alert: the Pope didn’t mind.

We had dinner in the Museum, too, which was exciting. Having dinner in a fancy museum is probably the most sophisticated thing I’ve ever done. The food was okay, at most, but the experience was great!

We walked back through the museum a second time on our way out, so we had the pleasure of seeing the Sistine Chapel a second time.

Up next, we’re visiting the Pantheon and the Purgatory Museum

Until then,

Summer