Rome and Vatican City, Italy, August 6

Today is the earliest morning yet. We’re on the road by 7 for the 90 min drive to Rome from where the ship is docked in Citivecchia. Citivecchia is the port for Rome and the 90 min drive is necessary if coming by ship. We chose this tour because it focused on the Vatican. When we were here last summer we saw many of the sights, but didn’t have time for the Vatican. Visiting the Vatican means sleeves and a longer skirt for me and pants for Chris. They seemed to allow shorts, but it’s a good thing I wore sleeves.

It’s a bit a bizarre visiting a place I’ve seen countless times – I felt this way about the Eiffel Tower a few years back. We don’t have time to see the 9 miles (as we are told) of the Vatican museum (which I didn’t really know existed), but what we did see of it with a terrific guide was impressive of course. Besides the art on the walls each ceiling is stunning (pic).

The highlight of the tour of course was the Sistine Chapel. There is no furniture in the room except for benches around the outside of the room. Again this is something I’ve seen again and again and was a bit bizarre to be seeing in person. It was stunning. It was also very crowded. There is no talking and no photos allowed. Of course many people ignore rules and talk and take photos anyway. Security guards are constantly clapping their hands to stop the photos and shushing the talking. Then every so often a loudspeaker message comes on to remind everyone in many languages not to talk or take photos.

Next was St. Peter’s Basilica. This place is truly enormous – also very crowded. It is a bit difficult to appreciate the size of it until we see mass going on in a side chapel. We spend a bit of time outside in St. Peter’s Square and see the Swiss Guards (pic) very cool. The whole place is very crowded (in the outside pic you can see how many people there are), but entirely worth it.

After the Vatican portion was a bus tour of Rome and time on our own. We spend the time on our own at lunch, having a gelato (pic) and hanging at the Trevi Fountain (pic).

This was the last day of our cruise, so the evening was very low key. – packing and early to bed.

Today I saw (Chris didn’t as it was in the Ladies’ Room) a physical fight between our guide and another tourist (not from our group. Basically a whole group of women cut into the ENOURMOUS line and our guide told her she couldn’t. At the end of it all our guide ripped the woman’s shirt and the other woman hit our guide! WOW.