Scott and Shirley's Blog: Rome

Today we had tickets for the Vatican. Our entry to St Peter's Basilica was timed for 9.30 am and the advice was to arrive 30 minutes before. So we had to get up pretty early and catch a tram about 7.40. This took us up to the River Tiber, and we walked along it to the Vatican.

We arrived pretty early and the square was quite quiet.

This is the balcony the Pope appears at. Though he's not even in Rome at the moment, he's visiting somewhere in Africa.

We could already see people had climbed to the top of the dome.

At our time slot we went into the basilica. Security at that time was pretty non-existent, nobody checked our tickets and although our bags went through an X-ray, nobody was watching most of the screens. Later when we came out it was different, and the queues had built up hugely.

As you might expect, the internals of the basilica are very elaborate.

We had to queue about 10 minutes to get into the crypt, where some popes are buried.

Next we climbed up to the top of the dome. The first part was a ramp/staircase up to the roof.

Then inside the dome you first went onto a balcony that looked down into the basilica.

The we climbed the dome itself. It was a long way up, and the staircase got narrower the higher we got. It was quite congested and a bit stop/start.

Eventually we emerged at the top. The views all around were amazing.

After spending some time there we went back down and emerged into the square again. The Swiss Guard were at one of the entrances.

Our next booking was the Vatican Museum at 11.30am. It's a 20 minute walk round the outside wall of the Vatican. We were a bit early and had to queue up.

Once inside we gradually discovered how huge it is. It would be impossible to take it all in in one day, apparently there are 7 km or corridors.

We did our best to do it justice, but it did feel you were being forced round a one way system like at Ikea, and there were loads of organised tours which caused it to be very congested at times.

One good bit was the map gallery, which was a couple of hundred metres long and had maps of different parts of the Roman Empire painted on the walls.

There are lots of amazingly decorated ceilings.

The last place we got to was the Sistine Chapel, with the ceiling and the Last Judgement painted by Michelangelo. Here you're not supposed to take photos, but I did take a couple of sneaky ones.

At last we got out to a courtyard, and it was actually quite a relief. We sat on a bench for a rest.

We'd actually only been round less than half the museum, but didn't have any enthusiasm to go in again, so we left the Vatican and went into the streets to find some lunch. We actually found a great place that did good street food. We got suppli and arancini, which are both different types of stuffed rice, and some pizza bianca - white pizza flavoured only with olive oil and salt. It was very good. With 2 large beers it only came to about 15 euros.

We decided to visit the Capuchin Crypt, so we caught the Metro to it. It's a type of monastery with many chapels filled with human bones in elaborate arrangements. It was quirky and very interesting.

After this we walked to Piazza Venezia and caught the tram home, visiting the supermarket on the way.

After resting for a while we went out for dinner at a local café, where we had slices of pizza cut traditionally with scissors and sold by weight. It was very good.

We took a walk up Janiculum Hill to see the sunset. It was a pleasant walk but the views of the sunset weren't the best we've seen.