Vatican City

On Thursday our alarm went of at 7:00 AM, after I hadn't gotten to bed until 2AM. That made the 6th day in a row to get 5 hours sleep or less, which was really starting to have a significant effect. But despite my fatigue I was excited to see the cathedral, so we got up and got ready to go.

Breakfast at the Hotel was amazing, we had eggs and ham and rolls and all kinds of American goodness. It was definitely the best breakfast we've had yet.

We arrived at the Vatican City early in the morning, and I was really impressed. The Vatican City is very opulent, but very beautiful. Basically all we did this day was take in the cathedral, so I'll let the pictures do the talking.

After exploring the inside of the cathedral for a long time we went up to the top of the cupola. This was a much nicer walk than the climb up Florence Cathedral, with a few places to stop and rest. Again the view from the top was unreal. This moment, emerging over the city of Rome and getting to take it all in from this Cathedral cemented in my mind that Rome is my favorite city in Italy.

After this we started the walk down, which was more treacherous than the climb up because rather than being overwhelmingly challegning on your muscles it is challenging to not feel like you're about to trip and fall down 100 steps.

On the way down we stopped at some very normal European bathrooms, but since I happened to have my camera with me and there was nobody else in the bathroom, I figured this would be a good chance to demonstrate the sad state of things across the pond.

After visiting the cathedral we went across town to look at some more modern architecture. On the way we found some interesting things, such as a pyramid built by one of the Roman senators as his tomb.

We also found some interesting Roman fountains...

Unfortunately for me, however, this trip was kind of a drag because by the afternoon I was getting really exhausted and ill feeling. I left the modern architecture tour early and headed back to the hotel, where I crashed and went to sleep about 6 PM. I didn't wake up until about 8 AM the next day... which is where our story resumes.