Vatican Museum

The morning we set out for the Vatican Museum I already knew I was sick, but thanks to getting about 14 hours of sleep I felt a little better than I had before. So we headed off to the musuem, the main attraction of which is the Sistine Chapel.

Much to our surprise the line to get into the musuem was about a quarter mile long. This is the off season, and it was pretty cold outside so I expect that we probably were seeing the line about as short as it ever gets. We waited outside for about an hour then finally headed into the museum.

The Vatican Musuem was a very cool modern building

So the museum itself was actually a pretty awesome building, one of the neater ones we've seen. It took us about 2 hours to wind our ways through, the whole time passing thousands of amazing works of art.

Hallways like this stretched on for kilometers


There were so many famous works of art, it was kind of overwhelming

So when we finally did emerge into the Sistine Chapel I have to say I was pretty disappointed. Really we've seen so many cathedrals and so many amazing paintings that this room hardly felt special at all. Further detracting from the experience was the swarming crowd.

For anyone who had been dreaming of going to the Sistine Chapel I have to say, its worth it if you're extraordinarily curious, and seeing the pictures at their full size is pretty impressive, but they're so far away you can't see them any better than if they were on a postcard. If you're not dying of curiosity just grab a poster or something and admire the quality of the painting withot spending 12 euro and standing in 3 hours of lines and smelly crowds.

Oh, and of course there were no photos allowed in the chapel.

After seeing the musuem I went with Natalie, Marcus, and Laruen Cathcart to the Catacombs. This was much more impressive than the Sistine Chapel.

The Appian Way, one of the most famous roads in the world! I was so excited to see it.

Part of the Ancient Appian Way, this was the road that lead to the catacombs

Again there are no pictures allowed, so I can only describe it, but this is something you should definitely make time to visit if you get the chance. The tunnels go on for what seems like an infinite space, and apparently over 160,000 early christians were buried there. Plus this only costs 5 euro.

So that evening we headed out to Sorrento, which is a small town on the Amalfi Coast south of Napoli. It took about 3 hours to get there, and then we went to get Pizza and went to bed so we could be up and at Pompeii early the next morning. Which brings us to the Pompeii post...