Vatican City – Now most of you realise I am not very religious but being in Rome it would be very easy to turn into a religious fanatic. There is so much biblical history here and of course many tourists are huge fanatics and hence the immense pull the Vatican City has. It is actually the world’s tiniest independent state in the world – The Vatican has been the residence of the Pope’s since 1377.Technically it is not Rome so wasn’t free and certainly not cheap! Someone has to pay for all the gold in these churches!
It was a hot day and as we neared the Vatican we were offered many times tours in English, finally we relented as we saw the queue to get in – being in a tour you get in pretty much straight away and the only wait is for the headsets for the audioguides.
Off we went round to the Vatican Museums with Eva our very petite guide. I am so pleased we took a tour as nothing is named or labelled and she of course gave us all the background information and taught us about why certain art is important. Again the children loved being with the guide. However the Vatican Museums are huge – 7 miles of galleries!
Of course St Peter’s Basilica, the greatest church in Christendom rises on the grandiose St Peter’s Square and you will also find Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel here.
You couldn’t help but be impressed, the luxuriousness of everything and magnificence abounds.
At every turn more famous art and biblical references to what happened here, for example we saw the Tomb of St Peter which in the past 30 years has been positively identified as his. Not sure how they did this!
The Sistine Chapel was a huge highlight for all of us – I don’t have enough adjectives to describe this remarkable work. Awesome! I snuck a little video of the chapel (highly forbidden but confessed my sin later) I couldn’t resist.
After our tour we continued to look around and Nev and Hermione decided to climb the cupola (the dome) of St Peter’s
whereas Seph and I decided to go visit the ‘caves’ underneath and see all the crypts. We stopped for a moment or 2 at Pope John Paul the seconds tomb, many people were there praying and weeping. We also got to see the infamous tomb of St Peter under here – the altar and dome of the church are right above his tomb. 
As we came out of the Caves we saw the Swiss guards that protect the Pope, they look awfully clown like in their uniform. However they are all young men, 24-29 and they cannot marry or have a family. They are forbidden to tell their wider family about their job and they must, I think be celibate. I did manage to persuade them to pose for a picture with Seph! She was stoked!
We spent all day here as it is so vast – we walked past the Hard Rock Café on the way home and pit stopped for food!
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