Città del Vaticano

Zak's favorite exhibit

I do believe I should get a retrospective 'A'
in Humanities 101 now.  

How much do you think he spends
on that uniform?  The tassels are
cute, though.  

Outside St Peter's

We're lucky the iPods have really good batteries

First thing Monday morning Ben picked up our Roma passes to allow us to use all the public transportation in Rome.  We squished ourselves on the express bus to the Vatican city and managed not to lose anyone or any wallets on our little trip, despite Ben getting felt up a couple times.

It was a mistake to go to the Vatican City museum on a Monday.  Since so many other sites were closed, the line to get in was loooooong.  From the moment you get in line there are people trying to sell you a tour--so you get to skip the line (so temping. . . .too bad we couldn't afford what they were asking).  I don't know how many times I kicked myself for not remembering to reserve our tickets online, but it was a lot and I had plenty of time to feel stupid for not doing it.  It also seems strange that the Vatican is located in its own country, but not as weird as the uniforms are for the swiss guards who man the borders.  Once we had wended our way through the horrendous line the guards at the x-ray machines let us and our 'bambino' go to the head of the security line.  And, then the ticket guy told us Isaac didn't need to pay, yay for Italians loving big families!  We shuffled our way to the cafeteria, around all the exhibits (to which the kids were in large part completely indifferent) and then into the Sistine Chapel.  We listened to our downloaded Rick Steve's tour and followed his advice to get from the Sistine chapel into St Paul's without waiting another few hours in the security line there, so at least we did that one part of our day exactly right!