Rome Day 3

Day 3 in Rome was also the last full day of our trip, so we weren't able to do as much touristy stuff as we would have liked. We did spend an excruciatingly fun 1.5 hours in the Italian post office trying to ship some of our stuff back. Thus, the glaring omission in our day, which just means that we're going to have to go to Italy again. Next time, I think we'll start in Rome and work south.

For the touristy (i.e. fun) part of the day, we went to Vatican City. Here we are in St. Peter's Square.



Debbie in front of St. Peter's Basilica.



And me in front of the fountain.



Happily, there's no charge to get into the basilica. Of course, that means it gets pretty crowded, but what can you do? Here is the view of the interior from just inside the front entrance.



Michelangelo's Pieta is just to the right of the entrance (and behind bulletproof glass).



The Basilica is in the form of a cross. (Byzantine style, I think.) Here is a view of the cross, from near the altar.



Since we missed out on climbing the dome in Florence, I insisted on climbing up into the dome here. Some of the people reading this know how much I like a good stair climb, but Debbie insisted that we take the lift for the first part of the climb, reducing it from 550 stairs to a mere 320. The lift doesn't really take you all that far, as you can see from this picture, which is after the lift and before the stairs.



The first stage gets you up into the interior of the dome. They have a fence up, so I couldn't really get any good pictures below. Here I am, though.



The remaining 250 steps from there were about as much fun as you might expect. I didn't take any pictures on the inside. The view from the top was very nice, though. For example, the Sistine Chapel and Vatican Museums (in the background just behind Debbie).



And me, with a view to the east.



And that was it for the day. Both the post office and the Sistine Chapel have ridiculously limited hours, so we had to skip the Chapel. Next time we're in Rome...

Anyway, the remainder of the day was packing and shipping stuff. We flew back to London on RyanAir the following morning.