Ambitious day. Our itinerary was to go to St. Peter's and the Grottos in the morning, and see The Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel in the afternoon. Went to the meeting point for the St Peter's tour, Borgo Vittorio 38, only one block from our hotel at 8:30, where we picked up our tickets.

We were separated into language groups. Waited for our English guide to show up. Finally we were ready to go to the Vatican and our tour guide took off. It was only a one block walk, but we lost her in the crowd before we reached the Vatican. There was a French group whose guide we recognized from seeing her at the meeting point. Told her we lost our guide and she invited us to follow her. She, of course spoke French, but once in a while she would explain to us in English.

When I bought the ticket, it said that the tour would not cut the line, and we might have as much as a 2 hour lineup. Our sneaky French tour guide walked beside the line and blended us in about 1/4 of the way from the front of the line. After a short time in the lineup we went through a security check.

I was really nervous going through security, because I though I would set something off with a name like Tihamer Laszlo Toth.  In 1972 a mentally disturbed Australian, Laszlo Toth, (No relation), took a hammer to Michelangelo's Pietà and damaged it..

I somehow fooled their system, didn't have to have a confrontation with the Swiss Guards, and we entered St. Peter's Basilica.

To the right of the entrance to St. Peter's is the Pieta, now behind a wall of glass because of my idiot namesake.

 Absolutely beautiful. I don't understand how anyone would try to damage this magnificent work of art.

As you can see in the above picture there were Angels everywhere.

And Saints!

We walked around St. Peter's, took hundreds of pictures, and then the guide took us to the Papal Grottoes under the Basilica. 91 Popes are buried here.

After the tour of St. Peter's and Grottoes we went for lunch in a restaurant close to our hotel.

There was a good looking couple looking at us, a couple of tables over, so I snapped a picture of them.

After lunch we started walking to, Viale Vaticano 100, the meeting place, for the second tour of the day, The Vatican Museum, Sistine Chapel, Basilica or Raphael Rooms.

As we were walking we passed thousands of people lining up for tickets. The line up wrapped half way around the museum. I was proud of myself for having the foresight to buy tickets online to avoid this.

We arrived about 20 minutes early, so our guide was not there yet. Met a young Hungarian family, standing at the top of the stairs we were supposed to wait at, who were booked for the same tour, and a little while later another Hungarian family came and they were also booked. They didn't seem to know each other either.  I was amazed at how many Hungarians we ran into, touring Rome.

Our tour guide finally arrived and people started to present their tickets to him for verification. I presented our tickets and he said the tickets had been cancelled.

I couldn't believe it. I had cancelled the original ticket we had for the morning tour because we couldn't book St. Peter's for the afternoon. But then I bought tickets for the afternoon tour. There was no way we could line up, in that horrendously long line, and make it into the Museum before it closed.

The tour guide said we could try the shop selling IOBUS tickets a few doors down. They might have a few tickets left. As you can see in the picture we were in a panic.

They did have 2 tickets left at 45EU each. I quickly scooped them up. They gave me a receipt and told us to go to another shop about 4 doors down to pick up the tickets. A young girl in the shop gave me the tickets and told us to wait outside the store, she would take us over to the museum.

As you can see, that put a smile on our faces. A few minutes later she came and took us past the long lineup, through a guarded door, right into the museum.

Thousands upon thousands of beautiful statues.

Hundreds of tapestries.

A guard noticed that Rita was in distress and very tired. So he asked if she wanted to sit in a chair in a roped off area. She sat for a few minutes to recover, and then we were off again.

Thousands of famous paintings.

We were overdosed with art by this time, and the same guard who had offered Rita the chair, asked if we wanted to go through a shortcut to the Sistine Chapel. We said yes. He said he would talk to his supervisor to see if we could. A few second later he was back and took us through a roped off door.

Finally made it to the Sistine Chapel. As we entered, I quickly took a picture of the ceiling, with the famous painting "The Creation of Adam". I had read that photography was not allowed in the Sistine Chapel so I thought (being the criminal that I am) I would take a quick picture before the guards came down on me. Sure enough as soon as I pressed the button, there was guard there waiving his finger at me and telling me to put the camera away. Here is the illegal photo.

As you can see, I'm not a very good criminal. My hand must have been shaking as I was committing the crime.

Anyways, I was disappointed by Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam". I had always imagined it to be an enormous painting covering most of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling. It is one of 30+ similar sized paintings covering the ceiling. It is beautiful, but WAY smaller, than I had imagined it to be.

There are an astounding number of artworks in the Vatican.

Finally we made it to the exit.

Went down the stairway, with hundreds of steps and made it out of the Vatican Museum and Sistine Chapel. We went past the lineup again, it was longer than before.

In hindsight, with everything working out the way it did, I'm glad our tour was cancelled. Not only did we save 45EU, we were able to go at our own speed and rest when we needed to.

Stopped for a beer in the restaurant below our hotel. Had a small beer,

some dinner,

and went exhausted to bed.