Week 5- St. Peters!

We are leaving for our second and last group field trip tomorrow for Assisi that will take us into week 6 but this week after our weekend excursion to Pisa and Florence I have been thoroughly enjoying Rome. Yesterday we got to see the pope in St Peters square (the plan was to sketch but there were way too many people) then we went over to the Vatican Museums. Crystal and I stayed until the museum was about to close and they were starting to kick people out a little before 6 pm. We got through almost everything, some things multiple times (we didn't know that once you got past something you cannot go back without going all the way back around to the beginning and go through everything again). There was so many great works in there and not to mention the Sistine Chapel that it did not seem right to go through quickly or see some things only once.

Then this morning we went back to St Peters only this time to see the basilica. We toured the church itself, the grotto underneath (I think we accidentally joined a tour group otherwise I am not sure we could have got down there), and went into the dome and up to the cupola. It was really cool to see it and experience it this way. The first level takes you onto the roof of the church next to the dome. It is so close and you can really study it from the outside. Then you go up another level which allows you to look up at the interior of the dome (you are standing right under it) and down onto the church floor below. Then you go up even more in between the inner and the outer shell of the dome up into the cupola looking down onto the entire city. The view was spectacular and the experience priceless. Best birthday ever!