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Day 8 - Into the Holy City5/3/2018 This day started at the ungodly time of 7:30 because we had to get to the Vatican line early. The lack of sleep was painfully apparent in everyone's eyes at breakfast but we were all dressed for the occasion as it isn't everyday that we get to get into the Vatican and St Peters Church. Getting through an incredibly long security line, we finally made it into the holy city we made our way to the Vatican museums. One would expect me to be fed up with museums but my newfound passion for the arts and the history of this time captured my attention. Each hallway was as incredible as the last one each with their own themes. There were hallways with paintings, sculptures, tapestries and even with a map of each region of Italy made centuries ago. In the thick crowd, I found myself walking with my mouth open in awe (and admittedly some fatigue induced yawning). As the hallways came to a close, we were nearing the highlight of the musuem and one of the most iconic rooms in the Vatican., the Sistine Chapel. Arguably one of Michelangelo's greatest works, the Sistine Chapel houses his famous ceiling art and the Last Judgement. Sitting proudly at the altar of the chapel, the Last Judgement depicted scenes of Christ judging all of humanity, determining whether they would go to heaven or hell. The ceiling depicted scenes from the Book of Genesis centralized around the Creation of Adam. Fun fact I learned about the ceiling art, since the scaffolding was above the windows when Michelangelo painted them, he essentially painted one of the most famous pieces of Renaissance Art IN THE DARK. That is unbelievable. Not to mention the 3-D design around the edges that gave the illusion to someone on the floor of the chapel that there were sculptures on the ceilings, when it was just the trickery of painting. The chapels was packed with tourists with aching necks from staring at the ceiling too long and security screaming at the occasional tourist who would snap a picture even though it was prohibited. After trying hard to take a mental photograph of what was around of me, we shuffled our way out of the Chapel and into St Peters Basilica. Remember when I said each church was better than the next in some way? This took the cake. The St Peters Basillica looked like something out of the gates of heaven itself. The entire place looked godly, adorned with sculptures made of bronze and marble and the most beautiful paintings I had seen since. The high ceilings, bronze arches, gleaming columns; I could go on and on. It must have been extremely overwhelming to some because I distinctly remember a child throwing up on the marble floor out of nowhere. Needless to say, we spent a good amount of time in here absorbing everything that was happening around us. Its too bad we never got to see Pope Francis but you win some you lose some. We must have missed the rain outside because it was pouring outside. We were also very hungry and we assumed at this point that lunch was pretty imminent. We were wrong. Walking away from St Peters we were directed toward the Castel Saint Angelo. The castle's intended purpose was to be a mausoleum for Hadrian but was later used by the popes as a fortress. Walking the walls of the castle made me feel like I was in an episode of Game of Thrones. We rallied to the tower of the castle for the view of Rome and for Winnie to give her presentation. Little did we know that not only would she interrupted by a family that, for whatever reason, wanted to take family pictures exactly where she was standing and by a wedding proposal that happened out of nowhere. She really couldn’t catch a break. In a way, neither could we as the fatigue was really apparent in all our eyes now. It was nearing 3PM and we were tired and we still had not stopped for food. Luckily, we wrapped up pretty quickly from there, thanked our wonderful tour guide for all the she had done for us and were on our way roaming the streets of Rome in search of any food whatsoever. After finishing our pizza in record time, we headed back to the hotel so I could pass out for the next four hours at least. Some of us wanted to see the critically acclaimed forum at dark since we heard they had light projections displaying what the forum looked like in ancient times. Naturally, with our luck, we arrived to discover the lights off due to the rain. Determined on not letting this excursion go to waste, the five of us decided to roam the streets. After a stop at what was going to be our last gelato store in Rome, we hopped on to the Metro to ride back. We needed all the sleep we could get as some of us made the decision to climb the cupula at St Peter, the highest point in Rome. This meant we needed to be at the Basillica at a crisp 7am. Fun. I went to sleep muttering "When In Rome" over and over again.
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