Day 11 - Rome Part 1

Day 11: (part 1) When in Rome.... I’ve been waiting this whole vacation to say that!  I have too many pictures today, so I’m going to break it up. We started our morning super early at 6am to make it to a tour of Vatican City. As soon as we got through security we ran into the amazing Kathleen Flake! It blows my mind that we’ve now run into 3 different families/people we know while on this trip! The Vatican was amazing. Beautiful paintings, mosaics and sculptures around every turn. My neck was hurting by the end of the tour from looking up at the ceilings so much. Most of the art we saw was 1,000’s of years old. My favorites that I saw were the Sistine Chapel (which can’t be photographed) and St. Peter’s Basilica. Unbelievable beauty that took years to create. Much of the art in the Basilica was giant mosaics made from the tiniest pieces of tiles. I can’t imagine the time it took to complete just one of them. I also loved the statue of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Savior. We saw where the Pope stands to bless the people and where he speaks from. And we also mailed post cards from Vatican City; the worlds smallest country. It only covers about 100 acres. After this tour everyone was in desperate need of a nap, so we went back to the hotel to take naps, which 4/6 of us actually did!