No Indecent Thoughts Now

I didn't know quite what to Expect from Vatican City. I knew that there would be a lot of religious art (duh) but apart from that I had never really though about it.

It turns out that it is quite a beautiful place. We wandered through the museum and the Sistine Chapel before going to St Peter's Basilica.

As we wandered through checking out bits and pieces there were a few things we noticed. The first was that it seems that if it would stay still it would get painted! Everything is frescoed. There's also some fantastic examples of tromp l'oeil that you would swear were 3D. (Look it up if you don't know what it is!)
The shot below is of us between the Sistine Chapel and St Peter's Basilica. We were lucky not to have to queue for as long as some people. There were huge cues all over the place! As it was we were lucky to only have to wait 90 minutes to get into Vatican City int he first place. As we stood waiting, the line behind us just grew and grew and went around the corner and out of sight.

This is a slightly blurry shot of me inside the basilica. One of the things you have to remember to do in the buildings here is to look down. All of the floors are as ornately decorated as the walls and ceilings.That's the Basilica behind us. All of the chairs get set up so that hundreds of extra people can attend services. It's just huge and swarming with people. There are no pictures of the Sistine Chapel, which is looking bright and glorious since it's cleaning, because you're not allowed to take any. Apparently the Japanese own the rights to it because they not only came up with the velum used to clean the ceiling but they also paid for the 12 years worth of cleaning.

Fair enough then.