Italy Part 2

Hello again! It's time to finish up the Rome part of our trip! On Monday we were really pumped to head to Vatican City for our private tour. Mom and Dad had scheduled a tour for just our family with a woman named Sonia. She was great and super knowledgeable. Basically any question we asked her she somehow knew the answers. Here are some pictures from the tour...

This is a 2000 year old pine cone. :)



Touring the Vatican museums...







The staircase that leads to the Pope's apartment.



Tripp and David did their best to try and find the Pope and invite him to lunch with us. :)



After the Vatican Museums it was on to St. Peter's Basilica! It is truly such an unbelievable structure. It's massive and everything is built on such a huge scale!



This is Michelangelo's Pieta...one of his first sculptures. He actually signed his full name across the sash so that people would believe that he carved it.



Here's a couple more pictures from St. Peter's...under the giant alter (100 feet tall) is where they believe that Peter is buried. At one time, to prove that he was really there, an excavation took place and they uncovered a set of bones believed to be Peter's...the feet were completely missing (Peter was crucified upside down and they usually just cut people down at the feet when they were crucified in that way). We got to see the tomb downstairs but there were no pictures.





This is a sculpture of Peter...it's tradition to rub the feet...











U-S-A!...it was Memorial Day. :)



To finish up Monday we went to the St. Peter in Chains church and got to see the chains that Peter was led into Rome wearing. Pretty darn cool.



On Tuesday we went to Florence! Stay tuned!