Abroad in Wales

Vatican City

The next day, Christmas Eve, we headed off to Vatican City.  The first stop was St. Peter's Square.  It is absolutely massive!  There must have been over two-thousand people standing in it and you barely noticed.  Notice the television screen - it was for the broadcast of Christmas Mass later that night.

Then we went inside St. Peter's Basilica.  And people back home think St. Joseph's Cathedral is huge!

 Getting ready for Christmas Mass! 

After the Basilica, we went around the corner to the Vatican Museum.  This is what we saw.

 As you can probably tell by now, I really like ceilings and floors.  Who needs walls?

All of this eventually led to the Sistine Chapel.  Eventually.  It took almost two bloody hours to get there.  And just like the Statue of David, you can not take photos.  They even have guys whose only job is to yell, "No foto" every two minutes.  Doesn't stop some people, but I had my reasons for not sneaking a photo.

And that was because I was seeing the Sistine Chapel in all its newly restored glory.  For the past three decades, restorative artists have been painstakingly restoring the paintings.  The original colors in all their vibrancy have returned.  Images once lost to fading have been restored.  You can actually see Eve in the crook of God's are as He reaches for Adam - a detail that was once lost.

Thus ended our Vatican day.  We returned to our hotel and had a nice Christmas dinner at a restaurant around the corner.  Then it was off to bed for some well earned rest.

Posted at 11:43AM Jan 12, 2008 by Jill S Brink in General  |  Comments[0]