Thursday, December 2, 2010



Day 6 continued: We marched past in triumph past the huddled masses of hundreds of tourists lined up in the rain for tickets into the Vatican Museum, which is the second largest museum in the world. We listened in rapt attention on little radio receivers to Ricardo and Ulysse blizzard us with details interlaced with wit and even wisdom. We saw the Vatican gardens. (Who knew?) We walked down one wing (1800 meters) of the five miles of museum, seeing hundreds of Roman sculptures and dozens of tapestries woven in Flanders from designs done by Raphael. We entered a chamber whose ceiling was painted to look three dimensional, into another hallway with an elaborate Baroque ceiling, then down some stairs past the Pope's bedroom door that was off a little hallway tossed off by Bernini. He was "in" and his window was open. Down more stairs and finally into the Holy of Holies, the Sistine Chapel.

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