Day 16 - Vist to the tiniest and richest country in the world

Today we made the final pilgrimage of the trip - we went to the Vatican. Myra had purchased tickets beforehand, which was the right thing to do, as the lines nearly made me cry, even though we didn't have to stand in them.

 We started out in some museum dedicated to stone carvings, which were pretty amazing and they allowed you to get really close to them (we could reach out and touch them if we wanted).

 Then we decided to see the Sistine Chapel on our way to the basilica. It took about a 1.5 hours just to reach the chapel, since they force you down a particular path that involved lots of paintings. One hall was particularly cool, the Gallery of Maps.

 Finally arriving at the chapel, we were surprised at how large and how small it was. It is quite huge, but with the hordes of people, it seemed smaller. Plus the famous painting was not as big as I had thought. They didn't allow pictures in the chapel, but I only found this out after snapping one.

 After this we finally made our way outside, where we found ourselves in another line, where we waited for about 10 min before we found out it was the line for the dome and not the basilica. So we left that and finally found our way into St. Peter's Basilica, which is amazing and probably my favorite church of the entire trip.

 We explored for much longer than any other church. But finally, exhaustion and hunger drove us to leave the Vatican and find food. I used google maps to find a place, which was a little Italian fast food place that was ok. It again tested my belief that Italian food is good. I am losing faith in this conviction.

 Next up was the Spanish steps and gelato and tiramisu. Then back to the apartment to rest until dinner. Everyone's feet hurt.

 For our last meal in Italy we chose Chinese food. It was good while we were hungry and fairly cheap, but once full we bequeathed it 3 stars. Then we returned for the last time to our apartment to pack and sleep.