Vatican City

Yesterday we went to Vatican City!!  I was saving this fun day for later and I've been so excited.  We saw the Sistine Chapel, St Peter's Basilica and the Vatican Museums.  We crossed over into the smallest country in the world ( Vatican ) and had a tour guide take us through the heart of the Catholic Church.  I had read a book about Michelangelo on the metro towards Vatican so I was so excited to see his finest pieces of art and sculpture.  I was able to see the beautiful ceiling of Sistine Chapel that Michelangelo painted 500 years ago. It took him 4 years to complete, and it was really beautiful. It shows scenes from the creation, (most famous one is The Creation of Adam, where God touches Adams finger), and then it leads you through scenes in the bible towards his famous Last Judgment which takes up the entire back wall of the chapel.  In this scene there is Christ in the center judging, while angels are pulling people up to heaven, and demons pulling people down to hell. Michelangelo drew himself into the painting, (and those who he hated he drew them burning in hell).  

Then we saw my all time favorite work of art:  The Pieta by Michelangelo. This is the sculpture that shows Mary holding Christ after he was taken off the cross. It almost brought me to tears, because there is so much emotion expressed.  Christ's limp body in Mary's arms.

There are no words to express how breathtaking and gigantic St Peter's basilica was.  My camera can't come close to capturing the immense beauty.  We entered at perfect timing because there was some religious service going on and the organs were bellowing through the basilica. It was an amazing experience.   Tomorrow we are going back to the Vatican to get a better look at the museums because our tour guide was a blundering idiot. He didn't teach us anything.  He would go up to a large sculpture and all he would say was "now here we have a significant piece of artwork".  and thats it.  He was trying to talk about a bronze sculpture of caesar and he said" you can note the bronzy.. bronze sculpture here".  We were ticked, I could have given that tour better than he did, but it was still entertaining seeing him awkwardly try to pretend he knew what he was talking about.  Ill post more of Vatican tomorrow.