Today is Vatican Day!
For the last 5 days we have been visiting various monuments, galleries and the like as if we were the only tourists in town, but today when we turned up at the St. Peter’s Square things were different. There was a queue about 200m long to get into the Basilica. Makes you wonder what it would be like in the height of summer.
To avoid the queue we went around the corner to the Sistine Chapel and its museums, where we found we could walk straight in.
The range and the number of exhibits in these museums and galleries is almost beyond belief. We spent over 2 hours walking through the museums before even reaching the Sistine Chapel! The whole experience was mind numbing.
After exiting the building, and feeling unable to walk any further, we opted to have lunch at the ‘Caffé Vaticano’ just opposite. Yes of course this was a very bad move, the food was terrible, the waiters rude and the price astronomical. Consequently we made The Gordons’ Rule of Travelling No.1: Never eat at a self serve restaurant, opposite a world famous monument, that looks like Cary Grant was a regular patron there in the sixties.
Undeterred by our dining experience we headed back to St. Peters Square to find there was virtually no queue for the Basilica. The size of this church is, you guessed it, unbelievable. If my memory serves me well you could fit both Westminster Abbey and Notre Dame inside it.
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