Vaticaning...

This picture was us entering the large square in front of St. Peter's Basilica. The square was very cool and surrounded by a huge wall of columns.



That's the fountain in the center of the square (it's not really a square... because it's a circle... but it has the same function as a square and I don't know how to spell Piazza). That building in the background is the front of St. Peter's Basilica. It had a really high square front with statues along the roof (there were also statues all along the wall of columns). The Basilica then stretched back away from the squre (circle) really far ending in a giant dome (which you could see from the squre, but I don't have a picture of it. I'm not sure why. Probably because I was in a bad mood).



This is the line to get in. As you can see that is not St. Peter's in the background. It was a very long line (but you can see the statues now! Look! See!). We arrived early in the morning and were overwhelmed by the amoung of people in line and left. When we came back in the afternoon there were more people in line, but we were prepaired this time. We gritted our teeth and lined up too. Fortunately St. Peter's is very big and the line moved along fairly quickly. When we finally arrived at the steps the Vatican sin police mad us leave because Tivoli had her shoulders showing (I would have thought they would be more concerned about little boys being adequately covered, but apparently not). We went and bought a scarf thing from a street vendor for Tivoli and headed back to the end of the line. We finally made it to the steps again. Apparently the sin police thought Tivoli was covered to the point where she wouldn't be a temptation to the priests and they let us through. We checked our bags and ourselves through security and entered st. Peter's behind a large tour group of Indians.




It was too big to take pictures of so I didn't. This is what it looks like if you don't look up. The place was gorgeous though. You should totally go to it if you have a chance. Huge square columns of marble stretched up to the ceiling which rose higher up into painted domes. We walked around for probably half and hour looking at everything. It was very gorgeous and mysterious. The sin police yelled at us for sitting on the floor. I'm not sure why. Maybe we were sitting on god... or they could have been worried a priest would mistake us for a little kid. I'm not sure. Either way we didn't sit down anymore.

This was St. Peter's gift shop. I didn't buy anything. Once we had thoroughly explored everything we left in search of a way up into the dome of st. Peter's.