Church

This morning we winched ourselves up out of bed, put our pants and our shoulder covering shirts on, and hopped the bus to the Vatican.  Since we are celebrities, we got to walk right to the front of the line and go in without waiting forever (jk, Laura and Blake are just good at planning).

Beautiful Angel in the Vatican

I'm glad I didn't have to lay on my back to paint/sculpt this

The hall of maps was probably my favorite

I'm not sure what exactly I was expecting out of the Vatican, but I got a lot more than I bargained for.  It made me wish I knew a little more about the history of the Catholic Church so that I would appreciate and understand the relics a little more. 

The end goal of the museum was really the Sistine chapel, and so we wound around and through the apartments, appreciating the ceilings and the art, surrounded by sweaty tourists, and feeling like we had jump into a pool ourselves.  We saw two Salvador Dali paintings, and then spilled out into the chapel and looked up for so long that our necks started to hurt. 

We realized that it would be entirely possible to spend an entire day looking around in the Vatican, but we had a line to skip at the Bailica as well, so we had to move on a little quicker than we would be liked. 

We made our way back to St. Peter's square and through the columns to the front of that line (👍🏽👍🏽) and up to the steps.

St, Peter's

Inside was even more incredible than outside.

Alter in St. Peter's

After we had looked our fill, we headed to he market where we had seen our potential souvenirs, made the necessary purchases, took in the views of one more incredible church, and headed back to the Airbnb to get ready for the transition to Florence. 

The bus almost let us down again, but this time w head a back up bus picked out, so we made it in plenty of time to catch the 5:50 to Florence.  The ride through the country side past fields of sunflowers and expansive vineyards was captivating, and the hour and a half slid past easily and comfortably on the train. 

From the Santa Maria Novella train station in Firenze we had a 20 minute walk to the Airbnb and then a trudge up to the 4th floor. We've walked so many steps... 

The place is neat, clean, spacious, and very comfortable.  It's nice to have the whole place to ourselves. Bonus: I can shower without hitting my elbows on the sides when I try to wash my hair. 

We needed food, so we worked up the courage to face the steps on the way home and went out to find a small hole in the wall place.  We had delicious homemade ravioli and tried limoncello as an after dinner liquor.  Blake and I liked it, Laura wasn't sure. 

Then it was back up the steps to sleep.  We have a more relaxed schedule here so we'll see what we want to do tomorrow after our bike tour. I think pedaling will be a nice change of pace from being on our feet all day. 

Buona notte.