Rome, Italy - DAY FOUR

We took the shuttle bus from the campsite straight to Vatican City at 10:00am. VATICAN CITY! We couldn't believe we were going to see it! Who would have thought?!
We entered through the two arched that you'll see in a photo attached and walked into St. Peter's Square. It was beautiful. The columns surround the square were HUGE and lovely (And here's a tidbit of info for you: if you stand on either of the two white circles on the ground next to the fountain you will see that the four rows of columns align and look like one row instead..). And the Basilica.... Massive and wonderful. We queued up at the end of the line, which was very long as you can imagine, but to our amazement it moved very quickly. Once we arrived at the doors we were given a choice... enter through the tombs or enter through the dome. We chose to enter through the tombs, of course, because Luke wanted to see P.J.P.2's tomb. It was quite lovely and impressive to see. (See photo). From there we went back up and into the Basilica itself. Amazing. Breathtaking. Beautiful. (See photos - unfortunately the photos didn't turn out very well...).
From the Basilica we headed to the Vatican Museum which you must go through to see the Sistine Chapel. We walked through the Hall of Maps, through many long hallways filled with beautiful art as we made our way to the chapel. Once we arrived I was terribly excited.... in we went and... CHAOS. There were TONS of people in the chapel. Flashes going off left and right, people bumping into eachother, people shouting to eachother, talking very loudly. Horrible. I couldn't look up at the ceiling for long because people were bumping into me. I couldn't take my time and enjoy and appreciate the amazing work of art I came to see because the guards were yelling at everyone and no one was listening. Funny thing was that it was mainly Italian tourists. You'd think they would have some respect.... but, no. Luke and I stood and looked around for a few minutes but got frustrated and disappointed pretty quickly so we made our way out of the chapel.
Once outside Vatican City we grabbed lunch and sat in the shade to eat it. (I will add that the weather has been AMAZING here in Rome. It rained a little on our first day in town and it tends to rain for a short period of time every day at around 5:00pm - thunder, lightning, the whole thing, but the bulk of the day and night is PERFECT... hot, sunny...).
After lunch we hopped on a bus to Piazza Venezia to take a tour of the Colosseum. We found a tour guide immediately and signed up for a tour. The guide took us around the exterior of the building and gave us some history (Did you know that the Colosseum is actually called the Flavian amphitheatre and that Colosseum is actually a nicname? It got the nicname because Flavian amphitheatre was too long to say when meeting someone.... "Meet you at the Flavian amphitheatre" became "Meet you at the colossal Nero" and that became "Meet you at the colossal" and that became "Meet you at the Colosseum". - The reference to Nero is because there was a MONSTROUS (colossal) statue of Nero next to the Colosseum. I believe that the Italians eventually officially changed it's name to Colosseum.) We also learned that the columns in St. Peter's Square were taken from the Colosseum. As was the marble that covered the exterior of the Colosseum. It was all removed to decorate the Vatican. Interesting! The interior of the Colosseum was amazing. All of the work that went into building it with all of the hallways underneath the stage, all of the cages where they kept the slaves and the animals, the many huge, beautiful arches...unreal.
After the tour Luke and I were pretty exhausted so we headed back to Vatican to catch the bus back to the campsite. We made dinner, had a few drinks, chatted and hit the sack.