The Vatican & The Pope

Sculpture inside Vatican Museum
Altar inside St. Peter's

On Tuesday, we took the bus to the Vatican. We had reservations for the museum. We first made our way to the Sistine Chapel(no pictures allowed). It was a little overwhelming because the walls and ceiling are completely covered with paintings. It was hard to know where to look, but it was very beautiful. Then we walked through the Vatican Museum, which was my favorite museum. The building itself was so ornate. It had some really cool sculptures and paintings. Our favorite was Raphael's Transfiguration painting. I was sad to not be able to take a picture of it.
After exploring the museum we got to see St. Peter's Basilica. This was of course the largest and most ornate church we saw our entire time in Rome. I took picture after picture. There were a lot of sculptures inside mostly of Popes and Saints. The altar is spectacular with black columns that twist. We also got to go beneath the church to see the tombs of former Popes.
One of our goals for the day was to find out how to get tickets to the audience with the Pope on Wednesday. Luckily my sister-in-law Amber was brave enough to approach the Swiss Guards and ask. She scored us all tickets!! So Wednesday morning we returned to the Vatican for an audience with the Pope. It was very cool to be a room with people from ALL over the world. The entire celebration was said in seven different languages (Italian, French, Spanish, English, Russian, Portugese, German) Our view of the Pope wasn't that great, but he did bless us and our families.