"We only take licenses from Alabama." - Comment by the attendant at the Vatican as my buddy Chris gave him his drivers license from Texas as collateral for renting two audio guides. He said this with so much seriousness it took us both a few seconds to get that he was actually joking.
Today we visited the Vatican, Sistine Chapel, and the Costillo Catacombs. The Vatican Museum was amazing. We had to wait in line for about an hour and forty five minutes to get in, but it was well worth the wait. Although, I was pretty surprised to see the collection that the Vatican had of non-christian art as well. They devote a surprisingly large portion of the museum to greek myths and egyptian art. The sculptures from the various time periods are just phenomenal. But now that I've seen both the Louve and the Vatican, I have to say that I actually think the Louve has a considerably larger Christian art collection.
We finished with the Vatican around 1:30 and grabbed a late leisurely lunch just outside the city. The weather was phenomenal today so once again we ate outside and enjoyed the weather and people watching in an alley off of one of the main roads in Rome. The italian food was once again phenomenal. After that we navigated our way around the public transit system and headed to the southeast corner of the city to check out the Costillo Catacombs. These catacombs are the largest in Rome. On our way there we accidentally got off the bus a few stops early, so we decided to walk the rest of the way (about 2 km). To our surprise, we realized that the road we were walking down was the only Roman road that was mentioned by name in the bible. It's one of the oldest roads in all of Rome. Sometimes it's hard to properly grasp and soak in the history of a road like this when we come from a country that is so young. Once we got to the catacombs we met up with some other guys from our tour group (they are from Calgary Canada) and decided to take the walking tour. It was extremely cool, but the tour itself was pretty lack luster (only lasting about 20 minutes).
Finally, Chris and I left the catacombs with the Canadian's and then we stopped at a couple mom and pop grocery stores to grab some bread, cheese, wine, and fresh fruit for dinner. Then we headed back to the hotel and ate outside on the open air veranda at our hotel. Tomorrow, we get up early and head to Sorrento and take some time to soak up sun and swim in the ocean.
