Rome, part 2

Our first full day in Rome was to dedicated to visiting the Vatican. Scott and I decided this in advance because we thought we would be doing our kids a disservice by bringing them all the way to Rome and not taking them to the Vatican. Our point of view was shaped by having been to the Vatican museums six years prior and realizing that they hold a great deal of beautiful treasures and immense history that is hard to grasp unless you are present in the space. We anticipated that visiting the museums with children who may not appreciate the beauty of the treasures might be a challenge so we carefully arranged for a guided English tour of the museums provided by a staff member of the Vatican that was highly recommended by trip advisor.

We took a cab from our hotel to the Vatican museum entrance in advance of our 9:00am tour and were shocked to see the miles-long lines wrapped around the blocks of the museum. This was part of our strategy in booking a Vatican museum-guided tour - to skip the entrance queue and advance directly inside the museum. At this point I thought we had scored a major victory.

However, once we were inside, the scene was organized chaos with thousands, millions of people in tour groups everywhere.  We found our Vatican tour guide easily and were given headsets and received instructions in how to listen to our guide (you needed an audio guide via earphones because the museum halls were so crowded with tour groups that you would not be able to hear a guide without audio intervention), but her Italian accent was thick enough that the kids quickly lost interest. Scott and I liked the tour and tried to listen despite being elbowed all the time by the Chinese/Japanese/Spanish/British/American tour groups that were traveling along with us.  

View below on the tour looking out on the Rome vista.

We saw so much artwork on our tour...beautiful painted fresco ceilings...

Crowds of people plowing forward into the Sistine Chapel (no photos permitted inside)...

I remembered the animal statue room from when Scott and I were here before, which is so impressive in person...

More paintings...cool, but can you tell I gave my phone to John and told him to take whatever pictures he chose in order to keep him engaged during our tour?

Some of my favorites were the modern paintings at the exhibit towards the end of the tour.

 Lovely Vatican museum garden in the middle of the tour.

















Honestly, the whole tour was great from an artistic point of view but miserable from a tourists-want-to appreciate-the-beauty-of-Rome point of view. Scott couldn't wait to get the $&%* out of dodge as soon as we could give back our headsets after the Sistine Chapel.

Finally we left the Vatican museum complex and started walking back towards central Rome. By this point it was getting towards lunch time so our goal was to find a nice place to rest for a meal. We decided to venture towards Piazza Navona, one of the most beautiful plazas in Rome.

So grateful for the Rome tourist that offered to take our family's picture in Piazza Navona!

After a touristy lunch experience we made our way back to our hotel for cooling off/rest time/showers/happy hour. And then it was time to venture back out. Scott and I wanted to check out the Pantheon, so we set out on our evening exercise walk of a few miles towards our destination.

 

Awesome! We loved visiting the Pantheon and John and Amelia remarked at the architectural interests of the building. 

After the Pantheon we took a cab back to our hotel because we had dinner reservations at a local restaurant by our hotel. Boy was this meal outstanding! We wanted to enjoy our last meal in Rome to the fullest, which is not hard to come by for a reasonable expenditure in Rome with all of the freshest ingredients around.

Extreme caprese tower! Scott and I split this appetizer of fresh tomatoes with cheese, basil and olive oil, and it was devine. Amazing.

My entree was seafood pasta, exquisite. What an enjoyable last dinner experience in Italy! I am still dreaming of Italian food back in Dallas months later...