Rome part 2

***WARNING*** This post contains pictures of dead popes so if you’re queasy about those things you might not want to read. I just find it interesting now but I used to not like things like that.

 

On the second day we were there we went to the Vatican. It was on a Sunday so we thought we’d go and try to see the pope. The Vatican itself is much smaller then I thought it would be. It’s really just St Peter’s square and St Peter’s church. There’s a bunch of building around it. But that’s all that’s there. The Sistine chapel and the Vatican museums are not even at the Vatican. They are a couple blocks away. Inside St Peter’s there are tons of statue’s, each one meaning something but it would have taken too long to research everything. The most famous one is Michelangelo's Pieta. It depicts the Mother Mary holding Jesus after his crucifixion.

But there are many others. Here’s some that I have no clue who they are.

Oh, here’s a real weird  one. Notice, his left side is missing. I didn’t even see that until we got home and I was looking at my pictures. I wonder if it’s like that for a reason? It just kind of blends in with the wall.

I thought he was kind of a cool looking Pope.  Then also inside St Peters are dead popes inside glass. I don’t think I’d like to be encased like that and opened up to the scrutiny of millions of viewers. And don’t think we didn’t scrutinize them. Can you guess which one we said was definitely Italian?

 

Yep, it’s the second one. Look at that nose! Poor guy. No wonder he became celibate. Oh, I’m definitely going to hell for that.

Speaking of going to hell. Tom is catholic so I made him do the holy water to see if he’d get burned. Yeah, he came out just fine.  But , I think he was sweating it a little.

As you can see, no burn marks.

Downstairs at St Peter’s is all the other tombs of the popes but you’re not allowed to take pictures down there. And they’re not encased in glass.  When we got out of the downstairs area it was time to view the live pope.

Nope, not him. He’s one of the swiss guards. But I’m sure he doesn’t really run after criminals in that get up. He just stands there still as a tree. But here is the real live pope!

It started to rain as soon as he came out. I’m not implying anything but it did clear up as soon as he was done? He gave a blessing in 6 or 7 different languages. The English part was really short. But I felt we needed a blessing after all my criticizing.