St. Peter's Basilica

On the day where Bill and I got to go on a tour together, we had a choice of going to St. Peter's Basilica or to Ancient Rome. We chose Ancient Rome. But then on the way to dinner, someone told us that the St. Peter's tour was just fascinating and that we definitely couldn't go home without seeing it. Soooo, we did!

On Friday, Bill had meetings all morning and through lunch. I went shopping and then met him at the yummy gelato place in the afternoon. I proceeded to haul Bill around to all the places I got to see that he didn't, such as Piazza Navonna and the Pantheon. We made it out to St. Peter's late in the afternoon. I wish there was a way to photograph this to capture the humongosity of it (is "humongosity" even a word? But you know what I mean!). It makes the National Cathedral look small.

We did get to rub St. Peter's foot. His foot is worn nearly smooth from centuries of people rubbing it. We also walked through the tombs below. Some of the earliest popes are buried there and one is really awestruck by the weight of centuries of faith and tradition. Two preserved popes are upstairs and people were photographing them. That seemed to me to bedisrespectful somehow but I was clearly in the miniority!

Michelangelo's Pieta (last photo in this post) is just beautiful.

We were unsuccessful in finding a taxi back to the Spanish steps so we WALKED. That is a long way to walk carrying a baby and we had to run a long gauntlet of street vendors selling the same Prada knockoff bags, belts, and watches. We were glad to hit a wine bar after that.