Day 8

Day 8 had great weather. We signed up for a trip to visit St. Peters Basilica with St Johns and Domenico (the St. Johns staff member in charge of student services). We took the stairs all the way to the top of the dome, and took plenty of pictures on the inside. While I was impressed with the view from Il Vittorino, the view from the top outside of the Dome was incredible. Inside the Basilica I found myself more than camera happy and took around 175 pictures (which for me is probably more pictures than I have taken in 5 lifetimes).

Picture of the top of the dome from the inside

The area where we took the picture above included a 10-15 minute walk up tons of stairs (Jazz said it was like doing stadiums). Thankfully I don't have claustrophobia, but some of the people we went with were not quite so lucky. The passageway to get to the top got tighter and tighter as we went up. Eventually the passageway was not much wider than the width of my body. Part of the stairwell was slanted, which you can see in the middle picture below.

Some of the passageway

Outside of the dome from the roof

Picture from the fenced in top of the dome

View from outside the dome

A mosaic inside the dome

Castel Sant'Angelo

Inside St. Peters

Long ceiling

Entrance

One of the archways

Fresco

Another fresco

Front

one of the closed off rooms

Can slightly make out the railing where we were standing earlier 

Entrance to below

Column

Column

Outside of the entrance

Large entrance door

One of the many fountains around Roma

Action shot, she only managed to soak her entire upper body

This was probably the best day we had so far in Roma. The Vatican really was amazing and the scale of it was incredible. I've seen plenty of movies/pictures portraying the Vatican, but it really kind of left you speechless. It was absolutely gigantic; pictures do not do it justice. I could go on and on about how amazing it was, but I'm sure you get the idea.

To top the trip off we stopped and the McDonald's for a bit of American food. The menu is completely different but they still included a few classic American items, namely the Big Mac meal. The only real noticeable difference was that the portion sizes are much smaller (and you have to pay for ketchup and mayonnaise .20 Euro each). 

McDonald's.