Cruise Part 2 Rome

Well we came back into Rome to pick up new passengers who were only doing a 10 day Western Med and letting off those who had completed their 10 and/or 20 Day portion. With a day in Rome we decided to do the Vatican, St. Peter's and overview of Rome.

The one great thing about doing a cruise excursion is you get to avoid the lines and all, however the negative side is that you don't get to spend a lot of time visiting something.

We got to spent about 4 hours at the Vatican and St. Peter's Basicilia. We had a great tour guide and have to say it was well worth the visit and all. I know we did not get to see everything in the Vatican and all but we saw quite a bit and as I said earlier our tour guide was quite knowlegeable on the various pieces of Art and History.

The Sistine Chapel was another WOW factor for me. But it is definetly a little smaller than what you imagine from the movies and all. Your neck gets a little tired from looking up and all.

We then moved on to St. Peter's and OMG that was another church that I was just so overwhelmed with. You just cannot describe how beautiful it is.

While we were there, the French President was visiting the Pople so as we were already in the Vatican they had closed it off to others entering and we also were lucky to be able to visit St. Peter's Basicilia as that had been closed off as well. We think we got some pictures of him and his entourage but not sure.

Our guide told us that 16k people visit the Vatican each day. As we were there in the early AM it wasn't too bad but by the time we left the crowds had deftinely increased.

Well we had our first experience with a tour guide who did not keep track of time. Our bus guide (who was different from the Vatican tour guide), didn't realize the time on the bus listed on like an hour off and so she lost track of time. We were suppose to be back on the boat at 4:15 p.m. and we were still touring around Rome at 4:30 p.m., and it is a 45 minute ride from downtown Rome out to our ship's port. She kept having our bus driver show us around Rome and then realized what was going on and have to tell you, our bus driver made it back to our cruise ship in about 40 minutes and because there were 38 of us, Holland held the cruise for us. We were about 90 minutes late and all of us had a good laugh on our experience.