On my very last day in Rome I checked out of my hotel, stored my luggage, and hopped on the subway to the Vatican, bound for the Sistine Chapel. Unfortunately, the Sistine Chapel has been closed for the past two days for some important religious holiday, so on the day it reopened there was a backlog of tourists anxious to see this site before leaving the Eternal City. By the time I arrived the lines wound around the Vatican Museum and down the street, nearly to the entrance of Saint Peter’s Basilica.

Painted dome in the Sistine Chapel

For two and a half hours I stood on line, baking under a brutal August sun, buckets of sweat pouring off me. When I finally reached the entrance there was another line to buy tickets – 13 Euros (about $17 US) gained me entrance to the Vatican Museums, the courtyards, the grounds, the numerous historical rooms inside the Vatican leading to the Sistine Chapel, and to the Chapel itself. Past the ticket booth the traffic thinned out a bit and I breathed a sigh of relief – I do not do well in large crowds for lengthy amounts of time, as I seem to have a hard time shielding myself from the energy of all those people in one place at the same time. I followed the signs and climbed the stairway to the upper level, only to encounter another mad crush of people at what appeared to be the entrance to the Sistine Chapel. It turned out to be the entrance to the route LEADING TO the Sistine Chapel. During the ensuing two hours I plodded through endless corridors leading to scores of chambers with walls and ceilings covered in frescoes. Continue reading →