Life on the High Plains

For the final day of our trip we purchased tickets for the Big Red Bus.  Its a double-decker bus that takes tourists through the city and stops at many points of interest while narrating everything that you're seeing via personal headsets.  Our goal was to get to St. Peter's Basilica in time for the Pope's weekly blessing at noon. The stop closest to the Vatican was at Castel Sant'Angelo.  This castle was built as a mausoleum for the Roman Emperor Hadrian and his family between 134 and 139 AD.  Hadrian's ashes were placed here in 138.  The ashes of other emperors were also placed here until 217.  The building became a military fortress in the 5th century and in 410 the urns and ashes were looted by the Visigoths.  Popes converted the fortress into a castle in the 14th century and it was also used as a prison.  Today it is a museum which we did not have time to go into. We found our way to St. Peter's Square which is directly in front of St. Peter'...

After disembarking from our ship we loaded on a bus for what was supposed to be a 1.5 hour ride to our hotel in Rome.  Somewhere along the way the guide who was on the bus decided we needed a city tour so our ride was significantly lengthened until another passenger on the bus said all they wanted to do was to get to the hotel. We felt the same way because Jillian and Brian were meeting us there!  We were only going to have a few hours together and the impromptu tour was cutting into that time. After getting there and sitting through a final Viking briefing we checked into our room which wasn't quite ready yet so we stored our luggage and headed out for our 2:00 p.m. tour of the Vatican Museums.  We had a crazy taxi ride that took forever despite the short distance.  That's the dome of St. Peter's Basilica. The museum has been around since the early 1500s and if you laid all the rooms out side by side it would be nine miles in length. This large bronze pinecone (Font...