Monday - Vatican Museums
Monday - a trip to see the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. We had pre-booked tickets with an audio guide, after much procrastination on my part! I'm really glad we didn't go for a guided tour as we saw lots of groups, all with ear plugs so they could hear their guide in a busy museum with lots of other groups. Non of the guides we saw looked very enthusiastic, they were just spilling out facts for the thousandth time while they tried to keep on schedule and keep to their deadlines. As we could go at our own pace, we could take a step back and let the groups move past, which they did, as quite a pace. The main issue was when you had several groups together and it was difficult not to get pulled along with the flow! And of course it got even busier the closer you got to the Sistine Chapel. But for parts of the museums it was relatively quiet in comparison. Highlights were the Egyptian galleries.
The Sistine Chapel was actually underwhelming, mainly because you were in a massive flow of people, shoulder to shoulder, and the chapel really is standing room only. You immediately have staff herding you to the centre, and keeping the edges free so people could move through. Your first reaction is of course to stop and look up, which causes a traffic jam. Once we were in, we stayed stood in the crowd in the middle for maybe half and hour listening to the audio guide. Then we managed to nab a couple of seats on the benches around the walls. These were obviously oversubscribed, and it was entertaining watching the musical chairs go on as people vacated their seat and half a dozen hovering nearby made a dash for it!
We actually arrived an hour early at St Peters Basilica, about 9.30 in the morning. I was totally unprepared for how massive the queues would be here! People must have been queuing since dawn. In my naivety I thought there might be a short queue early in the day ... !! Next time :-)
Monday - Vatican Museums
Monday - a trip to see the Vatican Museums and Sistine Chapel. We had pre-booked tickets with an audio guide, after much procrastination on my part! I'm really glad we didn't go for a guided tour as we saw lots of groups, all with ear plugs so they could hear their guide in a busy museum with lots of other groups. Non of the guides we saw looked very enthusiastic, they were just spilling out facts for the thousandth time while they tried to keep on schedule and keep to their deadlines. As we could go at our own pace, we could take a step back and let the groups move past, which they did, as quite a pace. The main issue was when you had several groups together and it was difficult not to get pulled along with the flow! And of course it got even busier the closer you got to the Sistine Chapel. But for parts of the museums it was relatively quiet in comparison. Highlights were the Egyptian galleries.
The Sistine Chapel was actually underwhelming, mainly because you were in a massive flow of people, shoulder to shoulder, and the chapel really is standing room only. You immediately have staff herding you to the centre, and keeping the edges free so people could move through. Your first reaction is of course to stop and look up, which causes a traffic jam. Once we were in, we stayed stood in the crowd in the middle for maybe half and hour listening to the audio guide. Then we managed to nab a couple of seats on the benches around the walls. These were obviously oversubscribed, and it was entertaining watching the musical chairs go on as people vacated their seat and half a dozen hovering nearby made a dash for it!
We actually arrived an hour early at St Peters Basilica, about 9.30 in the morning. I was totally unprepared for how massive the queues would be here! People must have been queuing since dawn. In my naivety I thought there might be a short queue early in the day ... !! Next time :-)