Ciao! So far, Rome had been wonderful already. We had seen the Trevi fountain, Colosseum and the Foro Romano, ate the best pasta and lots of gelato. On our third day, we would cross off another two highlights, namely the Vatican museums with the Sistine Chapel and the Pantheon.

Vatican city is the world’s smallest state and it’s located inside the city of Rome. It’s independent from Italy and is under the jurisdiction of the pope. It’s a small state that you can easily visit in a (half)day when you’re in Rome. The popular attractions in Vatican city are the Vatican Museums, the Sistine chapel and St. Peter’s basilica. We actually, kindof forgot about St. Peter’s basilica, can you believe that? I’m not that big on churches but it would have been nice to see it. Welp, I guess it’s a reason to come back to Rome one day. I threw a coin into the Trevi fountain after all…

If you want to visit the Vatican museums, you’ll have to buy a ticket with a timeslot, so they can regulate how many visitors are inside at once. The timeslot is just for entering, but once inside, you have unlimited time to roam around. Until the museums close, of course. So far we hadn’t seen many tourists in the city, but this museum was a bit more crowded. Especially inside the hallway that led to the Sistine chapel, and of course the chapel itself. It’s interesting how you wouldn’t normally care how many people are surrounding you, but with the corona virus still going on, I felt a bit uncomfortable in this hallway, with this many people around me. Most people did keep there distance, luckily.

When you want to visit the Sistine chapel, there are some rules you have to follow. You have to dress appropriately, which means that your knees and shoulders have to be covered. Also, you have to put your bags into a locker, which is why I didn’t take that many photo’s inside. Later I discovered that I could have brought my camera inside with me. But you can’t take picture inside the sistine chapel anyway.

The sistine chapel was absolutely beautiful, though it was crowded. I saw Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam which is truly something you could stare at for hours. To be honest, I had that with a lot of the ceilings inside the museums as well. It’s not just pretty artwork, the building is just as gorgeous, and you just wanna lie down on the floor to take it all in. Actually, I think I liked the building even more than I did the paintings. There are a lot of medieval religious paintings in the museum, as is expected, for lots of the artwork, if not all of them, is brought into the museums by the popes over the years.

The Vatican museums are a variety of palaces that are filled with 20.000 pieces of art, such as statues and paintings, so you can imagine it’s easy to spend a couple of hours here. There are also a few restaurants (though only one of them was open because of the virus) where you can have a simple lunch, though it was nothing too impressive.

After spending a good part of the day inside, we decided to go back to our hotel for a little siësta, before we headed into the city once more.