![\"Shutters\"](\"http:\/\/willz.org\/hosted\/blog\/austria\/big_trip\/rome02\/IMG_2618.JPG\")
<\/a><\/p>\nOnce you get those suckers open, you get this:<\/p>\n
We decided to hit the Vatican up first, so we went down to St. Peter’s. Apparently this is tourist time, because we had to \u201crun the gauntlet\u201d of people trying to offer us amazing deals on museum tickets and city tours! It was annoying and fun all at once. We also keep seeing these things:<\/p>\n Do they need to drive those home every night, or can they just leave them? It’s these kinds of questions that keep us up at night.<\/p>\n Once we actually made it to St. Peter’s, we walked around the square a bit before heading inside the basilica. It’s pretty much how I remember it. I’ll let the pictures tell the story.<\/p>\n MJ was pretty entertained.<\/p>\n The Swiss Guard were… guarding.<\/p>\n I will mention though that I love Vatican security. We had to go through a bag Xray\/metal detector combo to get in, but it was basically just a guy standing there waving everyone through. Almost everyone set off the detector, but he didn’t care. No complaints here either!<\/p>\n There was also some awesome lighting.<\/p>\n We also got to see St. Peter’s tomb.<\/p>\n There was also this crazy statue. Can you spot anything interesting?<\/p>\n That’s right, face of Jesus.<\/p>\n We walked around inside the basilica, then headed down into the grotto (underground passageways with papal tombs). I’m not sure what was up with the grotto, but we didn’t see them all, and I’m certain we didn’t even see as much as was open back in 2005 when I visited. So, stuff changes I guess.<\/p>\n After the grotto, we browsed the gift shop. I was very<\/em> amused to see that the gift shop nuns were using a PlayStation 3 and an LCD monitor to play a DVD.<\/p>\n Then did the phone book tearing in St. Peter’s square. Plenty of commentary on that on my blog. We then had to head back through the gauntlet to get to the Vatican museum. The Vatican museum was busy, but we still managed to get inside without much hassle. That was nice. We walked through the art and sculptures areas and made our way to the Sistine Chapel.<\/p>\n The museum also afforded a good view of St. Peter’s Basilica.<\/p>\n And how for photos of Joni that are only on here just because she’s so darn cute!<\/p>\n There were also some super creepy statues in there…<\/p>\n There was even a dude that had a ton of babies on him! Go babies!<\/p>\n And then I got a chance to get a higher res version of this photo<\/a>.<\/p>\n And then for no reason at all, I took a picture of this!<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n