Today sarah and i went to the vatican city, a whole different entity from italy. we went through the vatican museums to the Raphael rooms (very impressive) and the sistine. We kinda breezed through most of the rooms, it would've taken forever to look at everything and take the time to appreciate it all. i was very overwhelmed by the sistine. Fortunately, sarah, ever the art history major, told me all about the different paintings in the chapel, from The Last Judgment and all the little nuances and little pieces of revenge Michaelango partook for getting such a crappy base on which to paint. I particularly like the mosters from hell at the pope's eye level so whenever the pope turned around he would see that. I liked it a lot. we then went to st. peter's basilica and ran into laura there. that place is HUGE. lots of catholic paraphernalia all around. i took pictures of the pieta and touched the foot of st. peter, which laura told me absolved me of all my sins. yay. all in all it was very impressive. we then had lunch and i had gnocci for the first time, and it was pretty damn good. and afterwards we got good gelato too, for cheap. my feet hurt so much we chilled for the rest of the time and now i'm here. we're waiting to go to siena ( a three hour bus ride) and spend the next day there, then florence. laura's planned the trip up to salzburg. i'm way excited. =)