Monday May 19. We took a guided tour through the Vatican Museum and St. Peter's Basilica on Monday morning. After the Louvre, I decided that I wouldn't wander around a museum without the self-guided audio tour but now I know a guided tour is even better - at least in a small group. For us analytic thinkers with no background, the art, sculpture and architecture is much more interesting when given historical context. The Sistine Chapel was amazing but the rude, pushy crowds took alot away from the experience. Somehow the common courtesy we come to expect in the United States just isn't that same in Rome (at the major tourist attractions anyway). Is it so wrong to expect people not to cut in line, not to push the person in front of them when traveling in a crowd, to apologize if they hit you in the head with their giant backpack, maybe even to yield a seat to a 70 year old lady instead of knocking her over getting to it?

Tuesday May 20. This is a good time to point out that I didn't force anyone (including Jeff) to scale hundreds of steps to get a city view on this trip. We even skipped the 630 steps to the top of the dome in St. Peter's....but I can't resist the lure of picturesque views from high vantage points so the early crowd (me, jeff, my dad, and Scott) went to Castel Sant'Angelo to get a view of Rome. For the minimal effort involved, it was a pretty good view of St. Peter's even though it was rainy, overcast and very windy - our fourth day of drizzly rain. We also went shopping that afternoon and found the Ferrari shop for Tony.

Scott and Jeff decided to cook dinner at the apartment that night using fresh pasta from the supermarket. So we stayed in, avoiding the rain, and let Chef Scott and Sous-chef Jeff (or was it the other way around?) serve us ravioli di carne, spaghetti di pollo and inslata caprese. They use Bertolli tomato sauce which is authentic in this case considering is was purchased in Italy.

Tony's vacation ritual consisted of sleeping most of the day when not sightseeing and staying up all night. We locked him in one night - you needed a key to leave once the door was locked - so he couldn't go wandering. It wasn't on purpose but it was funny when he complained the next day.