Second Attempt at Saint Peter's

If yesterday's bus experience (at 7:30 in the morning) had been the same as today's (at 9), I would not have recommended it to Steve. We were squashed in like porverbial sardines. (Not roasted on coals. Fortnuately the buses are air condditioned. There was still a security line, but not as bad as when we came out of the church.

St. Peter's is overwhelmingly beautiful. Pictures cannot begin to convey the experience. It boggles my mind to imagine how the artists (there were several) conceived of how to create such beauty.

Those Swiss guard uniforms must be hot.

We took the bus past our hotel to the piazza near the train station and this basilica of St. Mary and the Angels and Martyrs in the Emperor Domitian's old baths.

There is restauration going on. You can see someone on a scaffold to the left. The truth is that every church we have been in, even those that don't make the tourist map, is full of gorgeous art. There is no 19th and 20th c Romantic smaultz.

Lunch was in a colonnade on the Piazza da Republica. I ordered clams, shrimp and callimari with squid ink pasta. The black 'worms' here are the pasta. Delicious. Katie would have loved it. Steve turned up his nose and ate lasagne.