day three - Plan A, Plan B, and finally Plan C

we started Day three shopping. We were in the direction of the Vatican and after what seemed like days and days of shopping (Nat's idea of shopping is to go into each and every store and look at each and every crack and corner in there!) on the five blocks to get to the Vatican, we were finally there! We took in the sights and views and i must say it was pretty great. The columns were just breath-taking. We first went into a free church (I think it was the St. Peter's Basilica in the Piazza San Pietro) and that was pretty cool. Not sure how they perserve it so well but they do. Everything in there is made from marble, gold and bronze. I think if you ask Natacha what her highlight of that church is she would reply that it was the unpeeled banana that someone stepped on. Her laughing and snorting immediately suggested to us that it was time to leave the repectful church. Our timing couldn't be better as we left the church. I have to first tell you, Nat and I like to save money on certain things (rather useless, unmeaningful things in other people's eye). We'd rather, or should i say I'd rather spend 118 euros on rubber boots! At least Nat and I appreciate each other's cheapness in this respect and joined a tour group. So again I must explain. What i meant by "joining" is that we walked when the tour group walked and stopped when the tour group stopped and just pretended to blend in meanwhile Nat was evesdropping on the tour guide's explainations in French and was paraphasing for my sake in English. What an educational experience! I learned quite a few facts, at the time, but now those facts have escaped me... We then went on to visit the Sistine Chapel. Little did we know, it was smack-dab in the middle of the Vatican Museum; a Museum that we thought we could by-pass on this trip. We quickly learned that we had to walk through this Museum before getting to our destination and a little tid-bit Nat got from a patient at a recent doctor's office was that this Museum is about 4 hours long and the only way out is that you go through the whole entire Museum! We attempted to get in, without paying, and just go see Michelangelo's work and leave. So plan A was follow the large highschool fieldtrip crowd that was just going in at the same time as us. We ended up in this Astronomy tour, a tour we didn't want to go on and a waste of 15 minutes. Then we went onto plan B and plan B only takes people with balls (and did i mention people with no shame?!?!) to do and that is just walk right pass security and the turn stalls. Obviously plan B failed miserably. In the end we had to resort to Plan C and that is that we paid the damn admission's fee of 13 euros and walked the whole damn Museum! Mind you, now that it's been days away from that long day, it was worth it! oh yeah, did i mention that we "joined" a tour group there as well? Luckily for me it was in English this time.