Rome and Other Places That Are Cool Too: Sean and Shad: Day 2

I woke up this morning and went to meet Sean and Shad at the Vatican. We were going to see if the Vatican museums were open to go and check out the Sistine Chapel, but heard that they weren't so we decided to head over to Castel Sant'Angelo a little further up on the Tiber. Monica decided to stay at the Vatican because the Pope was going to come out and give a blessing around noon.

On the way to Castel Sant'Angelo there were tons of street vendors lining the sidewalk up to the entrance of the castle. We bought our tickets and then went inside.

This is Castel Sant'Angelo and the many street vendors out in front on the path leading up to it.

Starting out we walked all around the center of the castle on the inside of the outer wall. We found the entrance into the center part of the castle and went in. The first part of the castle that we walked around was kind of circled around the inside that eventually led to a huge staircase leading up into the middle.

This is the outer wall of Castel Sant'Angelo that can be seen from inbetween the outer wall and the castle inside. It was incredible thick and it looked like there were a bunch of living areas built in.

This is the outside of the castle from within the inner wall. There were hardly even any windows until you were close to the top.

This is Shad on the starway that went through the middle of the castle. On either side of the stariway (this section was more of a ramp though) there were drop-offs all the way to the floor below.

This is a terrace area that we came out on after we were done climbing the stairs. There was a really cool marble statue of an angel that had brass wings.

Here is the statue of the angel from the front.

At one point, we were able to lean over side of the castle and look all the way down to the walkway we used when we entered inside the outer wall.

All once we reached the upper part of the castle we started working our way through all of the rooms. We were pretty disappointed to find out that it was not a preserved castle at all as they had turned all of the rooms in the castle to different showcases of local artists work and strange furniture from the early 1900s. Some of the art was cool, but it was pretty modern and really did not mesh well with the castle rooms that housed it. We worked our way through it all fairly quickly and eventually made it to the roof, which made it all worth while. The view from the top was amazing. We has a great view of the Vatican, the Tiber, and the Monument de Vittorio Emmanuelle. We spent a lot of time at the top just taking it all in.

The coolest part of the whole castle. From the top, there were some amazing views of the City. This is a shot with the Vatican in the distance.

Here is a view of the Tiber and the bridge that leads up to the Vatican. You can see the left part of the Basilica on the right side of the picture.

Another view from the top.

I like this view a lot. You can see the domes of a couple of different churches on the left, the Monument de Vittorio Emmanuelle a little right of the center, the dome of the Pantheon a little left of the center, and the mountains in the background.

This is the statue at the very top of the castle. It is a bronze statue of Saint Michael sheathing his sword after the plague in 590 AD.

This is a different bridge across the Tiber that leads straight up to Castel Sant'Angelo.

When we were at the top, we asked a lady to take a picture of us. We were hoping that she would get the Vatican in, in the background but instead she moved and centered us in the picture. You can kind of see some of the Basilica behind us and the point at the top of the dome kind of makes Shad look like Alfalfa from the Little Rascals.

Here is Sean and Shad at the top with the Vatican in the background.

I was lucky enough to catch Sean in the act of taking a picture before we headed down. I feel the black and white really reveals the heart and emotion that Sean put into every picture he took this weekend. Even though his camera may have not been the most sofisticated memory capturing device, he made up for it with stylish poses.

After a while we started the descent and headed into Trastevere to meet Monica and grab some lunch.

Before we went to lunch I was going to give Sean and Shad a tour of JCU, but when we tried to walk in the security guard stopped us and asked for my student ID. Unfortunately I did not have it on me so I didn't get to show them around, but I was able to kind of explain where everything was from the entry way. After that we sat down for some pizza and pasta at a little pizzaria close to the school. After that we grabbed some gelato on the way up to the bus stop.