Day 11- Campo de’ Fiore, a few big churches, and the biggest church.

Oh man, we did a lot today. The chafing is out of control and I forgot to pack Gold Bond. As always, we woke up and had breakfast on the rooftop, but this was a lot different.

There is something pretty magical about having a coffee and catching up on the news while you are overlooking the Vatican.

We took a cab over to Campo de’ Fiore, a market in a square that sells a bunch of different things. Mostly crap, but pretty cool nonetheless.

Then we started walking toward St. Peter‘s Square. We walked into a few amazing churches along the way, and then stopped and had some gelato.

We were still about 1.5 miles away from St. Peter’s, so we decided to take transportation the rest of the way. Mickie and I have had a small feud going about whether to take Ubers or cabs, so we were politely arguing when Evie said, “Guys, the 62 Bus is four stops away. In three stops it will get us to St. Peter’s.” I was pretty impressed with that because I don’t know how buses work.

We hopped on the bus and sure enough, after 3 stops it dropped us off. We found our tour person and we were off to St Peter’s Basillica.

It was really hot. Cash and Evie were troopers though. The tour guide started us in the Grottoes, where 91 popes are entombed. I did this 18 years ago, but it was still an amazing experience, especially because it was Cash and Evie’s first time.

As we were walking through the Grottoes, our tour guide would stop at some popes tombs and pass others. I said to Evie, “I feel kind of bad that we paid attention to some of these popes but we didn’t stop at a lot of them.” Evie said, “Oh yeah. I feel bad too.” And she turned around and said “Sorry Popes. We will be back to learn about you!”

Here is Evie and Cash in front of St. Peter’s tomb. I don’t know about the thumbs up but I think it is a positive gesture so it’s all good in my book. Then we climbed the staircase and Cash and Evie saw St. Peter’s for the first time.

This place is insane if you haven’t been. Giant ceilings, amazing statues, frescoes everywhere. I didn’t realize that I had booked a tour for three hours and we were pretty tired, but the tour guide showed us everything in there. After 2 hours and 30 minutes, Cash and Evie got really tired. Also, I honestly think I have a hairline fracture in my foot from The Eiffel Tower, so I was kind of limping along.

Here are some pictures the kids got:

Then we started walking out of the basilica and we were all super excited to go back to the hotel. The tour guide walked us around the building and took us to a stairwell and said, “Now you go up! Ciao! Give me a good review. I’m not going up. I never do.” I thought, “Nooooooooo” but we wound up going up to the very top of the dome. This was something I did with Caroline several years ago when I exercised and stuff, and it was a pain in the ass then.

We got to the top and I am honestly not sure if I have stopped sweating profusely this entire trip.

Evie got this picture here. I don’t know who that is but she doesn’t seem to too happy about the stairs.

Cash took these photos and I clearly am not happy about the stairs either.

Then we had dinner back on the hotel roof and we are heading to the Colosseum in the morning. I made sure kids were not on their phones for the entire day and it was like there were actually four people on the trip!